Entertainment

Review: Women take center stage as the curtain rises on a San Diego art museum

Published

3 years ago

April 7, 2022

Review: Women take center stage as the curtain rises on a San Diego art museum

LA JOLLA —

When an artwork museum opens a brand new, expanded or renovated constructing, all consideration fairly focuses on the structure.

Bricks and mortar — or travertine and glass within the case of the brand new, expanded and renovated constructing on the Museum of Up to date Artwork San Diego, opening to the general public Saturday — stand entrance and middle. Development takes time (on this case at the very least 5 years), plenty of cash ($85 million, in addition to a further $20 million to bump the endowment), a thousand and one selections (each grand and humble), plus difficult teamwork.

Toss in improvement concerns of the California Coastal Fee, and it’s — difficult.

That is the constructing’s fifth main transformation since World Conflict II, having begun life in 1916 as a seaside residential villa designed by Irving Gill, the pioneer Modernist. Every change established a brand new public face for the establishment. By now the façade gobbles up a stretch of 1 primary drag on this city, backed by a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean.

Fortunately, the important motivation for this bold iteration doesn’t get misplaced: For the primary time, the sustained degree of spectacular high quality within the museum’s everlasting assortment is manifest. The gathering stands out — nearly as a shock.

And that’s not all. In a welcome improvement that sometimes will get extra lip service than motion in American artwork museums, nearly half the artists whose work is on everlasting view — 40% — are girls. Southern California has been an epicenter of artwork’s critically essential feminist revolution because the Nineteen Sixties, and their assortment illustration is lengthy overdue.

Girls’s work is distinguished all through fascinating galleries devoted to Minimalism and Pop, Gentle and Area artwork, Conceptualism, artwork from Latin America and the San Diego/Tijuana border area, id politics and extra. Sure, the quantity needs to be at the very least 50%. Nonetheless, whereas dependable comparative statistics amongst museums are arduous to come back by, I daresay MCASD’s illustration of ladies is at the very least twice the nationwide common.

The Museum of Up to date Artwork San Diego has quadrupled its exhibition house, including 46,400 sq. toes in its transform. Sol LeWitt’s sculpture “Six-Half Modular Dice” stands in the midst of the Foster Household Gallery.

(Okay.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

MCASD is one amongst many Southern California museums that traditionally have had scant gallery house for assortment show.

In L.A., the Museum of Up to date Artwork outgrew its buildings quick. The UCLA Hammer Museum just lately added a welcome prints and drawings gallery, however its different everlasting assortment growth plans have been disrupted by the pandemic — briefly, one hopes. The Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork made the unfathomable determination to rebuild with much less everlasting assortment gallery house than within the buildings it just lately tore down.

A group is a museum’s defining marker, its declaration of dedication to the artwork it believes to be price lasting preservation, research and public presentation. At La Jolla’s public debut Saturday, some 200 important work, sculptures, installations and video works by about 150 artists will lastly be on long-term view.

That’s way over has ever been doable earlier than. The necessity has been acknowledged for many years. (It was a subject of debate at the very least because the late Seventies, after I was a curator there and the gathering small; right this moment it numbers greater than 5,000 objects.) Non permanent exhibitions wolfed up many of the restricted house. Now, with its sq. footage quadrupled, MCASD not hides its major purpose for being.

The museum’s director, Kathryn Kanjo, and her curatorial employees put the rebalancing entrance and middle.

The primary room options arguably the gathering’s signature portray — Ellsworth Kelly’s nice 1963 hard-edge abstraction “Purple Blue Inexperienced.” Of 13 artists in that introductory gallery, nonetheless, eight are girls. They embrace Ruth Asawa, Jo Baer, Helen Frankenthaler, Dorothy Hood and Miriam Schapiro.

The momentary exhibition program is following the lead. The inaugural present is “Niki de Saint Phalle within the Nineteen Sixties,” a radical take a look at the pivotal interval of the French American artist’s work. (She died in La Jolla, the place she moved late in life, in 2002.) The present was co-organized with Houston’s Menil Assortment, the place it was seen final September. This fall, “Alexis Smith: The American Approach,” a full-career retrospective of the essential L.A.-based artist, will spherical out the yr’s main exhibition program.

Even MCASD’s small outpost at a practice station in downtown San Diego at the moment options Yolanda López. It’s the primary solo museum presentation of the Bay Space Chicana artist and activist, who died final yr at 79.

New York-based architect Annabelle Selldorf designed the La Jolla undertaking. She was confronted with a posh web site. On a steep, comparatively slender bluff overlooking the Pacific, she wrapped everlasting assortment rooms round 6,800 sq. toes of latest momentary exhibition galleries that includes 20-foot ceilings.

Given the excavated hillside, galleries of assorted styles and sizes on completely different grades may have been a complicated warren of upstairs/downstairs rooms. With few exceptions, Selldorf was adept at creating sightlines between galleries, visually pulling a customer alongside a circuitous path.

Nearly all the time, panorama glimpses by strategically positioned vertical home windows forestall feeling misplaced inside. the place you’re and the place you need to be going.

A bench in the center of a museum gallery, with large red and yellow paintings hanging on the walls on either said.

One massive, spectacular skylighted room — previously the museum’s beautiful, underutilized, now unrecognizable Sherwood Auditorium — is of particular notice. It takes benefit of a big quantity of fantastically subtle mild to showcase a superlative assortment of Nineteen Sixties and Seventies perceptual abstractions referred to as Gentle and Area artwork (which had been nonetheless being put in throughout a current go to).

Geometric work by Larry Bell and Mary Corse; glass and plastic sculptures by Bell, Peter Alexander, Helen Pashgian, De Wain Valentine and Robert Irwin; and painted vacuum-formed wall reliefs by Craig Kauffman unfurl Southern California’s distinctive contribution to American artwork because the Fifties. On a darkened decrease degree, a significant 1965 neon surroundings asserts the pivotal significance of sculptor Doug Wheeler to the evolving style.

Elsewhere, an astonishing group of 12 works by Irwin, the Gentle and Area motion’s main determine, charts a lot of his evolution within the second half of the twentieth century. (Even the room’s bench was designed by him.) Beginning with not often seen Summary Expressionist canvases from the mid-Fifties, it’s a deep, dense tutorial within the artwork of seeing.

Robert Irwin's 1969 "Untitled" is an acrylic disk mounted on the wall.

The choice wants a number of issues to be full — and the museum does personal one other six Irwin works — however as excellent an set up as I’ve ever seen is featured: A 1969 acrylic wall disk dissolves earlier than your eyes in raking daylight, creating an inexplicable black gash that hovers within the environment. The preternatural phenomenon of this gash — a mysterious drawing in house — prepares one for the marvel within the subsequent room, the place the eye-boggling simplicity of exact apertures minimize into current sea-view home windows makes skinny air appear materially dense.

The event and energy of Gentle and Area artwork is fantastically framed. Irwin, 93, has lived in San Diego for a number of a long time, and his involvement with MCASD has been prolonged. Nothing near this show will probably be present in any museum elsewhere — together with the pivotal artist’s native Los Angeles, which is a disgrace.

The exhibition “Niki de Saint Phalle within the Nineteen Sixties” assembles about 50 works, plus documentary images, a movie and diverse ephemera. Curators Jill Dawsey and Michelle White, additionally answerable for the present’s informative catalog, deal with the 2 our bodies of the artist’s most essential work.

One she dubbed tirs séances — taking pictures classes — wherein Saint Phalle loaded a rifle or pistol and took useless purpose at canvases coated with discovered objects and plaster embedded with paint-filled balloons, yogurt and ink containers, eggs and different fluid supplies. When she (or an invited shooter) blasted away, shade exploded and ran over the ravaged surfaces.

A mixed-media work featuring dripping paint over a plaster cast.

Two dozen taking pictures classes had been publicly carried out in Europe and the USA, most in 1961 and ’62. A number of happened in Los Angeles.

One was at a jazz membership car parking zone on the Sundown Strip, one other on a Malibu hillside and a 3rd inside a neighborhood warehouse. The 2 public shoots had been witnessed by composer John Cage, painter Philip Guston, actor Jane Fonda, preeminent L.A. artwork critic Jules Langsner and vogue mannequin Peggy Moffitt, amongst different notables.

Later, Saint Phalle made voluptuous, embellished figural sculptures she dubbed nanas, impolite French slang for ladies. Some are collaged paper and material, whereas others are painted polyester resin.

One other, documented in a movie, was a big, brightly painted, now-legendary momentary sculpture 80 toes lengthy and 20 toes excessive. “She — a Cathedral” was made in 1966 with Swedish artist Per Olof Ultvedt and Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, Saint Phalle’s associate. As much as 150 guests at a time had been invited to enter the exaggerated nana’s reclining, pregnant physique by her unfold legs. There they encountered industrial innards of whirring mechanical gears and equipment, in addition to assorted tableaux of each day life.

Absolutely such frank celebration of female libidinal energy would have made the common moralizing misogynist apoplectic, which is another excuse to admire it. The rationale the sculpture was so giant, Saint Phalle defined, “is as a result of males are massive and [nanas] needed to be greater to meet their concepts.”

The survey rightly takes situation with the prevailing view that, as a result of she was an incest survivor — a childhood horror she revealed solely late in life — Saint Phalle’s breakthrough artwork is finest considered by that psycho-biographical prism. The surprising ordeal was definitely highly effective and consequential; but, as with youthful traumas endured by artists from Artemisia Gentileschi to Frida Kahlo, that slender focus robs a girl of any unbiased company inside bigger cultural and mental engagements. Her artwork is diminished to an emotional response to a lacerating occasion.

The exhibition and its catalog don’t say so, however one other side of Saint Phalle’s life earlier than she grew to become an artist does appear to me price emphasizing. A magnificence, born into an aristocratic French banking household and largely raised in New York, she grew to become a vogue mannequin at 17.

For the subsequent eight years, Saint Phalle was massively profitable on the aggressive job. Touchdown covers and spreads for main magazines together with Elle, Life, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue isn’t any small achievement. Saint Phalle’s breakthrough artwork needs to be seen in direct relation to it, reasonably than merely as an unshackled response to repressed trauma.

A painted and collaged resin figure of a seated woman

Tirs séances — taking pictures classes — are what vogue fashions do, in spite of everything, working with photographers’ cameras reasonably than weapons. Likewise, the French phrase for vogue mannequin, model, describes a embellished feminine type.

Modeling at its core is aesthetically entangled deep inside a tradition of systemic sexism, which is a topic Saint Phalle took on in her artwork. And language puns are a nucleus of the Dada angle she embraced as the one feminine member of the Nineteen Sixties Parisian artwork motion known as New Realism. Her work reworked a vogue shoot into an artwork shoot and a model right into a nana, and it did each in intellectually savvy and culturally revealing methods.

Self-taught, Saint Phalle selected to not go to artwork faculty. When she switched roles to set modeling apart and change into an artist, she took her life along with her to make work and sculptures that replicate a severe, looking out and significant sensibility. Her ’60s achievement was comparatively transient however acute. The sharply centered exhibition appears to be like terrific, particularly within the context of MCASD’s beneficiant everlasting assortment.

MCASD reopens

The place: Museum of Up to date Artwork San Diego, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla

When: Reopens Saturday, then open Thursdays-Sundays

Non permanent exhibition: “Niki de Saint Phalle within the Nineteen Sixties,” by July 17

Admission: $15-$25; guests 25 and youthful are free

Information: (858) 454-3541, mcasd.org

Movie Reviews

Daaku Maharaaj Review – Gulte

Published

4 hours ago

January 12, 2025

Press Room

2.75/5

2 Hr 27 Mins | Action | 12-01-2025

Cast – Nandamuri Balakrishna, Bobby Deol, Pragya Jaiswal, Shraddha Srinath, Urvashi Rautela, Chandini Chowdary, Shine Tom Chacko, Makarand Deshpande, Sachin Khedekar, Ravi Kishan, VTV Ganesh and others.

Director – Bobby Kolli

Producer – Suryadevara Naga Vamsi & Sai Soujanya

Banner – Sithara Entertainments & Fortune Four Cinemas

Music – Thaman S

Akhanda, Veera Simha Reddy & Bhagavanth Kesari, after delivering three back-to-back successful films, Nandamuri Balakrishna teamed up with Bobby Kolli, who delivered a blockbuster hit with his previous film, Waltair Veerayya and the production house, Sithara Entertainments. After grabbing the attention of the audience with its slick and stylish visuals in the teaser and trailer, the film was released in theatres today. Did Balakrishna deliver his fourth consecutive successful film? Did Bobby deliver another blockbuster after Waltair Veerayya? Did Sithara Entertainments continue its success streak after a memorable film like Lucky Baskhar? More importantly, did the slick and stylish visuals have the substance? Let’s find out with a detailed analysis.

What is it about?

Govind Gujjar(Makarand Deshpande) requests Nanaji to protect a little girl, Baby Vaishnavi and her family from the local MLA, Thrimurthulu Naidu and his brother(Sandeep Raj). Nanaji, while doing his job as the caretaker to the family, comes across a gang of Thakurs from Madhya Pradesh who runs Cocaine cultivation in the name of Tea Estate. During their first confrontation with the Thakurs gang, one of the gang members reveals that Nanaji’s real name is Daaku Maharaj. Who is Daaku Maharaj? What is Daaku Maharaj’s relationship with Baby Vaishnavi? What is the enmity between the Daaku Maharaj and Thakur brothers? Forms the rest of the story.

Performances:

Nandamuri Balakrishna delivered a subtle and impactful performance yet again right after ‘Bhagavanth Kesari’. His energy during the confrontation sequences with multiple antagonist characters & his energy during action sequences deserve appreciation. He looked good in the role of Nanaji and civil engineer Seetharam as well as ‘Daaku Maharaj’.

Pragya Jaiswal & Shraddha Srinath got limited but crucial roles. Both the actresses made their presence felt. The little girl who played the role of ‘Baby Vaishnavi’ delivered a good & confident performance. Ravi Kishan as Thrimurthulu Naidu did his role well and looked menacing.

Bobby Deol as the main antagonist and the younger brother in deadly Thakur’s family got a very good entry sequence. He did his part well in a not-so-well-written role. Shine Tom Chacko, Makarand Deshpande, VTV Ganesh, etc., the film had many notable actors. All of them made their presence felt but most of these characters were not written well.

Technicalities:

The cinematography by Vijay Kartik Kannan is undoubtedly the best thing that happened to the film. His visuals throughout the film are slick, stylish and very refreshing. Daaku Maharaaj is without a doubt one of the best Balakrishna film to date in terms of visuals. Especially, the visuals during the pre-interval sequence are top-notch. After the cinematography, the second-best thing that happened in the film was Thaman’s background score. His background score elevated and enhanced many sequences to the next level in the film. The ‘Chinni Chinni’ song is pleasant to hear and looks very good on screen. There are three other songs in the film including a mass number & two montage songs but none of these three songs leave any lasting impact.

Dialogues by Nandu Savirigana & Bhanu Bogavarapu are largely written keeping Balakrishna’s image in mind and are aimed to please the fans of Balakrishna & mass audience. There are quite a few dialogues in the film which are likely to draw whistles & cheers from the fans in theatres. Editing by Ruben & Niranjan Devaramane is a mixed bag. Their work is slick at places and would have been better at places. Especially, the editing during pre-climax and climax episodes would have been better.

Production values by Sithara Entertainments are very good as usual. Producer, Naga Vamsi and team spent enough money to give the film a very stylish and grand look. Kudos to the producers for hiring notable actors across multiple film industries even for small & not so significant roles. Bobby, the director took a routine script and mixed enough commercial elements to make the film a decent commercial entertainer. Let’s talk more about his work in the analysis section.

Positives:

Balakrishna’s Subtle & Yet Impactful Performance
Excellent Visuals
Superb Background Score
A Couple of Action Sequences
Fans & Mass Audience Friendly Dialogues
Pre-Interval Sequence

Negatives:

Routine Storyline
Predictable Screenplay
Dragged Out Pre-Climax & Climax
‘Dabidi Dibidi’ Song Choreography

Analysis:

Kamal Hassan’s Vikram & Rajinikanth’s Jailer are now textbook references for any filmmaker who wants to make a film with a senior star hero in India across the film industry. The one thing that filmmakers have to keep in mind is that both Vikram and Jailer became a phenomenon for their innovative screenplay but not ‘Just’ because of their stylish presentation. The slick and stylish visuals along with terrific music only enhanced the impact of those films to another level but are not the ‘Only’ reasons for their phenomenal success.

For Daaku Maharaj, the director, Bobby, selected a very routine story and wrote a predictable screenplay around it but made sure to include enough adrenaline-pumping moments at regular intervals. The pre-interval sequence and transformation sequence of Seetharam into Daaku Maharaaj stands out. Both these sequences along with the dialogues used for the lead character will be liked immensely by the fans and mass audience.

The cinematography by Vijay Kartik Kannan & background score by Thaman are undoubtedly the major highlights of the film. However, the impact of cinematography and background score was brought down by routine execution. Barring an interesting twist related to the character, Baby Vaishnavi, right from the opening sequence to the climax, the film runs on a very predictable note. Especially, the last thirty minutes of the film would have been better with better writing for Bobby Deol’s character. Also, the choreography in the ‘Dabidi Dibidi’ song should have been better.

Overall, Daaku Maharaaj is a decent commercial entertainer and it can be watched easily once in theatres for Balakrishna’s subtle & yet impactful performance, slick & stylish visuals, Thaman’s background score and a few very well-executed sequences. With a bit of extra care in writing, this film would have become a memorable film in Nandamuri Balakrishna’s career.

Daaku Maharaaj – Stylish Maharaaj

Rating: 2.75/5

Tags Daaku Maharaaj Daaku Maharaaj Review

Entertainment

Column: For Angelenos suffering fire fatigue, ace water drop videos are sweet revenge

Published

5 hours ago

January 11, 2025

Press Room

Column: For Angelenos suffering fire fatigue, ace water drop videos are sweet revenge

Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Super Scooper water drop!

The most memorable battle scenes exist in the pivot — the moment when all appears to be lost and then, out of nowhere, the cavalry arrives. The fishing boats at Dunkirk. Union reinforcements at Gettysburg. Or, fictionally, the Riders of Rohan sweeping down on the besieged city of Gondor.

For Angelenos, the cavalry has arrived in the form of water drop videos.

For days, images from the horrendous series of wildfires that continue to consume huge swaths of Los Angeles have been devastating. People forced to flee their cars on Sunset Boulevard; sparks whipped by 80-mph winds igniting entire streets; firefighters hastening evacuations and confronting literal walls of flame; the smoking shells of homes and businesses.

These images shocked, terrified and aggrieved us. It was difficult not to feel helpless, hopeless, as the fires grew in size and number.

Then, as the ferocious winds began to die down on Wednesday, firefighters were once again able to take to the air, scooping up water from the ocean and reservoirs and dumping it on the fires. TV journalists caught some of the maneuvers on camera. Citizens filmed others on their phones. Everyone began posting and sharing them on social media.

Whether in Altadena, West Hills or Hollywood, the videos — call them firefighting fancams — depict firefighting pilots angling planes over flames that appear uncontrollable and releasing, with remarkable precision, gallons of water that douse raging infernos in a matter of seconds.

It is impossible not to cheer. And at this moment, Los Angeles needs something to cheer about.

For days, fire has been our worst enemy. Randomly killing and arbitrarily destroying, it has taken on near-supernatural dimensions, appearing at times to be laughing as it sped through brush and buildings, forcing thousands to flee.

Watching it be squashed into nothing but smoke and steam is an exhilarating thing. Thought you were unstoppable? Take that. Thought you were too big to be beaten? Yippee-ki-yay, motherf—!

To a city reeling with loss, water drop videos are “Battle of Britain” and Snoopy beating the Red Baron. They’re rebel pilots taking down the Death Star, Bill Pullman’s speech in “Independence Day,” LeBron James hitting a final-second three. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and the Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men.”

The precision of the drops is astonishing, the impact heart-lifting, their moments of victory obvious and unquestionable.

The only thing missing are the job-done figures of the pilots walking away from their aircraft in vivid silhouette to a pounding bass accompaniment. For the simple reason that they are still hard at work.

But a grateful city sees them and has been offering viral shout-outs and admiration by posting water drop videos with the “Top Gun” soundtrack, sportscaster commentary and many, many applause emojis.

Two yellow Canadian Super Scoopers have been especially well-documented dropping water over the Palisades. One of them was grounded on Thursday after colliding with a civilian drone, and whoever was idiotic enough to illegally send one up during a firefight better hope the internet doesn’t find them before the feds do. These planes, helicopters and Super Scoopers are our heroes, providing support for the fearless, stretched-thin firefighters on the ground, helping to quench the Sunset fire before it claimed more homes and offering hope that at some point Los Angeles will cease to burn.

More important, the water drop videos have returned a feeling of control to the populace — and given us all something to root for.

Firefighters have been working nonstop since the Palisades fire exploded, and their efforts amid the smoke and flames have been lifesaving and heroic. It’s satisfying to watch the fruits of that hard work in the form of a fire all but extinguished before it claims yet another acre or snakes its way toward any more homes.

In fact, it’s the best thing any of us has seen in days.

Movie Reviews

Daaku Maharaaj Review: USA Premiere Report

Published

11 hours ago

January 11, 2025

Press Room

Daaku Maharaaj Review: USA Premiere Report

Final Report:

Daaku Maharaaj makes for a decent one-time watch. It’s a stylishly made film through and through, but the key characters are written routinely. Technical departments (Thaman and DOP) significantly enhance the appeal. Solid writing that complements the stylish production would have made this film a memorable one. Watch it for Balayya in a style-packed production. Stay tuned for the full review and rating soon.

First Half Report:

First half of Daaku Maharaaj is decent, with solid visuals and an action-packed interval episode. We need to see if the style meets substance in the second half. Thaman and Vijay Kannan (DOP) together make it technically good. The second half needs to show if Bobby has written something solid.

— Director Bobby briefly dances in “Dabidi Dibidi” song with nice styling and a stylish costume for his fun moment.

— Daaku Maharaaj begins with a brief action sequence where BalaKrishna declares that he is the ‘God of Death’ leading into a flashback. Stay tuned for the first half report.

Stay tuned for Daaku Maharaaj review, USA Premiere report. Show begins at 2.30 PM EST (1 AM IST).

Daaku Maharaaj comes after a goodwill film like Bhagavanth Kesari for Nandamuri Balakrishna, and for director Bobby, it’s a follow-up to the commercial blockbuster Waltair Veerayya. Stay tuned for the Daaku Maharaaj review to find out if the Balayya-Bobby combo hits the bullseye or not.

Cast: Nandamuri Balakrishna, Bobby Deol, Pragya Jaiswal, Shraddha Srinath, Chandhini Chowdary.

Written and Directed by Bobby Kolli

Banners: Sithara Entertainments & Fortune Four Cinemas
Presenter: Srikara Studios
Producers: Suryadevara Naga Vamsi & Sai Soujanya
Music: Thaman S
DOP: Vijay Kartik Kannan
Editors: Niranjan Devaramane, Ruben
Screenplay: K Chakravarthy Reddy
VFX Supervisor: Yugandhar T
Stunts: V Venkat

U.S. Distributor: Shloka Entertainments

Daaku Maharaaj Movie Review by M9

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