Word: anti-art
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Even evanescent events have a kind of art-history pedigree. Dada, the anti-art phenomenon that grew out of disgust with World War I, was as much a café phenomenon as it was an art movement. And more recently there has been Rirkrit Tiravanija, the Thai artist best known for cooking and serving meals for visitors at his gallery shows, at which the art was the shared experience of the meal. To serve and nourish, and to reflect on it while you are doing it, in a world that's gotten used to performance art--maybe that can be art...
...There were a few differences between then and now. One was that the culture of vulgarity was still a minority one. Another difference was that the content of '50s anti-art, however loud or lurid, was harmless. (OK, except for comics like EC's "Vault of Horror," with its ripely illustrated cautionary tales of deceit and dismemberment.) And a third was, well, me: a kid who was as naive as he was curious. When Little Richard wailed, "I saw Uncle John with bald-head Sally/ He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he ducked back in the alley...
Travesties is fairly solid as house productions go. The story is based upon the imaginary life experiences of a senile diplomat, specifically focusing on the year 1917 when Lenin the revolutionary, Tzara the artist of anti-art, and Joyce the self-exiled Irish writer all roved the streets of tranquil Zurich while Europe pounded out its own life blood. The humorous "what ifs" of their possible meetings or interactions are fully exploited by the witty, yet, erudite Stoppard script...
...always a bit mysterious to those outside the immediate scene. The musical snatches that sneaked out confused rather than clarified. The fact that it was "no" wave indicated that it was somehow removed from the normal musical continuum. It was a cerebral expression of nothing in particular; an anti-art cry from the steel and glass super-structures of the Big Apple...
...break away from the impressionistic, pictorial vision of his predecessor, Alfred Stieglitz. While Stieglitz captured the more romantic-- misty weather scenes and soft focus portraits-- with an emphasis on mood, Evans tried to focus on a clarity and cleansing of the photographic medium, engaging in a kind of anti-art campaign. He labeled Stieglitz's art as "veritably screaming aestheticism." His photographs are straightforward views of everyday people in ordinary settings and the objects of their contemporary living...