Word: avant
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...PEER(LESS) Gynt a social satire? Is it an updated Norwegian folk tale? Is it a meditation on man's quest for self? Is it just an avant-garde joke? I don't know; it's hard to tell...
...Svenska Film Institute's latest American release traces the odd evolution of an avant-garde production of Mozart's famous opera Don Giovanni. It centers around the whims of Walter (Etienne Glaser), the opera's director, who wants his actors to get in touch with the erotic and ends up offending all with his outrageous demands. The Mozart Brothers asks: "How can Walter reconcile his ideas with those of his cast and crew...
...what if he did have the orchestra play in the nude in a production in Oslo, or if he wants his opera stars to roll in mud onstage? Stripped of its avant-garde allure, The Mozart Brothers falls apart. Left behind is a dull expose of empty personal relationships between Walter, his ex-wife, the actors, his children and his new lover...
Tadanori Yokoo, 51, is among the most well-known graphic designers in Japan -- and a rebel. In the '60s he achieved pop stardom for his paintings and for psychedelic posters promoting his fellow members of the avant-garde underground. Unable to survive on his painting alone, Yokoo turned to commercial assignments. "I loved to quarrel with corporate clients," he says with a smile. "And I refused to compromise. I wanted to express something very personal. So my design was called antidesign, and I was pushed out of the design establishment...
Then, in the '70s, "the avant-garde became part of the mainstream," as Yokoo puts it, and he got plenty of work again. His sexy, creepy 1980 poster for a fashion show is typical of his more recent, dreamier work: a naked, bleached-out man and woman stand face to face against a yellow field, their eyes and ears an odd, coppery red. In 1982, with his "sense of crisis missing," Yokoo doubled back, leaving full-time design work to become a painter once again...