Recent Stories with tag seattle art museum

If there's a more fun way than a Remix to visit the monumental Picasso exhibition ongoing at SAM, I'm not sure what it could be, and I suspect it isn't likely to be legal. Museum members get a special entrance and a lounge all their own, but regular people like you and me can also buy tickets (and do, the Remixes frequently sell out) and enjoy the slightly illicit thrill of taking over a museum for the night, having a drink or two, and discovering a wide range of amusements. 

Here's what you missed from last night's extravaganza:

The evening began with people milling about, drinking wine and listening to the marimba-playing, chanson-française-crooning Erin Jorgensen. There was a French culture theme on account of the Picasso exhibit coming from the Musée National Picasso, but it was also Seattle-French, like it had just biked down from Café Presse on Capitol Hill.

After Jorgensen came the Harlequin Hipsters, "Seattle's premiere partner dance improv troupe." That description seems complete but it does leave out the hula hoops.

I am notoriously bad at matching face to names, but if you want to give it a shot, here are the Hipster players. As you can see, they supply the ambiance.

Then arrived the sassiness of the Heavenly Spies, whose can-can dance mastery can be viewed at the Can Can. (That's them in the first photo, up top, too.) Pernod Absinthe was sponsoring the event so as you watched the dancing, a woman circulated among the crowd offering a sample absinthe spoon.

But it was not all DJ TigerBeat's dance music (with impromptu singalong by Seattle's young and chic to "Livin' on a Prayer"); up on the fourth floor you could wander the galleries to harp accompaniment, only to notice the songs were oddly familiar--anything from arrangements of Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" to The Eagles' "Desperado." Chilling.

You could watch video of a Dutch girl very hard trying to sketch a Picasso.

You could play trivia. If you're wondering about the sailor hats at the far table: The first 50 people wearing a sailor's outfit got in free. Almost everything about the museum experience is improved by having 50 people in sailor outfits wandering about.

You could have your portrait taken.

Or you could take the Portrait Challenge, and draw one yourself.

Portrait Challenge accepted! Kanye and bug-Kanye.

Crowds thronged the Picasso exhibit itself, of course. Everyone got a ticket with a 20-minute window, so that you could still move about. The exhibit comes with accompanying audio narration, which you listen to on "wands" that are about the size of an opened clam-shell cell phone. They're very popular, but you can also see that the attentional bottleneck that makes cell phone listeners bad drivers extends to walkers, too. The Remix may be over, but the Picasso exhibit runs through January 17.

Pablo Picasso was the world’s first truly modern artist, and not solely in terms of technique. Before the term "branding" was a gleam in a marketer's eye, he understood the commercial importance of an artist’s public persona, actively pursued PR opportunities (he was constantly featured in Life and Look magazines), raked in money from appearances in movies and on TV, used the mass production of art as a way to scale his output, and created a complete, complex mythology around his life and art.

However, judging from the Picasso, Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris exhibit now at SAM (on view from October 8, 2010 to January 17, 2011), he never committed an artist’s worst sin: He never bought his own myth, or let it rule him.

The staff as SAM worked countless hours bringing this exhibition, the first to ever travel from the Musée National Picasso (which is being renovated) and the largest exhibition of the artist’s work in this country since 1939, to Seattle.

It is a testament to Picasso's prodigious talent and output that this blockbuster show, which you would expect to show signature works, or works from a particular period, presents you instead with more personal glimpses of the artist. Picasso’s strength as an exhibition is that it is a collection of works that were in the artist’s personal collection, works he never sold, works he held near, works he couldn’t let go. The exhibition is great not so much for its celebration of his iconographic fame as an artist, but in its celebration of Picasso the man.

Works from every phase of his life are on view. The exhibition includes 150 works, 75 paintings and sculptures, in 12 rooms, each room dedicated to a period of his life.... (more)

Special to The SunBreak by Heidi Boren

Things have come full circle for me and for Seattle since 1994. That was the year I danced at The Lusty Lady. It was also the April that Kurt Cobain ended his life. Now, The Lusty Lady is shutting its doors this June 27, while the Kurt exhibit draws visitors just across the street at the Seattle Art Museum.

SAM, the reborn Seattle Art Museum on First Avenue, was just a baby back then. Hammering Man had been recently, uh, erected, and The Lusty Lady had the cheek to comment on him from its pink-framed marquee with "Hammer Away, Big Guy." But as pithy as the marquee had always been, the Lusty was still just another sex arcade down at the end of  "Flesh" Avenue. A girl who worked at one of these places was probably also a hooker, and most certainly suffered from low self-esteem.

A stripper named Jane, who I met in New Mexico, had challenged those notions for me. When I asked her why she, someone who had a high school diploma, no addictions, and could have worked anywhere else in town, worked as a dancer at a strip club, she told me she didn't want to end up "one of those people from suburbia who thinks Cat Stevens is a real person."

As my musical tastes ran directly to Cat Stevens and Suzanne Vega, I didn't really grasp what she meant. When she died in a motorcycle accident a few months later, however, I decided I wanted to find out.

Having written a single, five-page play that had been well received by my professor in college, I considered myself the premier dramatic voice of my generation. My plan was to get myself back to Seattle where I had a sister who was a soft touch with money. There, I would live out Jane's quest and write an award-winning play about it.... (more)

Lines stretched everywhere at a sold-out SAM Remix Friday night. (The Seattle Art Museum's next Remix event will be at the Sculpture Park on August 27. Sign up for more information.) I'd dropped in at a Remix before, which had a lively, museum-at-night wine-and-cheese feel, but this was an event. I could tell because people were dressed up. For further evidence, check the #samremix Twitter stream.

From 8 p.m. to midnight, the museum was thronged with people dancing to KEXP's DJ Riz, drinking, designing a cover for the Stranger, singing karaoke, taking "highly opinionated tours" from celebrities, and watching Warhol films. The art tours began at 8:30 p.m. with Seth Aaron Henderson, designer and the winner of Project Runway's season seven, and wrapped up at 10:45 p.m. with musician and man-about-town Sean "Harvey Danger" Nelson. Henderson also gave a talk about his favorite works at SAM, and Nelson performed live.

The "Pop Culture Fashion" runway show drew a big crowd to the South Hall, and brought dayglo outfits, Warhol homages, punk rock DIY, and...well, the slideshow below will do a better job of this than I can. It was presented by the New York Fashion Academy, and featured creations by Anna D Designs, Mille Vixen, Samara Clothing Co., Evolve, Cameron Levin Couture, The House of Gina Marie, Lady Konyaku, Lekkerlife, Reyes Clothing Co., Jesse David, and Yurkanin Design House. (Complaints about my photography should be addressed to the heavens, while shaking a fist.)... (more)

It's just as well that I can't afford to collect Andy Warhol. One piece just doesn't do it. You can fill half of Paris's Grand Palais with portraits and a museum in Pittsburgh with assorted pieces and still not see the same piece twice.

Or you can stay closer to home: love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death opened yesterday at SAM. It's a smart, focused selection of Warhol pieces curated by Marisa Sánchez.

She steers away from the overly familiar and focuses on Warhol's non-paintings—photobooth strips, Polaroids, sewn portraits, screen tests—and non-iconic subjects. No Marilyns, no soup cans, no neon-cow wallpaper.

Warhol's genius—or was it just a knack?—was taking a simple set of rules and milking them for all they were worth. He repeated ideas the way Letterman repeates punchlines, and was just as successful at making lightning strike the same place twice, three times, four times, or more, long after you'd think that spot had no spark left in it.

A case in point is the highlight of the show: twenty of Warhol's Screen Tests. The idea behind the Screen Tests was simple: Sit someone in front of a nondescript background and film them for three minutes. Just sitting there. Doing not much. Project the films at 16 frames per second so they last four and a half minutes.

The first time I saw any Screen Tests was last year at SAM, when Dean & Britta played their collection of songs composed for 13 Most Beautiful. "Most beautiful" was an apt title, and not just because Jane Holzer brings the hubba hubba. The Screen Tests are some of the loveliest films I've seen, but it's maddeningly hard trying to pin down why, because for the most part nothing happens. But nothing makes me feel more like L.B. Jeffries, James Stewart's character in Rear Window, and at their best they give Warhol's subjects a moment where they're as lovely as Grace Kelly's entrance in that film.... (more)

There's plenty of great things going on this weekend, from Salt Horse's opening tonight, to ArtAttack's production of Fat Pig (just extended!) and the Balagan's Trout Stanley, to the closing of Glengarry Glen Ross down at the Rep. But that said, there's a bunch of top-notch, one-time-only events this weekend to keep you busy.

Tonight, Feb. 26, is the SAM Remix down at the Seattle Art Museum (8 p.m.-midnight, tickets $10, $8 students) the bi-monthly art-and-performance bash that tries to bring in the under-30 crowd. SAM Remix almost always sports an awesome lineup of events, but tonight's lineup is exceptionally good for two reasons: First, KT Niehoff's Lingo Dance are installing themselves as human sculpture throughout the galleries. It's part of a three-month project the company is developing with ACT Theatre called A Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light. The second is a new work from Mike Pham, half of Seattle's performance art darlings Helsinki Syndrome, called Soccer Practice. Expect something funny, odd, physical, and--quite probably--involving glitter.

Tomorrow night, Sat. Feb. 27, the Canoe Social Club above Theatre off Jackson is hosting what promises to be the sexiest fundraiser for Haitian relief yet, Hotties for Haiti (10:30 p.m., $15, 21+), an evening of performance by local burlesque and aerial performers including Tamara the Trapeze Lady, Lara Paxton, and Violet Tendencies. I've been told to expect nonstop striptease and table dancing, with your drool-slathered dollar bills destined to travel quickly from g-string to helping the people of Port-au-Prince.

And finally, I've saved the best for last: all weekend, the Seattle Chamber Players are hosting a stunning series of concerts called Icebreaker V: Songs of Love and War at On the Boards (tickets $18). Here's the deal: for the fifth year in a row, SCP is presenting a festival celebrating the best contemporary European chamber composers. Each of the five concerts features a different nation and deals with different themes, and to top it off, SCP is bringing in guest performers from around the globe, from Polish soprano Agata Zubel, to Denmark's FIGURA Ensemble.... (more)

It's a beautiful day, as if spring has sprung. That means it's time to lock yourselves indoors and watch some movies. And if you're looking for something to do this fine evening, head to the SAM, where their Steve McQueen series continues with Bullitt, followed by a Q&A with Steve's first wife, Neile McQueen-Toffel. And now here's this week's DVD releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.

Compared to the past few weeks, this week's lineup is actually pretty decent. So let's get the must-miss out of the way: Law Abiding Citizen, another title (like Couples Retreat before it) in bad need of punctuation, not to mention a better script. Don't remember this Jamie Foxx-Gerard Butler action thriller? Consider yourself lucky to have blocked those non-stop commercials from your memory.

Also out today is Coco Before Chanel, starring gamine cutie-pie Audrey Tautou as the fashion designer in her early years.  There's also Good Hair, Chris Rock's documentary about the politics and culture surrounding African-American hair. (Because there's two types of hair: the hair white people have, and the hair white people used to have.)  Speaking of black people, cult camp neo-classic Black Dynamite is also out on DVD. I thought it was released a couple weeks ago, but apparently it's actually out this week. I blame The Man.... (more)

Friday, Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m., SAM begins a three-part retrospective of the films of Richard Pryor with Silver Streak, a 1976 Hitchcockian spoof starring Gene Wilder as a publisher trying to relax by taking a train across the country, only to get caught up in a murder mystery. On Feb. 12, the series continues with Blue Collar, and closes up on Feb. 19 with the legendary Richard Pryor: Live on Sunset Strip. Tickets for the series are $20 ($17 for members) or $7 per film.

Seattle art critic Matthew Kangas said one of the weirdest things I have ever heard anyone say in public yesterday, at the press preview for SAM's new exhibit Alexander Calder: A Balancing Act (October 15-April 11, suggested SAM admission $9-$15). Trying to make a point about Miró's influence on Calder, he said, "If you take away the metal, it's a Miró painting."

Strictly speaking, if you take away the metal, there's nothing to paint. But more to the point, taking away the metal would be like trying to appraise cubism without all those angles. As the subtitle A Balancing Act implies, Calder's art has to do with the kinetics of taking up space. If much of 2D art is about the line, Calder's sculpture is about the line's tensile properties--in his work, the line bends, coils, springs, and supports.

Seattleites who aren't familiar with Alexander Calder probably are and just don't that he's the sculptor who produced "Eagle," the painted-red steel piece that's become the icon of SAM's sculpture park. But Calder also... (more)