Art

CHICAGO – One of the peculiar secrets … since revealed … in the new Apple TV+ series “High Desert” is that the icon Bernadette Peters portrays two characters. One is the mother (Rosalyn) of main character Peggy, and the other is mysterious actor Ginger who somehow ended up in California desert country. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

CHICAGO – How has actor/singer/Broadway icon Bernadette Peters ended up in the arid lands of California? She is featured in the new Apple TV+ series “High Desert.” It has an ensemble cast led by Patricia Arquette as Peggy Newman, a recovering human being in an odd and spiritual place. The series begins streaming on May 17th.

CHICAGO – The newly released “Paint” film offers an amiable enough premise that’s amusing in a two minute trailer, but entirely out of gas 20 minutes into the story, and then plods around for a whole other hour. While it’s hard to hate it, but I don’t think my time was very well spent either.

CHICAGO – The European Union Film Festival is an annual happening at Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center, and will take place in 2023 from March 1st-31st. Kicking off the Fest will be an appearance from actors Lena Olin and Tora Hallström.

CHICAGO – The tradition of the music salon goes as far back as 16th Century Italy, and is designed as a destination “either to please or to educate.” On May 7th, 2022, Soprano Kirsten Leslie Karadzhova and pianist Paul Dykstra will present the first Art Song Series at Dykstra’s “Salon des Artiste” music studio in the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. For complete details regarding this “free to the public” event, see below.

CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review on the new documentary about the art world, “The Lost Leonardo,” in select theaters, including Chicago’s Music Box Theatre, on August 27th, 2021.

BOSTON, MA – Meeting Lana Z. Caplan, as I did at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, is to meet a variety of perspective all in one dynamic artist. The veteran “lens based” media visionary has single-channel films, video, interactive installations and photography on her palette. Her latest exhibit – through September 29th, 2918 – is at Gallery NAGA in Boston, and it is entitled “Dunites.” The presentation will include photography, video, 35mm slides and a VR (Virtual Reality) installation, all inspired by the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes south of San Francisco.

CHICAGO – The British artist Andy Goldsworthy is a true “outsider” artist, because many of his works are rooted in the grown-and-death cycles of the great outdoors. He is described as a sculptor, photographer and environmentalist, but many of his art creations use materials available in any wooded area, based on a connection to nature combined with a creative soul. This is profiled in the second film about him from the same director, “Leaning Into the Wind - Andy Goldsworthy.”

CHICAGO – Recently, the record for highest bid ever on a work of art was shattered – $450 million for Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvador Mundi’ – and the ownership of a canvas, for the price of supporting a small country, calls into question the meaning of art and collecting. All of this, and everything more, is generated in the cinematic rendering of “The Square.”

CHICAGO – The 24 year-old Lena Dunham is a new and notable voice for her generation of filmmakers, breaking in with her first feature, the memorable “Tiny Furniture.” Dunham wrote, directed and portrays the main character Aura, a newly minted film theory graduate who is going through the time honored process of what to do with her post collegiate life.