Hoopleville

Happy birthday, Picasso

Hoopleville

By DAVID KISH | October 20, 2010

Alternative universe
In the 1930s and '40s, Boston painters developed a moody, mythic realism. They mixed social satire with depictions of street scenes, Biblical scenes, and mystical symbolic narratives, all of it darkened by the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II.
Purposeful randomness
"How do I absorb all this beauty," Leslie Schomp writes in Diary (2010), an open cloth notebook resting on a wood stand.
A walk on the wild side
Everyone looks so weary in Howard Yezerski Gallery's gritty documentary photos of Boston's dear departed Combat Zone from 1969 to 1978. The year's still young, but this glimpse into our past from Roswell Angier, Jerry Berndt, and John Goodman may be one of the best shows of 2010.
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Alternative universe
In the 1930s and '40s, Boston painters developed a moody, mythic realism. They mixed social satire with depictions of street scenes, Biblical scenes, and mystical symbolic narratives, all of it darkened by the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II.
Purposeful randomness
"How do I absorb all this beauty," Leslie Schomp writes in Diary (2010), an open cloth notebook resting on a wood stand.
A walk on the wild side
Everyone looks so weary in Howard Yezerski Gallery's gritty documentary photos of Boston's dear departed Combat Zone from 1969 to 1978. The year's still young, but this glimpse into our past from Roswell Angier, Jerry Berndt, and John Goodman may be one of the best shows of 2010.
Photos: Boston's Combat Zone, Burlesque (NSFW)
Images from Boston's Combat Zone at Howard Yezerski Gallery and the "Henry Horenstein: Show" at Walker.
Subject bias
"Objects of Wonder" is a mixed bag of a show, which is what it sets out to be.
The outside world
For some time now, Providence artist Adrianne Evans has been mulling natural processes in her art.
Re-structuring
Three large oil paintings overwhelm the lobby at the Portland Museum of Art, introducing the show "Division and Discovery: Recent Works by Frederick Lynch," a beautiful and meditative collection found on the fourth floor of the museum.
Ravishing beauty
The wreckage at the end of Modernist art's main thrust is the starting point for "Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line," a four-decade retrospective of the New Yorker's drawings at the RISD Museum.
Deep blue
If you’re going to explore the cosmos, better do it at night.
Tattoo you
Dr. Lakra is no more a real doctor than is Dr. Dre or Dr. Demento. The 38-year-old Mexican tattoo artist’s real name is Jerónimo López Ramírez. As for “lakra,” it means “delinquent.” Or so I thought.
Cowboy junkie
England in the mid-’80s, gray and depressed by Thatcherism and the Smiths, wasn’t a place folks typically dressed to the nines in ten-gallon hats, bolo ties, and Nudie shirts. But such were the sartorial choices made those days by the members of the Mekons.
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