A Tasting Menu of Fall Arts
A sampler of outstanding selections from the coming cultural season, from soup to nuts.
Edited by Laura DannenWith contribution from Douglas Bair and Tiffany Wan
VISUAL ART
Appetizer
For 20 years, photographer Amy Blakemore has used low-tech cameras and rigorous composition to give meaning to the banal—hair blowing in the wind, a woman with a watering can. She shows intimate new works at James Harris Gallery, with a complementary retrospective at Seattle Art Museum. Sept 1–Oct 16, James Harris Gallery, 312 Second Ave S, 206-903-6220, jamesharrisgallery.com; Sept 4–Feb 13, Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, 206-344-5275, seattleartmuseum.org
Soup or Salad
It’s no secret that Seattle has a healthy steampunk scene (the Steamcon convention returns November 19–21), but the Victorian-era, brass-tinged aesthetic travels east with a new collaboration at Kirkland Arts Center, Steambot. Five artists take inspiration from Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison in this exhibit on technology, past and present. Oct 15–Dec 4, Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St, Kirkland, 425-822-7161; kirklandartscenter.org
Entree
More than 150 Pablo Picasso masterpieces are on the move, slinking from Helsinki to the Pushkin museum in Moscow to St. Petersburg. And like Sarah Palin calling to her neighbors in Russia, we can practically see his paintings on the horizon, crossing the Bering Strait bound for Seattle Art Museum. Starting October 8, a collection of Picasso works spanning the artist’s entire career (1900–1973) will be on display, encompassing one of the most impressive international exhibits SAM has undertaken since King Tut in 1978.
Walking through the exhibit will be like paging through a fully illustrated biography on the Spaniard. There’s La Celestina (1904) from Picasso’s introspective Blue Period, completed in the shadow of a close friend’s suicide; The Weeping Woman (1937), depicting longtime lover Dora Maar who Picasso said was always in tears; self-portrait The Matador (1970); plus a range of sculptures, photographs, and prints. The pieces are on loan from the Musée National Picasso in Paris—which houses Picasso’s personal collection and the largest repository of his work—as the seventeenth-century mansion undergoes an expansion and other renovations through 2012. Though the collection will ramble on in January, it will likely only make two or three stops in the U.S., and Seattle is the first. Talk about a draw. Oct 8–Jan 17, Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, 206-344-5275; seattleartmuseum.org
Dessert
Call us…surprised that the Frye Art Museum, best known for its collection of nineteenth-century oil paintings, plans to celebrate six years of bloody, boisterous performance art by Seattle-based collective Implied Violence. Props, costumes, and Cremaster-tinged images from past performances will be on display in Implied Violence: Yes and More and Yes and Yes and Why. Oct 9–Jan 2, Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, 206-622-9250; fryemuseum.org
Published: September 2010
Lucia di Lammermoor was my very first opera. Ah, this sure brings back very fond memories: I remember, at 10 or so, being completely flabbergasted by the set, customes, lighting, and of course, the singing.
Leave the political commentary out of your reviews!