Category Archives: Art

RKS 2024 Film: “Tish”: Memories of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero”

Watching the documentary “Tish” about British photographer Tish Murtha the lyrics of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” are most appropriate. “A working-class hero is something to be.”  Although the late Tish Murtha now has a permanent exhibition of her photos at the Tate Museum in London she never reached the status of a working classContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: “Tish”: Memories of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero””

RKS 2024 Arts and Culture: Käthe Kollwitz at New York’s MoMA

In the early decades of the 20th century, when many artists were experimenting with abstraction, Käthe Kollwitz remained committed to an art of social purpose. Focusing on themes of motherhood, grief, and resistance, she brought visibility to the working class and asserted the female point of view as a necessary and powerful agent for change. “I haveContinue reading “RKS 2024 Arts and Culture: Käthe Kollwitz at New York’s MoMA”

RKS 2024 Arts and Culture: LaToya Ruby Frazier Photographic Exhibit Opens at New York’s MoMA

LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity opened 12May2024 and runs until 7September2024 at New York’s MoMA. For this exhibition, Frazier has reimagined her diverse bodies of work as a sequence of original installations that she calls “monuments for workers’ thoughts,” which address the harmful effects of industrialization and deindustrialization, the healthcare inequities facing Black working-class communitiesContinue reading “RKS 2024 Arts and Culture: LaToya Ruby Frazier Photographic Exhibit Opens at New York’s MoMA”

RKS Literature: The Cruel Mr. Creakle Looks for His Next Victim (Charles Dickens)

“Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye, as he rules out a ciphering book, with a pocket handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don’t watch his eye in idleness but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether itContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Cruel Mr. Creakle Looks for His Next Victim (Charles Dickens)”

RKS 2024 Film: “Be Still”: A Descent into Madness of a Forgotten Canadian

You know Salvador Dali and Mary Cassatt. But do you know Canadians Helen Galloway McNicoll and Hannah Maynard? All but erased from history, 40 years before Dali and the Surrealist movement began, professional Canadian photographer Hannah Maynard was perfecting surrealistic techniques in her Victoria, British Columbia studio. Maynard moved beyond stone faced portraits to aContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: “Be Still”: A Descent into Madness of a Forgotten Canadian”

RKS 2024 Entertainment:  Maoist Guerilla Opera!

I attended a Christmas Special presented by the Opera Revue at the Granite Tied House and Brewery in Toronto on 20December2023.Take away from this performance is that they are somewhat akin to Maoist rebels in the Peruvian jungle. Can you imagine these upstarts attacking traditional opera? I can as I saw them. In fact canContinue reading “RKS 2024 Entertainment:  Maoist Guerilla Opera!”

RKS Museums: The Met Presents “Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930’s” (Until 10December2023): Ben Shahn’s “Welders”

The 1930s was a decade of political and social upheaval in the United States, and the art and visual culture of the time reflected the unsettled environment. Americans searched for their cultural identity during the Great Depression, a period marked by divisive politics, threats to democracy, and intensified social activism, including a powerful labor movement.Continue reading “RKS Museums: The Met Presents “Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930’s” (Until 10December2023): Ben Shahn’s “Welders””

RKS Museums: The Met Presents “Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930’s” (Until 10December2023): Guglielmi’s “One Third of a Nation”

The 1930s was a decade of political and social upheaval in the United States, and the art and visual culture of the time reflected the unsettled environment. Americans searched for their cultural identity during the Great Depression, a period marked by divisive politics, threats to democracy, and intensified social activism, including a powerful labor movement.Continue reading “RKS Museums: The Met Presents “Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930’s” (Until 10December2023): Guglielmi’s “One Third of a Nation””

RKS Literature: Pain and Humour (Ken Kesey)

“Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there is a painful side: he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses,Continue reading “RKS Literature: Pain and Humour (Ken Kesey)”

Keith Haring’s “Art is For Everybody” at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario

Fotini Stephen (Toronto, 9November2023) The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has collaborated with the Broad Los Angeles to assemble a major exhibition of Keith Haring’s work. The exhibit displays a broad range of Haring’s work created in the short and highly prolific 10-year period in which he painted. The last AGO exhibit of his workContinue reading “Keith Haring’s “Art is For Everybody” at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario”