If you choose to translate the word femininity in the title to feminism, take note of evidence here that feminists do indeed have a sense of humor. And men certainly can be feminists. Jason Roberts has limned the drag queen scene in Palm Springs, California, and while his Girls Night Out is a group portrait sparkling with bling-bling and good wigs, The Recruiter is made drolly funny by its title. In it, an ostensibly female figure — one bicep is perhaps too muscular — has an arm around the shoulders of a feminine-looking person wearing a suit and tie. Since the pressure has been relieved somewhat in our post-feminist age, gender identity can be amusing as well as serious. Roberts’s Question of Relief addresses the age-old problem of lines at women’s restrooms always being longer than at men’s: a transvestite stands before a door marked “MALE” and points to the adjacent door marked “FEMALE.”
An odd painting to be here is from Umberto Crenca’s whimsical 2003-04 series of bio-engineered humanoids. What’s unusual is that My Funny Valentine is not one of those creatures with dual genitalia but rather a smiling, priapic figure, unambiguously male. There is another male portrait in “Vacillate,” McCorkle’s thoughtful-looking “Esteban,” but questioning gender would explain that inclusion.
“Vacillate: A Conversation on Contemporary Femininity,” curated by videographer Cat Ganin, is the sort of guest show that more galleries should open their walls to. Kudos to Gallery Z for doing so.
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In 1969, Harvard University students rallied to support the creation of a black-studies program and protest the Vietnam War, the presence of ROTC on campus, and the university’s expansion into surrounding communities.
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Universities need their ivy-covered red-brick towers and classical stone porticoes to remind students of their roots in the past.
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Fellow Portlanders, we have about three months until we return to our caves for hibernation.
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The RISD Museum continues its top to bottom renovation and expansion.
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While culinary fads have come and gone, Chef Tony Maws has stuck by his sound principles.
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"When you don't understand a painting, you assume you're stupid. When you don't understand a cartoon, you assume the cartoonist is stupid."
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Never merely illustrative, their unity seemed like the very source of Heaven.
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Theater around town
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For more than 50 years David Driskell, in his art and his distinguished academic career, has been a creative force in the intersection of modernist art and the African diaspora.
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Terry Hilt's show of watercolors at Aucocisco provides an opportunity to consider the role of modernism in today's art.
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Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Crime, Painting, Visual Arts, More
, Crime, Painting, Visual Arts, Sexual Offenses, Pablo Picasso, Umberto Crenca, Thomas Terceira, Less
