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CHRIS THOMPSON

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MoMADness

The Museum of the Modern American Dream hits town
In September the Museum of the Modern American Dream, an organization dedicated to commemorating the search for the American Dream by ordinary Americans, opened up an extension here in Portland.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | November 01, 2006

Last of the Tuba

MaryPat Warming’s burial of feminist theory
In a 2006 performance in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, Italy, MaryPat Warming wore a costume with a third prosthetic breast, stood with the Madonna’s poise at the edge of a wall with the vista of Florence unfolding behind her, and endeavored to consume the contents of several wine bottles full of whole unpasteurized milk.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | October 11, 2006

Changing worlds

A talk with USM philosophy professor Jason Read
On the USM philosophy department's home page, I noticed Karl Marx’s famous lines from Theses on Feuerbach: “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.”

By CHRIS THOMPSON | October 04, 2006

Painting at 3 mph

Thomas Manning on parade
Friday evening, a group of local citizens — students, activists, interested participant/observers, members of the press, and a surprisingly spare handful of professors — gathered at USM in Portland, preparing to march to Congress Square.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | September 20, 2006

Smells like free spirit

Art and engagement in Autumn 2006
Encountering Charlie Hewitt’s work for the first time, at his Farnsworth Museum retrospective, was like meeting someone from the neighborhood where you grow up long after you’ve grown up.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | September 13, 2006

Living theoria

Military uses for art theory
This spare spiral that Constantin Brancusi traced to capture the likeness of writer James Joyce describes the sort of journey involved in what Joyce called the “sedentary trade”: using one’s life as the material for one’s work, each working and wandering into and out of the other.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | September 06, 2006

Irregular customer

Reed Altemus at Maine Roasters Coffee
The Portland Press Herald horoscope predicted an average day for artist Reed Altemus on Monday, August 21.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | August 24, 2006

Mauve drab

Henry Wolyniec + Melanie Essex at Whitney Art Works
The diptych is a device you almost never see used properly these days.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | August 17, 2006

Like Wow

“From Baja to Bar Harbor” at the ICA@MECA
The great Dave Hickey draws a fine distinction between two kinds of art viewing experiences.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | July 19, 2006

Pinching edges

Considering the head-butt heard 'round the world
One of my painter friends had to watch the World Cup final with only one eye.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | July 12, 2006

Unheimlich maneuver

Cryptozoology at Bates College
This weekend the Bates College Museum of Art unveils the cryptozoological community’s most highly esteemed artworks by a Wyeth family member, living or otherwise.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | June 21, 2006

Life, camera, action

Tom Antonik’s photographs, artwork + memorabilia at USM
Artist, photographer, and HIV/AIDS activist-educator Tom Antonik has donated a collection of artworks and memorabilia to the University of Southern Maine’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | June 14, 2006

Postapologetic

Alexei Monroe’s Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK
Interrogation Machine is the sort of book that eschews any particular methodology in favor of throwing itself headlong into an experimental engagement with a vast, difficult, and continually changing historical and aesthetic terrain.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | May 24, 2006

'Retarded hippy'

Four dangerous decades
The message to be gleaned from a recent Frieze magazine survey is that the art world, like the world in which it is nestled, has gone to the dogs, that there is no longer any scope for real criticality.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | April 26, 2006

Selective strife

“In Our Time” at the PMA
Portland Museum of Art’s “In Our Time: The World as Seen By Magnum Photographers,” is quite literally a catalogue of the most virtuosic photojournalistic photographs in the last half-century.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | April 19, 2006

Blurbography

The real art criticism
If we agree that the state of current art criticism is worrisome enough to warrant some serious soul-searching, then art historian James Elkins's perspective is the right way to come to grips with what it really is.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | March 29, 2006

(Ad)venture capital

Slop Art gives away the store
At the College Art Association's annual conference in Boston last week, we caught up with Slop Art’s entrepreneurs to find out more about their aims, methods, and aspirations.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | March 01, 2006

Work nut

Catching up with Colleen Kinsella
Portland artist, musician, and curator Colleen Kinsella speaks with the Phoenix about this year’s WORKNOT project and its relationship to her own practice.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | February 22, 2006

Retooled

“Activator” at Bates College Museum of Art
What follows is a response to the provocation posed by the Bates College Museum of Art’s current show “Activator,” a tightly organized exhibition of six installations by seven young artists

By CHRIS THOMPSON | February 02, 2006

The thinking ass

“Accommodations of Desire” at the Portland Museum of Art
Before his imagery got captured and turned into poster art backdrops for dorm-room bong-hits, Salvador Dalí imagined it in service of a revolution in consciousness. “Accommodations of Desire: Surrealist Works on Paper Collected by Julien Levy,” at the Portland Museum of Art through this spring, traces the stages and offshoots of this revolution along the axis established by one crucial figure in its history and its dissemination — collector and dealer Julien Levy.

By CHRIS THOMPSON | January 25, 2006

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