Arts

Uniquely human

The social underpinnings of A Chorus Line
When A Chorus Line won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1976, America was experiencing what was then the worst economic downturn since the Depression, vibrant women's-lib and gay-rights movements, and such trends in popular psychology as the encounter group.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 03, 2009

Rural vernacular

Contemplating Linden Frederick at CMCA
A documenter of the contemporary American experience with portraits of our most mundane infrastructure, Belfast-based Linden Frederick has been chosen as this year's distinguished artist by the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport. In the show honoring his selection, 35 oil paintings explore 23 years of Frederick's observations.

By ANNIE LARMON | June 03, 2009

History's mysteries

Explore Portland's past with AIRE
Melodrama is a particularly satisfying popular art form for a financial crisis, filled as it is with unambiguous types and tropes — rich ruthless villains, poor but warm-hearted heroes and heroines, music that spiritedly cues our hisses and cheers, and reversals of fortune that reward honest, ordinary people just like us.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 27, 2009

Structural integrity

A group show at the Whitney
The five artists featured in "Stratum," now on view at Whitney Art Works, are diverse in background, medium, and scale, but they comfortably crowd the gallery's two rooms with sculptures, paintings, and drawings that respond to the relationships exposed by stripping back layers and how meaning and interpretation shift when new layers are presented.

By ANNIE LARMON | May 27, 2009

Full shelf

The best in summer reading
Hot town, summer in the city. . . . or in the country. . . . or at the beach. Wherever you are, don't forget your books.

By BARBARA HOFFERT | June 08, 2009

Happy meeting

Divergent approaches, the same landscape
An artistic intersection between Joseph Nicoletti and Ying Li happened in northern Italy. These very different painters from widely differing backgrounds found common interest in the Italian landscape, and have made paintings whose similarities illuminate their differences.

By KEN GREENLEAF | May 20, 2009

Rise and fall

Naked Shakespeare's Richard II
For years now, the Naked Shakespeare Ensemble has brought its signature fare — stripped-down productions and ravishingly acute attention to the Bard's language — into a slew of non-traditional settings, including the Wine Bar on Wharf Street, SPACE Gallery, and the Sacred and Profane festival.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 20, 2009

Close focus

Mary Hart's small paintings demand attention
Aucocisco has opened its new premises with a show of small paintings by Mary Hart. The new space on Exchange Street is spare and elegant, and so, in their own way, are Hart's little paintings.

By KEN GREENLEAF | May 13, 2009

River song

A lyrical turn in the South
Tim Gautreaux writes of a South that never changes. Dense, humid, with a fecundity that is more than a match for any human development, his South is largely a no man's land where the trees close off the sky, their roots rise "from the soppy mud like stalagmites," and the calm is broken only by the "stout windings of water moccasins."

By CLEA SIMON | May 13, 2009

Smooth lyricism

Betsy Sholl's Rough Cradle rocks
In "The Sea Itself," Betsy Sholl writes of a No said to the storm tide: "...such a total No , it became a kind of Yes ,/so the world was suddenly everything at once,/solid and shifty, stormy and calm."

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 06, 2009

Creative play

Words and Images 2009 is less serious, but headier, than in the past
It has now been 40 years since the University of Southern Maine began publication of its literary and arts journal Words and Images .

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 06, 2009

Infinite eights

Duncan Hewitt skates on thin ice
"The Smallest Eight I Can Skate," Duncan Hewitt's interactive imagining of the Coleman Burke Gallery in Brunswick's Fort Andross, is as elegant and introspective as its diminutive title.

By ANNIE LARMON | May 06, 2009

Rich power

Pontine lushly retells Jewett's stories
The Maine writer Sarah Orne Jewett, born in South Berwick in 1849, memorably focused her work on the ordinary people of rural nineteenth-century Maine.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 29, 2009

Dueling morals

Mad Horse's masterful The History Boys
A battle of pedagogies is raging at an English grammar school for teenage boys.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 29, 2009

Conversation piece

Leon Johnson explains his trans-historical-post-colonial-dinner-wait-what?!
Leon Johnson explains his trans-historical-post-colonial-dinner-wait-what?!

By IAN PAIGE | April 29, 2009

Bad girls

Mary Gaitskill carries on
People tend to make much of what they think of as Mary Gaitskill's fictional realm, a place of sexual transgression, of violence, violation, rape, and sado-masochism, and her female characters, the violated, the used, the users.

By DANA KLETTER | April 28, 2009

Slideshow: Portland Museum of Art 2009 Biennial

The 2009 Portland Museum of Art Biennial, April 8 to June 7, 2009
For it’s 2009 Biennial, the Portland Museum of Art whittled down 970 applicants to just 17 Maine (or at least Maine-affiliated) artists.

By PHOENIX STAFF | April 24, 2009

The power of 'Cool'

A contemporary-art show at Bowdoin is a must-see
"New York Cool" is required viewing for anyone who has an interest in contemporary American art. Comprised of nearly 80 works, the show, at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art through July 19.

By KEN GREENLEAF | May 18, 2009

True de-Light

Moss Hart and Good Theater send up thespians
It's opening night, and in the leading lady's suite at the Ritz-Carlton, key players are drinking a litany of pre-curtain toasts: Fast-talking financier Sidney Black (Stephen Underwood) blesses his first-ever investment in the theater.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 22, 2009

Farcing facts

Seacoast Rep knows some funny Rumors
The Brocks' posh house in the suburbs of New York is a study in contrasting eras: Its turn-of-the-century architecture is trimmed with gorgeous wood moldings and banister, with austere green and amber stained glass.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 15, 2009