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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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"Leon Golub, an artist who depicted scenes of war, torture and oppression in large-scale figurative paintings, has died." ...man. That's a brutish summation. This quote from his 2001 retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum has a bit more depth: "These expressive political paintings, many of which are mural-sized, explore issues of race, violence, war, and human suffering." I really like Leon Golub. I visited his studio as a student and found his aggressive take on media violence both challenging and inspiring. He was really articulate and generous in talking about his practice. I don't remember specifics of what he said, it being many many years ago, but I came away with this idea in my head: Why should art be pretty and unchallenging when TV news is so ugly and unchallenging?
I must say that Moulin Rouge took me completely by surprise. From the previews, I thought it would be a standard, boring period piece costume drama, and I had zero interest in it.The fact it was a musical starring Nicole Kidman and Euan MacGregor should have peaked my curiosity but the swings and tophats and coquettish frills just made my mind glaze over. I did not expect the heavily postmodern, oddly effective collage of contemporary love songs delivered in over-stimulating baroque and encrusted valentine sets. I didn't expect that every shot would be pushed to the extreme, each moment of the film an overloaded symbolic allegory to ...something... well, something emotionally hard-core, that's for sure. It's an operatic plot with an audacious amount of dramatic catharsis crammed into every scene. Somehow it's okay. NK is excellent and so is EM. They embody their larger than life characters with never so much as an ironic quiver. (note: just found out the director, Baz Luhrmann, also did "Strictly Ballroom," which I also loved...yeah, I'm a big softie. Hit me with your best shot and paint me with a broad stroke brush.)
clarification: I am not pregnant
I am leaving the position of Interim Managing Editor at YYZ Artists' Outlet. And the job is a maternity leave position, but the person that is pregnant is the person that I was hired to fill in for. Not me. I've pasted the job posting into the comments in case anyone is interested in applying. I won't answer any questions about it or otherwise mention it again on this blog.