Arts and Style
Warhol draws music
By Alidor Aucoin on October 2, 2008
Andy Warhol’s genius was that not only did he connect graphic design, cinema, sex, politics and pop culture, but as a new exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts demonstrates, Warhol was also the world’s most successful groupie...
Memo for artists : Arts are a market
By Vincent Geloso on October 2, 2008
Artists in Quebec were hoping that Stephen Harper would be ripping his hairs off to look like Jack Layton as they unleashed ads criticizing the government for cutting funding to arts in the province. However, their cause is not benefitting from widespread support as they expected and whatever support they have are polite yet lacking in passion...
In fond memory of Richard Monette
By Sharman Yarnell on September 18, 2008
At a time when funding for the arts is contracting, it is significant to note that we have also lost a man whose perseverance and creativity pulled The Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario out of deep financial debt...
“Dangerous Liasions” is eye-filling
By Alidor Aucoin on September 18, 2008
As Le Vicomte de Valmont in the Segal Centre’s eye-filling production of Dangerous Liasons, Brett Christopher is a satin-lapelled lounge lizard with all the right moves..
La fonderie Darling : un espace de création unique
By Louise V. Labrecque on September 18, 2008
Il n’y a pas plus québécois qu’un Québécois ! » Voici une maxime résumant à elle seule une québécitude bête à pleurer, un complexe en somme. De ce genre de cliché, de préjugé, de formule toute faite, impossible de ne pas faire matière à réflexion lorsque l’on visite la Fonderie Darling, nichée au cœur du Faubourg des Récollets, dans le « Quartier Éphémère »...
Forgotten master
By Alidor Aucoin on September 4, 2008
Roman Catholic who was incarcerated in a series of Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, Christo Stefanoff’s signature works have enduring political value because not only do they depict the Jewish Holocaust, but Christian suffering as well...
Thank you Centaur for 40 Magical Years
By Sharman Yarnell on September 4, 2008
Time for Montrealers to raise a glass and celebrate the theatre that has given our city years of innovative, provocative and classical works...
Une élégie empreinte d’ironie
By Alidor Aucoin on September 4, 2008
Dans la plus récente pièce de Michel Tremblay, Le Paradis à la fin de vos jours, présentée au Théâtre du Rideau Vert jusqu’au 6 septembre, le paradis est loin d’être ce à quoi on pourrait s’attendre. Comme le dit l’auteur, on n’y voit pas grand-chose (en fait, on voit rien pantoute, dit-il), le bon Dieu est toujours aussi occupé et inaccessible ici qu’il ne l’est pour ceux qui le prient sur Terre, et le fait de retrouver ceux que l’on aime n’est pas aussi rassurant qu’on voudrait bien le croire...
Cette riche mosaïque humaine
By Louise V. Labrecque on September 4, 2008
Les témoignages sont à la mode. On raconte sa vie. Dans le roman de Josée Bilodeau, la ville désarticulée est au contraire mise en scène, sur 188 pages, avec un impressionnant patchwork de personnages, tous plus hétéroclites les uns que les autres. Au détour des rues et des ruelles, dans les clameurs urbaines, On aurait dit juillet nous transporte dans une ville inconnue – j’aime bien imaginer qu’il s’agit d’un Montréal chargé de vie-, s’observant au travers mille et unes vitrines, comme des scènes parfaitement liées au décor de la ville...
The other side of Beijing
By Alidor Aucoin on August 21, 2008
So you thought the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games were as thrilling as they were chilling?..
Ottawa should learn from Québec’s censorship history
By P.A. Sévigny on August 21, 2008
The federal government should take the time to watch Québec journalist Eric Parent’s new film, “Les Ennemis du Cinéma” before letting Canada’s fundamentalist evangelical groups bully him into making a humiliating, and possibly fatal error for his party’s chances in a not-too-distant election...
Nous sommes l’espèce fabulatrice
By Louise V. Labrecque on August 21, 2008
Notre spécialité, notre péjorative, notre manie, notre gloire et notre chute, c’est le pourquoi...
The Met does Broadway
By Sharman Yarnell on August 7, 2008
Broadway bound this summer? Consider: A late night walk along Broadway with the neon lights glowing along the streets from 42 Street to Times Square screaming at you, beckoning for you to turn onto them and take in one of the greatest celebrations of the human spirit – the Broadway play...
La tempête a rainswept “Tempest”
By Alidor Aucoin on August 7, 2008
Mother nature provided a thrilling opening at the end of July to the Repercussion Theatre Company’s English language production of The Tempest on Bonsecours Island in the Old Port...
Two by Blue
By Alidor Aucoin on August 7, 2008
“Being Frank”, Ricky Blue’s 70 minute musical cabaret about a Frank Sinatra wannabe running at Théâtre Lac Brome until July 27, is a breezy, beguiling salute to ol’ blue eyes...
Hot Blues
By Alidor Aucoin on July 10, 2008
With two of his stage plays opening on the straw hat circuit one week apart this month, Ricky Blue is suddenly Quebec’s hottest playwright in either language...
Couture as art
By Alidor Aucoin on July 10, 2008
Death can sometimes be a good career move for an artist. Yves Saint Laurent is a case in point. Before he died on June 1, Saint Laurent was considered a brilliant, influential designer whose career in recent years stood still as he wasted his enormous talent on cocaine and alcohol...
Lu: Omaha beach
By Louise V. Labrecque on July 10, 2008
6 juin 1944. Omaha Beach, Omaha « la sanglante », est l’une des cinq plages du débarquement de Normandie, lors de la Seconde guerre mondiale. Le jour J, Bloody Omaha sera le lieu des plus lourdes pertes américaines...
CHUT! Ça commence… «Il était une fois…»
By Louise V. Labrecque on June 26, 2008
Jo Légaré a connu une histoire d’amour avec le peintre Guildo Molinari, cet artiste en arts visuels de grand talent dont l’œuvre est trop peu connue. Jo Légaré parle en prose dans ce récit autobiographique. Un récit bien écrit donne toujours l’impression d’être autobiographique. Et puisque c’est d’amour dont il est ici question, les banalités y sont, comme de la musique, poignantes...
Une excellente lecture d`été
By Esther Delisle on June 26, 2008
Il était une fois un dentiste qui rêvait d’écrire des histoires qui plairaient à des lecteurs. Il rejetait d’emblée l’idée d’«une écriture ampoulée, compliquée pour montrer ce dont je suis capable (...)
Le Piège Américain
By Chris Bumbray on June 26, 2008
The life of Quebec mobster Lucien Rivard is getting the big screen treatment in “Le Piège Américain” (THE AMERICAN TRAP), from local director Charles Binamé- who last directed a film about another Quebecois icon, “Maurice Richard.” Suffice to say, Rivard is a much more controversial figure...
The Audacious Little Redhead of PEI
By Sharman Yarnell on June 26, 2008
Little did she know the affect she'd have on the province's tourist trade and economy when she wrote the story so beloved by Canadians and others in so many countries the world over. She couldn't have conceived that her story and its sequels would be turned into movies, award winning television series and a musical that is staged to sold out houses every year in her home province...
Pour un meilleur entendement
By Pierre K. Malouf on June 12, 2008
«Une recherche valide doit se donner pour finalité la reconquête d’une totalité et elle ne peut dès lors que se déployer dans un espace multidisciplinaire. » Ces paroles furent prononcées en 2000 par Marc Angenot, à l’occasion du lancement simultané de trois (!) ouvrages de sa plume...
Hanganu is RAIC's gold medal laureate
By Alidor Aucoin on June 12, 2008
Dan Hanganu, the Romanian-born architect widely acclaimed for this design of Montreal's Musée d'archéologie et d'histoire de Pointe-à-Callière, believes that much of today's architecture is the work of what he calls "acrobats, who make noise for a period of time, then eventually lose their spark." Many computer designed buildings are, he believes, a "vulgar expression of advanced mediocrity," and lack depth of the art of architecture...
Triennial at the MAC a coherent triumph
By Alidor Aucoin on June 12, 2008
ot so long ago you had to hang out in New York, Los Angeles or Vancouver to see contemporary North American art of any significance. But if you want evidence that art as good and as interesting is being made by Quebec artists, you need look no further than the Triennial at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal...
Sur mon chemin, j’ai rencontré le réel
By Louise V. Labrecque on June 12, 2008
Que faire ici ? Et pourquoi ? Pourquoi j’écris ? Quels discours, quels pays ? Qui suis-je ? Où vais-je ? La disparition possible dans l’anonymat pousse toujours à une recherche de ce qui constitue son originalité propre...
The joy’s of Quebec’s wild, indigenous ingredients
By Nancy Hinton on June 12, 2008
The fiddleheads have been coming in by the potato sac this spring, officially kicking off the season of wild edibles in my kitchen at Les Jardins Sauvages. For those of you unfamiliar with Les Jardins, it’s a food and restaurant partnership between myself and my forager-par-excellence partner François Brouillard, a foremost field expert on Quebec’s wild ingredients. We’re located just on the way to Rawdon—about 45 minutes drive from Montreal...
St Ambroise Fringe Festival hits 18
By Sharman Yarnell on June 12, 2008
Once again, The Fringe Festival is serving up a cornucopia of stage delictables, with something for everyone. You might say this is art with no strings attached, art with no holds barred, where anything and everything goes. From dance to drag, drama and music, it has it all...
Stage ghosts
By Sharman Yarnell on May 29, 2008
To be or not.... That is the question in many Montrealers minds when it comes to English Theatre. And for good reason...
Histoires de s’entendre
By Louise V. Labrecque on May 29, 2008
Suzanne Jacob a fait de la musique, du théâtre, se passionne pour tout, puise son eau à toutes les sources, écrit des poèmes, des paroles de chansons, des essais. Elle chante, rit, édite, pense et parle. Et elle écrit, elle écrit, elle écrit … !
Le complexe d’Icare de Sébastian Maltais
By P.A. Sévigny on May 29, 2008
Dans un monde où la communication visuelle se trouve souvent réduite à guère plus qu’un gribouillage bidimensionnel non loin du plus commun graffiti de banlieue, certains pourraient considérer la plus récente exposition de Sébastian Maltais comme le début d’une ère nouvelle pour la communauté d’arts visuels montréalaise...
Sex at the Segal
By Alidor Aucoin on May 29, 2008
ryna Wasserman, now in her 10th year as artistic director at The Segal Centre at the Saidye, has one objective for the upcoming season. She’s put together a sensual bill of theatrical fare designed to “sizzle and titillate.” And she’s assembled a team of top-notch directors to oversee the daunting season...
What Leonard taught me about food
By Nancy Hinton on May 15, 2008
Leonard Cohen taught me this about cooking: Do not judge. Just do your thing. Try and please the person on the receiving end, the consumer of your art, whoever he or she is without any expectations of appreciation...
"Equus" is best show in town
By Alidor Aucoin on May 15, 2008
Ignore the script's dubious psycho babble. Equus, playing in French at Théatre Jean Duceppe in Place des Arts until May 31 is electrifying drama, thrilling theatre, and at the moment best show in town...
“Odd Couple” excellent
By Alidor Aucoin on May 15, 2008
The Odd Couple is a time tested, proven draw. The one-liners that fly around the Segal Centre's production of the two mismatched colocataires, finicky Felix (Rod Beattie) and "divorced, broke and sloppy" Oscar, (John Evans) can still pull laughs 40 years after Neil Simon's comedy made its Broadway debut. Everyone who has ever been stuck with an offensive roommate can relate...