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Seven Days in Chicago
Writers and artists love Obama at the Chopin Theater + Lauri Apple paints the veeps + Wicker Park landmark Pontiac Cafe closing its doors
(2008-10-07)
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After the Deluge
Wu Hung puts the flood of contemporary Chinese art in context
As a professor of Chinese art history at the University of Chicago and the director of the Center for the Art of East Asia, Wu Hung is a devout academic and scholar. He has fashioned his curatorial career, though, as a cultural diplomat. He’s been curating exhibitions since the 1980s
(2008-10-07)
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The Other Cheek
David Sedaris has a midlife crisis
David Sedaris wants you to have more sex. "That's what I was telling kids last night," he says when we meet for coffee during a tour stop for his latest book, “When You Are Engulfed in Flames.” "There was this girl that came through the line and as we got to talking, I gave her some advice and said, 'You should have sex with as many people as you can'
(2008-10-07)
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Crossing Lines
Crooked Fingers debates “Forfeit/Fortune”
Eric Bachmann appreciates fine lines—what they represent, how one decision we make can dictate complete prosperity or utter failure. Crooked Fingers, the band Bachmann fronts, had a record all about that released in 2005, called “Dignity and Shame,” and this month sees the release of the band’s fifth full-length, another examination of borders of fine lines, titled “Forfeit/Fortune"
(2008-10-07)
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Breaking Down the Bristol
Bucktown’s got a copy cat on its hands
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but ripping someone off is just a recipe for bad karma. With that in mind, The Bristol, Bucktown’s new Midwestern-inspired trattoria, might be headed for some bad vibes
(2008-10-07)
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Eye Exam
Identifying Marks
Identity—who we are, and how we make the case for it—is fraught territory, on both the personal and political fronts. Shirin Neshat’s “Rebellious Silence,” on view at the Spertus Institute’s “Twisted into Recognition: Clichés of Jews and Others,” is a case in point: in the photograph, a woman in chador regards us evenly, her face covered in Farsi script, and a rifle held up to bisect the plane of her face. It’s an image that tugs enigmatically at the layers of the self (in the steady, inscrutable eyes) and at Western notions of Islamic extremism
(2008-10-07)
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Past and Prologue
The Joffrey moves into its new season
This time last year, Ashley Wheater took the helm of the Joffrey Ballet, filling the formidable shoes of Gerald Arpino, who co-founded the company alongside Robert Joffrey more than fifty years ago. This, the first season under Mr. Wheater’s direction, is both a Romantic tribute to the masters who have directly influenced the Joffrey and a look into the future of Chicago’s premiere classical ballet company
(2008-10-07)
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Portrait of the Artist
Mindy Rose Schwartz
The art of Mindy Rose Schwartz helps me understand the city where I live: a landscape of endless avenues and rows of mid-century bungalow homes, bricks bracing for the chill, and corner bars touting an old style—a style not updated in decades but drunk down with pride
(2008-10-07)
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Soundcheck
Country Boy
We've all had that "guilty pleasures" conversation, the one where you and a couple of close buddies, after three or four beers and four bucks spent at the jukebox, reveal the embarrassing Top 40 passions locked within the trenches of your brain, inhibited by the hipster cortex. This is precisely where Texas rocker Ben Kweller's heart and soul are at this stage of his career
(2008-10-07)
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