Thanks to Aeschylus, 7Pi reminded us last Thursday that Greek tragedies are just that--tragedies. After returning from Troy victorious, a convincing Agamemnon (Felix S.) meets conniving treachery and death by those closest to him (Clytemnestra, played by Fred R. and Aegisthus, played by John C.). Cameron D., playing the cursed Cassandra--Agamemnon's war prize--was so powerful on stage that all the boys in the audience looked in the direction Cassandra pointed fully expecting to see what she described. Cameron's moving performance was a spell binding portrayal of madness and possession by the spirits.
Yesterday evening, independent scholar and critic Michelle Marder Kamhi ( www.mmkamhi.com ), co-editor with husband Louis Torres of Aristos , an online review of arts; author of Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts ; and grandmother of two Saint David's boys, gave a thought provoking talk on art for our grandparent community. An advocate of objective standards in arts scholarship and criticism, Ms. Kamhi focused her talk on the ways in which art critics such as Clement Greenberg promoted the shift from representational art to abstraction. Kamhi argues that the abstract and post-modern art prevalent today, which often requires explanation by docents in order to be understood, goes against art's purpose. Taking issue with Greenberg's contention that representation is an expendable convention of painting, she quoted the late art critic John Canaday: "Art is the tangible expression of the intangible values that men live by." ...
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