http://riverfronttimes.com en-us Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:36:18 -0500 Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:36:18 -0500 http://riverfronttimes.com/about/syndication Village Voice Media XML Feed Generator http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/jordan-eagles-blood-spirit/ These scarlet-hued stained glass-like works by New York-based artist Jordan Eagles possess a peculiarly visceral texture that's no accident: They're painted with bovine blood collected from slaughterhouses. Encasing this macabre material in layers of UV resin and Plexiglas, the pieces, which alte...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/jordan-eagles-blood-spirit/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/bill-smith-beyond-the-humanities/ The usual description of Southern Illinois-based artist Bill Smith goes something like this: He holds an MFA in sculpture as well as degrees in diesel mechanics, biology and chemistry. But as his current exhibition at the World Chess Hall of Fame attests, his work begs a subtler read, as it provo...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/bill-smith-beyond-the-humanities/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/the-river-between-us-laumeier-sculpture-park/ As recent flooding attests, the Mississippi River still has the ability to define those along its shores. This group exhibition, organized with the Longue Vue House and Gardens in New Orleans, explores the layered historical connections shared by St. Louis and the Big Easy, sister cities that are...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/the-river-between-us-laumeier-sculpture-park/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/www-riverfronttimes-com-2013-05-09-culture-contemporary-german-art-selections-from-the-permanent-collection/ This exhibition of sixteen artworks from post-unified Germany does not overtly speak to the political tumult of their cultural origins — and that may precisely be the point. Ranging in media from painting and sculptural installation to photography and fabric-based works, the artwork on view...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/www-riverfronttimes-com-2013-05-09-culture-contemporary-german-art-selections-from-the-permanent-collection/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/hiraki-sawa-migration-review/ The lives of humans and other earthly animals are small and ephemeral in London-based Japanese artist Hiraki Sawa's brief black-and-white video "Migration." Using Eadweard Muybridge's 19th-century photographic studies of locomotion, Sawa digitally populates his spare, modest apartment with miniat...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/hiraki-sawa-migration-review/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/variations-review-philip-slein/ New York-based painters Stephen Ellis, Valerie Jaudon and Arnold Helbling display three self-hewn approaches to the abstract in this group exhibit of mid- to large-scale works. Ellis layers brightly hued veneers in alternatingly loose and tightly controlled stripes, their points of overlap creati...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/variations-review-philip-slein/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/kerry-james-marshall-garden-of-delights/ Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/kerry-james-marshall-garden-of-delights/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/yvette-drury-dubinsky-there-and-gone/ St. Louis-based Yvette Dubinsky harnesses her experience traveling the war-torn countries of Syria and Lebanon in 2009 for this exhibition of prints and mixed-media installations. While overseas, the artist befriended two families with whom she continued to correspond as conflicts escalated and t...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/yvette-drury-dubinsky-there-and-gone/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/donald-judd-the-multicolored-works-pulitzer/ If there's a way to think of color not as color, Donald Judd (1928-1994) figured it out, devoting the last decade of his single-minded career to deploying this fundamental and, to Judd, bedeviling aspect of art as objectively non-expressive. This exhibition collects twenty-plus works from the Gre...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/donald-judd-the-multicolored-works-pulitzer/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/good-summer-bank-projects-michael-senise-cody-frei/ In this two-person show, Milwaukee-based artists Michael Senise and Cody Frei juxtapose everyday objects to create visual puns that tend to riff on consumer and pop culture. A canvas photographic print of Stone Cold Steve Austin features the pro wrestler in a self-referential tank top, bulging ar...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/good-summer-bank-projects-michael-senise-cody-frei/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/film/monsters-university-review/ Terrorizing children in their bedrooms remains the existential concern of the toothy blobs, hams, and pop-pom-furred Wild Things that populate Monsters movies, many of whom look like gummy nothings long stuck to the bottom of Pixar's junk drawer. Their very lives depend upon coaxing night-...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/film/monsters-university-review/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/restaurants/review-st-louis-bakery-roundup/ We're not sure how it happened — yeast in the water, maybe? — but the past year or so's batch of from-scratch bakeshops seemingly doubled the local baking-and-pastry scene in size. Batters and doughs are on the rise everywhere from south city and Soulard to Maplewood and midtown. As s...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/restaurants/review-st-louis-bakery-roundup/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/film/world-war-z-review/ Destruction is scary, but not half as scary as the act of rebuilding, the moment of looking at the random, jagged pieces you've got left and wondering how the hell you're going to fit them together. In Marc Forster's World War Z, the world as we know it — or even as we don't really k...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/film/world-war-z-review/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/2013-artists-in-residence-exhibition-craft-alliance-review/ This year's group of Craft Alliance artists-in-residence — Bifei Cao, Laura Elizabeth Mullen, William Archer Rimel, Kelsey Viola Wiskirchen — exhibit elegant work that playfully upends the expectations of their medium, be it metal, fiber or clay. Cao creates intricate jewelry that ble...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/2013-artists-in-residence-exhibition-craft-alliance-review/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/in-the-details-sheldon-review/ Using black-and-white snapshots from the '30s and '40s, Chicago-based artist Shawn Michelle Smith creates photographic displays that focus on otherwise-overlooked details in the images. In the series Excess and Accident, small grids of silver gelatin prints home in on and enlarge atmospher...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/in-the-details-sheldon-review/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/news/iexcl-ask-a-mexican/ Dear Mexican: Recently, a coworker turned me on to a website that features many videos of unspeakable atrocities the drug cartels are committing in Mexico, many graphically displaying murders and beheadings. I just recently saw one of a woman getting her head cut off with a knife...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/news/iexcl-ask-a-mexican/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/opera-theatre-of-saint-louis-review-champion-emile-griffith-the-kiss-bedrich-smetana/ This past weekend Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) debuted the final two operas of its 2013 season, a pair that represents the polar ends of the opera spectrum — and two feats our local opera company regularly pulls off with aplomb: bravely premiering modern operas and staging rarely per...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/opera-theatre-of-saint-louis-review-champion-emile-griffith-the-kiss-bedrich-smetana/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/film/forget-paris-bling-ring-review/ Delicacy of touch isn't a particularly valued commodity among American filmmakers. We like pioneer swagger in our directors; particularly in the age of the blockbuster, open-ended questions and eyelash-fringe feelings are suspect. That's why it's always been hard to know how to categorize Sofia C...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/film/forget-paris-bling-ring-review/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/film/much-ado-about-nothing-whedon-review/ In Joss Whedon's The Avengers, Iron Man gets off a good burn on Thor during their intramural fight in the woods: "Shakespeare in the park?" he says. "Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?" Like any good Shakespearean pastiche, The Avengers began in media res, with a glowy cube th...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/film/much-ado-about-nothing-whedon-review/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/music/humdrum-we-are-electric-review/ For Humdrum's latest EP, the band booked time with Steve Albini in his Chicago-based Electrical Audio studio. This fact alone could overwhelm the conversation about the record, but Albini is a famously egalitarian and workmanlike producer. If you book time with him and get on the studio calendar,...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/music/humdrum-we-are-electric-review/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/music/marilyn-manson-alice-cooper-family-arena/ Once there was a subculture of people who shaved parts of their head and brightly dyed their dreadlocks. They casually wore bondage gear and did drugs most people couldn't find. They were true freaks of a different sort — 1990s industrial cybergoths, or whatever you want to call them. They ...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/music/marilyn-manson-alice-cooper-family-arena/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/news/the-cover-of-the-june-20-print-edition/
Read Pros and Cons: Ex-cons redefine handball at Forest Park by Jessica Lussenhop....]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/news/the-cover-of-the-june-20-print-edition/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/spamalot-the-muny-review-st-louis/ Wasn't that great?" a middle-aged man asked his wife as they strode out of the Muny after Monday's season-opening performance of Monty Python's Spamalot. "It was better than great," the wife replied. "It was thrilling." Indeed it was thrilling after the curtain call when John O'Hur...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/culture/spamalot-the-muny-review-st-louis/ http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/news/handball-forest-park-st-louis-history-prisoners-murder/ The handball courts loom high over the dirt running path in Forest Park. The last time anyone painted the twenty-foot-high wooden boards they were a soft canary yellow; today they're a sun-bleached gray. In lush green surroundings, the handball courts are a stern sight, rising from the lawn like ...]]> Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2013-06-20/news/handball-forest-park-st-louis-history-prisoners-murder/