Marie Cuttoli: The Hero of Modern Tapestry
The latest art exhibition at the Barnes Foundation is not an exhibition of an artist, per se.
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The latest art exhibition at the Barnes Foundation is not an exhibition of an artist, per se.
My first class in tantric sex began on familiar footing. “Breathe in, breathe out,” encouraged the instructors, in calming, meditative voices. “Feel the rhythm of your breath within you.”
Claire Epstein (C’ 23) needed money.
Color Field painting was most likely doomed to fall out of favor from the day of its inception. It’s the sort of blobbish abstract expressionism that those who lack an appetite for non–representational art despise most. The post–war emptiness of thought that inspired the style doesn’t translate well into our modern tendencies to anxiously overthink all we encounter. Unlike the work of famed Abstract Expressionist painters Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning, Color Field painting leaves little for the eye to zero in on, and fewer paths of paint for the mind to follow.
I read Little Women for the first time in sixth grade, climbing to the top of my bunk bed every night armed with the four–inch–thick novel in one hand and a book light in the other. The story of a Civil War–era family of four daughters was one I soon grew infatuated with. So when its latest film adaptation by Greta Gerwig came out, I ran to see it.
Climate change isn’t the crisis of our generation. To leave it at that would be to reduce its gravity. The warming of our planet and melting of our oceans is too big a problem to be put into the hands of today’s youth, to be called our responsibility to solve. Climate change and its effects have been a long time coming, and the consequences of our delayed action, whatever tragedies they will soon prove to be, will plague the years, decades, and centuries to come.
On the blustery November Wednesday following homecoming weekend at Penn, the campus sidewalks overflowed with piles, cans, and bags of garbage. Wednesday is collection day for the neighborhood surrounding Penn’s campus, so for those without a landlord or private pick–up service at their residence, hump day is waste day. In kicking their garbage to the curb, those living just west of Penn’s campus have to confront their week’s worth of waste as they set it outside to be whisked away later that day. And after homecoming parties and pre–games and brunches, there’s waste galore.
Ben Habermeyer (E ’20) looked at the Statistical Inference (STAT–431) exam in front of him with a sense of mild panic. Not one of the textbook practice problems recommended by the professor looked anything like the questions on the page in front of him. He looked around. No one else seemed to be struggling nearly as much as he was. As the clock ticked away, he scribbled in what he could and turned in his exam feeling decimated.
I’m a sucker for romance. I recently binge–watched the entire Modern Love series on Amazon in one sitting. I have Dinah Washington, Ann Peebles, and Patsy Cline records looming over my dresser. I tear up nearly every time I read a John Keats poem. And I love romantic comedies.
To say the political climate at the inception of the travelling art exhibition 30 Americans was different from that of today would be an understatement. When the Rubell family first premiered the exhibition of contemporary art by African American artists in 2008, reviews of that first show glimmered with the shiny hope of an Obama presidency. In today’s context, the show holds simmering undertones of protest.
“I have so much going on right now that honestly, I don’t really have time for a relationship.” Strangely enough, these were the exact words I said to a guy last year that I actually wanted to date seriously. But his beautiful mess of commitment issues and inability to fit me into his schedule left me so insecure that I wondered if I was the one with the problem for wanting a healthy relationship to be as much a part of my life as my job, schoolwork, and other responsibilities.
There’s one story that Reverend Chaz Howard never gets tired of telling. Thirty years ago, when Howard was in middle school, he remembers playing basketball at an all–boys Jewish sports camp in Maine. “It was the best of times and the smelliest of times,” he says with a laugh.
When’s the last time you had an orgasm? It’s okay, don’t be shy. Has it been a while? If you’re a heterosexual woman, the answer might be yes. Maybe you’ve never had one at all. But trust me, you’re not alone.
I’ve had little time to cook this week. Subsisting mostly off cups of tea and bowls of reheated soup as I try to relieve myself from a lingering bout of the common cold, I read every piece in this issue wrapped in a blanket, deeply craving each plate of octopus, mie goreng, and “angry” pizza arrabbiata I came across. But what I noticed most in many of these appetizing reviews was a common theme I hadn’t quite expected: the challenge of the price tag.
“Sankofa—who here knows what that means?” The question fell upon a quiet group of students, squinting up at their speaker against the sunlight of a golden afternoon in southwest Philadelphia. A Twi word from the Akan tribe in Ghana, sankofa translates to the phrase “go back and get it.” This is the principle upon which the Sankofa Community Farm of Bartram’s Garden built up its community over the last six years. Chris Bolden–Newsome, a co–founder of the farm, explains to a class of twenty Penn students the ways in which the histories of the African Diaspora align with the social and spiritual implications of hosting a community garden. He expands upon his original translation to say, “ain’t nothing wrong with going back and getting what you left behind.”
My family rarely ate dinner together growing up. What can I say? We were busy people, and certainly still are. Both of my parents worked nine–to–five jobs, but often had to arrive earlier or stay later for important meetings. So by the time they drove across town to pick my sisters and me up from our after–school programs or soccer practices, and then drove another twenty minutes to get home, we were all so hungry we often didn’t care what was for dinner.
Senior year is a time for embracing clichés. We get coffee with our exes, dabble in the pre–professionalism we once condemned, and venture beyond Penn’s campus into the gleaming Philadelphia metropolis. So, on one warm evening last week, my fellow SWUGs and I took a walk down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a promenade that boasts such grand buildings as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Franklin Institute, and City Hall. We marveled at the architecture glowing in the golden hour light and smiled at the jubilant children running through the fountains of Dilworth Park, until we came to the most monumental edifice of the Parkway and our first destination of the night—a place that glittered with the effusive glory of Americana, happy hour, and mozzarella sticks: TGI Friday’s.
The quiet, mostly monochromatic art now residing in the first floor gallery space of the Institute of Contemporary Art doesn’t immediately incite its viewers to protest. That is to say, when compared to the '90s–era work of the art collective fierce pussy, these newer works are both less explicit in their motivations and more detached in their directions, and not simply because the ICA provides no description in its labels. No, the new exhibition arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplified, which opened last Friday, brings us the art from four members of that collective. This new exhibition holds a tone distinct from the protest pieces of fierce pussy’s early days, one that now shares a refreshed and nuanced iteration of their fiery old resistance.
One of the last things I expected to do in my first week of senior year was share a meal of vegan chicken with my freshman year ex–hookup. And yet, there we were. Maybe I said yes to his DM'ed dinner invitation because I wanted to tell myself I had fully moved on and genuinely cared about how he was doing. Or, maybe (definitely) my self–righteous ass was just bored and wanted to give him shit for working at Google and hoped to get a free meal out of it too (I didn’t). This passive–aggressive curiosity begs the question: is staying friends with an ex mature or masochistic?
What is the human condition, really? This is a question that demands meditation, restraint, commitment, and, when the answer comes in the form of video art, extreme patience. That answer takes shape in the Barnes Foundation’s latest special exhibition, I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like, which displays seven works by Bill Viola, an American artist specializing in experimental video art. This exhibition, containing pieces from the years 1976 to 2009, looks with slow and quiet detail at our behaviors, our expressions, and our rituals as human beings throughout all of time.
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