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Three to See: Reinterpreting the Classics
Produced by Matthew Cunningham on Friday, April 11, 2008
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Detail from "Have a Nice Day" by Anton Skorusky Kandinsky |
Each week, Chicago Public Radio’s Matt Cunningham brings us three events for our cultural calendar. This week, he has found new examinations of three classics.
In the fall of 1967, photography student Dean Sharp was walking across what is now known as Daley Plaza. He was on his way to check out some possible subjects for his final photography project. And he noticed something.
SHARP: So I stopped to take a few photographs. And a took a few more, and I took a few more. And I kept seeing more and more people just responding to the sculpture.
Through his lens was the newly unveiled sculpture by Pablo Picasso. Back then it was quite the topic of conversation. And so, Sharp’s images capture reactions to the piece.
SHARP: The range of emotions that they were expressing from distaste to shock to amazement to people dissecting the sculpture and debating it with their friends, to people laughing about it. I think today people are a little more blasé about things. Or maybe they’ve just seen a lot of things in various city scapes and it doesn’t have the kind of impact that this sculpture had in 1967.
These reactions are on display at the Chicago Cultural Center through June 29.
And just down Washington Street at Wacker, is our second stop of our Three to See. Performing this weekend at the Civic Opera House is American Ballet Theater. They’re restaging of the classic, Sleeping Beauty.
The famous ballet was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa. He is also responsible for Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker. The familiar story, elaborate sets and costumes and a reworked shorter version have made it very accessible to families. The production is slightly different, giving the prince with a little depth, according to artistic director Kevin McKenzie.
MCKENZIE: It had become sort of a card board cut out figure. He was the predetermined good guy, but not a lot of depth. After getting this calling and vision from this unknown thing, take a leap of faith to leave his world behind; no matter if he was bored with it, loved it or hated it, he had to leave it behind irrevocably to go forward into the quote, unquote unknown. And then lucky for him, it turns out what’s at the other end of the tunnel is this gorgeous, blessed creature.
Each performance has different principle dancers performing the roles of Prince Charming and Princess Aurora. And these dancers are some of the best in the world. And besides, who doesn’t love a bunch of fairies in Tutus? ABT’s Sleeping Beauty runs through Sunday.
From one reinterpretation of a classic to another, stop three of our Three to See takes us to Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. Enter the Meditation of Weapons exhibition at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and you’ll encounter iconographic portraits of arch angels dressed in military gear, carrying M16s and gun sites as halos.
The artist Anton Skorubsky Kandinsky is classically trained in the socialist Realist style of painting. His largest work on display is titled Forever Kalashnikov. You see the profile of two gun barrels. The older version has the flag of the Soviet Socialist Republic. The modern version has the current flag of Russia; highlighting that weapons are more permanent that the political regimes that control them.
Roman Petruniak is the show’s curator. He says Kandinsky’s work is not passing judgment.
PETRUNIAK: His work is asking us to meditate on the nature of what it means to have a lot of weapons, what it means to have a fully stacked deck of cards in the international game.
Mediation of Weapons by Anton Skorubsky Kandinsky is at the Ukranian Institute of Modern Art on Chicago Avenue through May 11.
For Three to See, I’m Matt Cunningham, Chicago Public Radio.
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