Art And Life

Against Wind and Tide Letters and Journals, 1947-1986 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, edited and with an introduction by Reeve Lindbergh Pantheon: 358 pp., $27.95 "A woman writer is 'rowing against wind and tide,'" Anne Morrow Lindbergh told her daughter Reeve in 1972, quoting Harriet Beecher Stowe. "We cannot - or only with the greatest difficulty - produce a great 'body of work.'… And it isn't just being a woman. It is some other deeper conflict between art and life. " Ultimately, Lindbergh made art from her life; this posthumous collection joins five earlier volumes of diaries and correspondence that explore her experiences with the subtlety and drama of a good novel.

A new play about artist Ai Weiwei's secret detention in 2011 will premiere in April in London. Written by British playwright Howard Brenton, "#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei" is set to open at the Hampstead Theatre. The title of the play is a reference to Ai's Twitter handle. The artist, who is a regular user of the social networking site, has gotten into trouble with Chinese officials a number of times due to his online activism. In 2011, Ai was arrested by Beijing officials while attempting to travel to Hong Kong.

In November, Elton John angered Chinese officials when he dedicated a Beijing concert to Ai Weiwei. The outspoken artist, whose online activism has gotten him into trouble with police numerous times, has apparently returned the favor by creating an online promotional video for the pop singer's AIDS foundation. The video exists in two versions -- one is 30 seconds long, the other is a minute. The promo is viewable in the clip below. The Valentine's Day-themed promo is also expected to run on screens in Times Square, Piccadilly Circus and Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, according to a report in Britain's Independent.

In November, Elton John angered Chinese officials when he dedicated a Beijing concert to Ai Weiwei. The outspoken artist, whose online activism has gotten him into trouble with police numerous times, has apparently returned the favor by creating an online promotional video for the pop singer's AIDS foundation. The video exists in two versions -- one is 30 seconds long, the other is a minute. The promo is viewable in the clip below. The Valentine's Day-themed promo is also expected to run on screens in Times Square, Piccadilly Circus and Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, according to a report in Britain's Independent.

As a college professor of theater and drama, I appreciated Laurie Winer's laudatory review of "The Real Thing" (" 'Real Thing' Has Right Stuff," Jan. 20). The play is both emotionally resonant and intellectually challenging, two qualities too rarely wed so comfortably in a single work. However, I take exception to her assessment of Jeff Allin's performance as Henry the playwright as "problematic." Far from being the insecure "sad sack" of Winer's description, Allin commands the stage with physical vitality when required and with exquisite verbal timing in his character's more reflective moments.

Although he is barely known in the United States, the filmmaker Philippe Garrel is the subject of a devoted cult in his native France, where he's considered a Rimbaud-like Romantic, a major figure of post-French New Wave auteur cinema. Garrel, now 61, made his first feature, "Marie for Memory" (1967), when he was a teenager, earning the attention of his idol, Jean-Luc Godard. His work can be divided between avant-garde and narrative phases, but almost every Garrel film is a home movie of a sort.

These essays and color photographs of clothing, housing, weapons and icons are especially striking because they show how traditional Indian culture has done away with the dualisms that rock Western culture: Dualisms between art (what Westerners believe they see in a museum or theater) and life (the daily routine); dreams (diverting reveries) and wakefulness ("reality"); nature (that which is outside of us) and culture (that which we create). In traditional Native America, Anna Walters shows, dreams offer direction in life, culture emerges from nature (which is both inside and around us)

Collage is often called the definitive art form of this century. In his paper collages, Pablo Picasso disrupted the space of art with the debris of "real" life. And in her image and text pieces, Barbara Kruger disclosed the abstruse manipulations of the media society. For these artists--along with everyone in-between, from John Heartfield to Robert Rauschenberg--the power of collage has been its ability to unravel the fiction of seamlessness, the reigning myth of both art and life.

A new play about artist Ai Weiwei's secret detention in 2011 will premiere in April in London. Written by British playwright Howard Brenton, "#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei" is set to open at the Hampstead Theatre. The title of the play is a reference to Ai's Twitter handle. The artist, who is a regular user of the social networking site, has gotten into trouble with Chinese officials a number of times due to his online activism. In 2011, Ai was arrested by Beijing officials while attempting to travel to Hong Kong.

"We exclaim that the whole brilliant style of modern times--our trousers, jackets, shoes, trolleys, cars, airplanes, railways, grandiose steamships--is fascinating, is a great epoch, one that has known no equal in the entire history of the world." Tone down "exclaim," throw in tape recorder, TV and telephone for outdated trolleys, railways and steamships, and we might think we are reading something from the pages of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine.

Against Wind and Tide Letters and Journals, 1947-1986 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, edited and with an introduction by Reeve Lindbergh Pantheon: 358 pp., $27.95 "A woman writer is 'rowing against wind and tide,'" Anne Morrow Lindbergh told her daughter Reeve in 1972, quoting Harriet Beecher Stowe. "We cannot - or only with the greatest difficulty - produce a great 'body of work.'… And it isn't just being a woman. It is some other deeper conflict between art and life. " Ultimately, Lindbergh made art from her life; this posthumous collection joins five earlier volumes of diaries and correspondence that explore her experiences with the subtlety and drama of a good novel.

There are artists who prefer to stay out of the public spotlight and devote themselves solely to their work. And then there is Ai Weiwei. An Internet activist with a history of getting into trouble with Chinese authorities, Ai has been outspoken in support of free speech and human rights. He spent 81 days in jail this spring before being released on bail but still faces charges related to tax evasion - charges supporters regard as an attempt by the government to silence him. The terms of Ai's release forbid him from discussing his legal case.

The tomb raiders dug down 30 feet into Mawangdui -- a mound in Hunan, China, long known as a burial site for ancient nobility -- but they missed the mark. At some point they did find, and loot, the nearby tombs of her husband, the Marquis of Dai, and their son, but hers was the larger one, and more luxurious. That is because Lady Dai, as she is now known, outlived both of them and had more time to prepare for her trip to the afterlife. In 1972, more than 2,000 years after her death in 163 BC, Lady Dai was finally discovered.

Although he is barely known in the United States, the filmmaker Philippe Garrel is the subject of a devoted cult in his native France, where he's considered a Rimbaud-like Romantic, a major figure of post-French New Wave auteur cinema. Garrel, now 61, made his first feature, "Marie for Memory" (1967), when he was a teenager, earning the attention of his idol, Jean-Luc Godard. His work can be divided between avant-garde and narrative phases, but almost every Garrel film is a home movie of a sort.

The first few times I took my kids to the Museum of Contemporary Art, the visits weren't completely successful. Both children loved the Grand Avenue building, with its pyramid top and the exciting descent down the stairs into the museum. But looking at the art was another matter. My daughter was an adolescent and had learned her museum manners. Her younger brother had not.

IF you were in Westwood at lunchtime Wednesday, you might have come across an unusual sight: about 50 people sitting on the sidewalk in office chairs. If you stopped to talk with one of them, you might also have learned that the motley lineup was a work of art. Specifically, it was a happening, an event scripted by the late artist Allan Kaprow, who's the subject of a retrospective exhibition on view across town at the Museum of Contemporary Art's Geffen Contemporary.

In this city, more than most places on earth, art and life seem inseparable. Someone robs a bank in suburbia on live TV, and the collision is inevitable, an unclean segue between pulp fiction and truth. The bad guys wore the requisite ski masks, the SWAT troops sported ball caps, the shrieking bank tellers holed themselves up in the vault. The police tape fluttered. The artillery was heavy. There were skycams and wounded bystanders on the curb.

"I move with the temperament of the light, not into it, not controlling the next move," says improvisational dancer/choreographer Dana Reitz. "And I allow myself to go into stillnesses. I stand in darkness. I wait." When Reitz dances her "Circumstantial Evidence" at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions tonight, the forms of her improvisational movement language may force the audience to do what Reitz says she does before each performance: "I leave the need to be in control out the door.

AL PACINO likes layers. A week before the first performance of "Salome" at the Wadsworth Theatre in West L.A., he drifts up and down the dark aisles like a wayward cloud formation of black and gray garments -- baggy pants, a couple of untucked shirts and a droopy blazer, his smiling face floating above them in Cheshire cat fashion. "Suicide," he says. "Murder. Sex." Pacino is ticking off the overlapping elements that keep him coming back to this odd script and the role of Herod, king of Judea.

Red hair, ivory skin, slender, supple limbs and a light but forceful attack: Moira Shearer left an afterimage like nobody else in world ballet. In the tragic finale of "The Red Shoes" -- the 1948 film that made her an international star as the brilliant, suicidal ballerina Victoria Page -- it's easy to summon up her luminous persona in the empty spotlight that we see retracing the path of her choreography.