Pal Sverre Valheim Hagen as explorer Thor Heyerdahl.
PHOTOS COURTESY THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY.

Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl’s 8,000-kilometer voyage across the Pacific Ocean on the balsa raft Kon-Tiki in 1947 stands as one of the greatest post-World War II feats of exploration, and cemented his standing as a legendary adventurer.

Heyerdahl’s book about his experience became a bestseller. It was published in 1948 as “The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas,” later reprinted as “Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft.” A documentary motion picture about the expedition won an Academy Award in 1951.

Now, a glossy big-screen version sails into local theaters, a product of Norwegian filmmakers Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg. When the movie premiered last year in their homeland, it broke box-office records. And while most American audiences will label the 118-minute voyage as a bit old-fashioned, it nonetheless is also a beautifully shot and at times exciting tale filmed mostly in exotic locations.

Agnes Elisabet Hilden Kittelsen as Liv Heyerdahl.
PHOTOS COURTESY THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY.

Directors Ronning and Sandberg begin with Heyerdahl’s childhood in his hometown Larvik, in which he fell through the ice trying to cross from one ice floe to another. The scene conveys the mix of curiosity and recklessness that defines the older Heyerdahl. Pal Sverre Valheim Hagen’s portrayal of Heyerdahl juxtaposes his gangly, cheerful looks and charisma reminiscent of Peter O’Toole’s in the classic “Lawrence of Arabia.” To say the camera loves the Norwegian stage and screen actor would be an understatement, especially given how dabbled sunlight gives him a god-like aura. Portraying his left-behind wife, Agnes Elisabet Hilden Kittelsen also radiates star power in her few scenes that concisely deliver a sly combination of both heartbreak and pride in her husband’s mission.

But the thrust of the film is set on the open sea, where Heyerdahl and a few friends are adrift to face the odds. During the three months aboard the primitive vessel named after Inca god of Sun and storm, the crew is met with setbacks in the form of storms, sharks, and other perils of the open sea. Yes, splashes of last year’s “Life of Pi” wash over the proceedings, but this is filmmaking done primarily on location (in Malta, Thailand and the Maldives among other lush locales), void of blue-screen and over-dependence of computer effects.

“Kon-Tiki”
Rated PG-13
Now playing in select theaters.

But just as the sea dwarfed the six men on the Kon-Tiki, the movie’s focus on its epic subject matter also minimized tensions among the characters. Much of the conflict is portrayed in a subdued manner, such as the effects of cabin fever among the Kon-Tiki’s crew. The film also skirts entirely the persuasiveness of Heyerdahl’s hypothesis about the populating of Polynesia, preferring to stick to the simplistic notion that his voyage somehow proved it—though that’s hardly the case.

Nonetheless, “Kon-Tiki” is a nice-looking film, with luminous cinematography by Geir Hartly Andreassen and expert period detail in the scenes on land. And it’s hard not to swoon at those ultimate travelogue that flashes up on the screen. And no computerized tigers to worry about, either.

—SCOT C HART

Wade McCollum, Scott Willis and Bryan West bring color and flash (not to mention, some flesh) to “Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical.”

It doesn’t matter that the plot is minimal, that the music is loud, or that the acting is rote. It’s the outrageous 500 costumes that are the star of the touring show, “Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical.” Easy to see why the designs won a Tony, and also an Oscar for the 1994 film in which this jukebox musical is based.

Now mind you, the show is actually a lot of fun, hi-energy and funny, with some 20 dance-floor favorites flushing out the story. If disco is not your thing, stay away.

Since the same writer as the film penned the production, the plot sticks to the tried-and-true formula of friends on an extended road trip, aboard a battered bus in the thick of the Australian outback. Of course, the friends are two drag-queens (Tick/Mitzi and Adam/Felicia) and a transexual (Bernadette) heading west from Sydney aboard their lavender bus, Priscilla. En route to a casino gig, it is discovered that the woman they’ve contracted with is Anthony’s wife and small son. Their bus breaks down, and is repaired by Bob, who travels on with them. It’s a staged road movie with attitude to spare, and lots of sweaty toned bodies and suggestive dance moves.

From “Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical.”

Wade McCollum, last seen at Dallas Theater Center in the wonderful production of “Cabaret,” holds his own as Tick/Mitzi. His stage presence solidifies him as a strong leading man (in a dress and out) and his performance during “You Were Always On My Mind” is powerful. Bryan West steals a few scenes as the hilarious, young, and mischievous Adam/Felicia. But it’s Scott Willis as Bernadette, the aging drag queen looking for love in all the wrong places, which brings some depth and needed angst to this perfumed story.

But all that is secondary to the parade of songs (“It’s Raining Men,” “I Will Survive,” “Hot Stuff,” among other hits) and colorful and wondrous outfits that really spark the energy of this crowd-pleasing production. The film carried more substance; the stage show is just happy to make the audience smile and tap their feet.

—SCOT C HART

“Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical”
Dallas Summer Musicals
Music Hall at Fair Park
On stage through May 26, 2013.

Works by Kristen Cochran at her recent show at RE gallery.

Kristen Cochran wants to speak in tongues. This might not be apparent at first, but as you spend more time with her work you realize that she’s not merely experimenting with and synthesizing materials, she’s also intuiting a lexicon of private iconography.  Her latest show, “stutter slip stack,” at Wanda Dye’s RE gallery, offered an impressive selection of this process.

I was first exposed to Cochran’s sculptural works, works that seemed to investigate the space housing them as much as the materials and shapes out of which they were comprised. In certain ways her current exhibition title, “stutter slip stack,” indirectly alludes to this exploratory verve, this sense of works being worked and reworked right up until opening night. The difference here rests with this show consisting principally of works on paper. And yet they still convey the same restlessness and kinetic searching.

Stylistically these works display apparent variations, but they’re not essential. Such diversity doesn’t arise from eclecticism or a division of voice, rather from the search itself, from the process of experimenting with application, mark making, and above all else: using forms as language. This language doesn’t function as a proxy for ordinary communication; it wants to say something else, something unutterable. Cochran’s stuttering ought to read here as religious stammering, as glossolalia, as tongues — “but the spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Stacking and stuttering, or repetitions at the intersection of the known and the unknown (perhaps the unknowable), in time develops into a language all its own. And being all its own implies that it has no referent within other tongues and thus awaits interpretation (a hyperbolic metaphor for reading whatsoever).

The slightly unorthodox hanging of the work contributes to its unconventional aim. Work in the front of the gallery hangs mainly in clusters; in the back pairings seem preferred. While not universally true of all the work in the show, you will find forms again and again taking centrality. The strongest pieces serve as meditations on both process and materials on one hand, and on what happens when certain forms — whether spontaneously intuited or discovered by happenstance — are repeated, slightly altered, or brought into relationship with foreign elements on the other. Cochran refers to these forms as symbolic characters called glyphs, which seems ideal given that the word reaches back to an ancient word meaning “to hollow out.” Here enters the slip of the stutter slip stack.

Works by Kristen Cochran at her recent show at RE gallery.

Language certainly brings us into the open of being, into the possibility of shared lives, of having a history and a future, of knowing, of communing. But words fail too, they slip off a little and misapprehension, confusion and discord happen. These unassuming little symbols we agree upon rest on nothing and are hollowed out. And yet they retain the very possibility of so much that is necessary to human life. For this reason it is not uncommon for artists to seek another grammar, to find a fashion of communing that doesn’t fail the way that ordinary language seems to. Consequently Cochran mines for a new lexicon of forms, glyphs that can be repeated and played upon to convey something that everyday words seem to her to be unable to do.

My criticism alternates at this point, as I cannot deny the inevitable failure and slippage of our hollowed out symbols — even the most successful and enduring ones. Add to this the private nature of a created or found language, of a language that is only one’s own, and the possibility of conveying something intelligible vanishes. Still, the desire to essay through art at all, however, grants Cochran a more flexible and receptive community. As strange tongues need interpreters, it seems beneficial that there remains a group of people — a cult of artists and cultural practitioners — generally interested in finding new and nuanced ways of understanding what visual works are saying and doing. In this way the artist’s paintings and sculptures and spatial explorations do what the very best art does: initiate critical and playful conversations. And it’s those interpretive and conjectural conversations that move her experimental stammerings toward the sort of unlikely communion with and between others that she so desires.

—ANDY AMATO, PhD
Andy Amato is an artist, writer and teacher.

Kristen Cochran
“stutter slip stack”
RE Gallery, Dallas

Adesola Osakalumi kneeling in a scene from FELA. Photo by Sharen Bradford.

Raucous and defiant, electrifying and exhilarating, Fela! is a very different musical, blending a wide variety of attitudes and moods, sometimes angry, sometimes coy, sometimes soothing, sometimes sexy, sometimes groping for the mysterious and spiritual. Sprouting from the hybrid Afrobeat songs (jazz, funk, highlife, traditional Yoruban chants and rhythms) composed by Fela Anikuklapo-Kuti, Fela! reverberates with a throbbing, insistent kinesthesia that is irresistible, pleasurable and often, overwhelming. Choreographer Maija Garcia has created witty, daring, mesmerizing dances that provocative and gloriously imaginative. Costume Designer Marina Draghici has fashioned primal trappings for Fela’s “queens” that might be a 21^st century version of Josephine Baker’s Parisian wardrobe, and for the second act, fancifully exotic headdresses and skirts that have come from Venus or Saturn. Projection Designer Peter Nigrini has assembled a poignant succession of bold, sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce photographs and designs, punctuated with text and a persistent tension between harmony and chaos, another manifestation of Fela!’s strategy to reflect “the universe in small.”

Michelle Williams in FELA. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

Set on the evening of Fela’s last performance, circa 1978, at his Afrika Shrine nightclub in Lagos, Nigeria, this groundbreaking musical begins as he addresses the audience directly, coming to the front of the stage, playfully provoking them. He refers to the cops of the oppressive Nigerian regime as “mosquitoes” buzzing around, trying to keep people from coming. Throughout his show he mocks them and the government, he speaks frankly and extensively about religion, ancestors, Christianity, politics, weed, sex, the ghost of his recently deceased mother, Funmilayo (a great educator and activist) economics, torture, freedom, valiance….Fela! is an impulsive combination of many ideas, admonitions, themes but it feels organic, it comes together. “Water No Get Enemy” is a sharp example of a song that begins with the cool, calm of a dream, then gradually suggesting more subtle ideological imagery. Water is a vital component of our existence. Even if a child ours drowns, we cannot live without it. The ambivalence of the core metaphor serves as a useful conundrum.

Fela! has the sense of perpetual turning, it never really winds down. Some numbers might go longer than necessary to make their point, though the level of enjoyment mitigates this. The politics aren’t always easy to follow; context can go a long way towards comprehension. A few more clues to enrich our culture inferences might have been helpful, though injecting those seamlessly may have been problematic. Whatever you might glean from Fela!‘s themes of anarchy, subversion, and disobedience (mixed with sybaritism, despair, yearning) the salient, iridescent spectacle is undeniable and far beyond entertaining. You can’t look away, you can’t ignore its gravitational pull on your blood.

— CHRISTOPHER SODEN

Maestro Emmanuel Villaume.

The Dallas Opera has appointment a new music director—only the third person ever to be named to that position in the 56-year history of the company. Acclaimed French-born conductor Emmanuel Villaume will take over the baton to conduct the upcoming season-opener of Carmen this October.

“Over the past year, I have actively sought input from a wide variety of sources, both inside and outside Dallas,” said Dallas Opera General Director and CEO Keith Cerny.  “I was delighted to see the intense level of interest in this position from candidates of the highest caliber, many of whom have extraordinarily busy careers conducting at the world’s leading opera houses. Having carefully weighed all input, spoken with a number of these candidates, and traveled extensively to watch contenders for the position in both rehearsal and performance, I made the decision to appoint French-born conductor Emmanuel Villaume as Music Director of The Dallas Opera.”

Maestro Emmanuel Villaume has appeared in the world’s most important and prestigious opera houses, including engagements with the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and Washington’s National Opera.

Photo by AkosPhotography.com.

“I am honored to be selected as Music Director of the Dallas Opera and to be a part of such a talented artistic community,” said Emmanuel Villaume. “The Winspear Opera House is one of the most beautiful performing arts venues in the world, and I am excited to be working with the superb orchestra and dedicated staff of the Dallas Opera.  I look forward to helping create even more brilliant performances with this impassioned opera company.”

After opening Dallas Opera’s 2013-2014 season, Maestro Villaume returns to Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for performances of Massenet’s Manon and to Venice’s La fenice for performances of L’africaine. Maestro Villaume maintains a busy schedule of symphonic performances including concerts with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and the Slovenian Philharmonic.

“Maestro Villaume will work in a multi-faceted capacity during the production season, but our new Music Director will also spend time outside the regular season spreading the word about TDO throughout the Metroplex, said Cerny.v“I also believe that Emmanuel Villaume will prove an excellent ambassador for the company while attending to his many national and international conducting engagements,” Cerny added, “and will help the Dallas Opera to continue to attract the best singers, directors and designers at work in our field today.”

Michel Bouquet as Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Renoir.
Photo courtesy of Fidelite Films and Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Set on the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, “Renoir” (based on a book, “Le Tableau Amoureux,” by Jacques Renoir) is a beautifully shot film taking the viewer into the world of the renowned painter and impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir and his relationship with his middle son and his last model Andrée, a 15-year-old mouthy redhead played by Christa Théret who most decidedly upsets the entire household when she arrives.

When the film opens Renoir is 74 years old and in declining health, but when Andrée comes to him to model saying she was sent by his wife (but actually recommended by Henri Mattise) he becomes alive again.  Andrée is full of life and love and not too long after her arrival meets his son Jean Renoir who in turns is inspired to become a filmmaker, eventually a famous filmmaker, because Andrée has a dream of becoming an actress.

However, first she must inspire the old man with her energy and passion for life easily becoming his muse.  Indeed, a free spirit in Renoir’s home, she takes the old painter to a new level and his son, Jean, easily falls in love with her too.

A film by Gilles Bourdos’ the style certainly captures the time in Renoir’s beautiful home in the countryside at this farm, Les Collettes on the Cote d’Azur while World War 1 rages on, but in his world there are only teams of women servants to cater to his every whim after his wife Aline dies. Renoir himself dies just four years later in 1919.

Vincent Rottiers as Jean Renoir and Christa Theret as Andree Heuschling in Renoir.
Photo courtesy of Fidelite Films and Samuel Goldwyn Films.

While Renoir has three sons, Pierre played by Laurent Poitrenaux, Jean played by Vincent Rottiers and a teenage son, Claude played by Thomas Doret, it is invariably Jean that Andrée falls in love with as he comes home from the war so that he can recover from a wound that almost costs him his leg.

At the same time, Renoir is having his own pains struggling with painting since he is plagued by arthritis, but alas, his muses’ skin offers him the “velvety texture of a young girl’s…” since it so absorbs the light.

“Flesh! That’s all that matters,” Renoir proclaims and he sets out one last time to prove it with this, his latest muse at his side.

Shot by Taiwanese cinematographer Mark Ping Bing Lee the mood is sensual with the landscape taking as much of the center stage as the actors and the story.

Also of note, while the story is true, the moments threading the outline together do not take the viewer into unnecessary trysts, but instead the underlying theme is the kind of effect Andrée has on the entire household from the female caretakers and their resentment of her to Renoir to his son, Jean who Andrée does finally marry having led him in the direction of filmmaking where he does become successful.

In the end we find that she too, ends up making 15 silent films under the name Catherine Hessling before she and Jean eventually divorce in 1931 with his classic films including “Grand Illusion” and “The Rules of the Game.”

—RITA COOK

Renoir
Rated: R
Now playing at theaters

Henry Finkelstein, The Mill at Larré, 2013, oil on linen. Photo courtesy of Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden.

Explosions of color and expression are de rigueur for the work of painter Henry Finkelstein. His fifth solo exhibition at Valley House Gallery and Sculpture Garden in north Dallas opened last weekend with their annual garden party and runs throughout May. What better place to see gorgeous art than Valley House Gallery and Sculpture Garden in full bloom? Make sure to allow yourself enough time to leisurely stroll the gardens – it’s truly one of the most beautiful places in town to view sculpture outdoors.

Henry Finkelstein is a plein-air landscape painter in the best of the tradition. His landscapes capture the lush gardens, houses, and vistas of both Maine and the Brittany region of France, where he spends summers painting. Finkelstein paints with an immediacy that feels as though you saw the scene with him, a decisive frenzy to get it on the canvas, and a revealing honesty. When the gardens aren’t blooming, he paints luscious large still life paintings in his Brooklyn studio.

His French landscapes are timeless – they could easily have been painted a hundred years ago. Viewing them takes you immediately to the Continent. Larre, Yellow and Blue documents a yellow house with a blue roof on an impossibly beautiful sunny day. Finkelstein paints with pure color mixed on his palette rather than on the canvas. That certainty speaks to his finesse as a master colorist: it’s like the talent of a one-take singer. The Mill at Larre gives the artist a chance to show water reflections and this one is a beauty of pinks and greens and blues. The clouds reflected in the water are stunning. Dead center is a dark green and white flowering bush curving over the water. Combined with the reflection of the curve, it creates a ball of white flowers as a final resting place for your eye. Finkelstein allows us to see some of his process – he makes no attempt to hide all of the charcoal underdrawing with paint. Walled Garden III is an example of a technique the artist uses to create space with color. Without using typical perspective cues, Finkelstein has painted a scene we could walk into – the depth created almost solely with his color.

And then we have Henry Finkelstein’s still life paintings. His talent with light and color glows indoors while bouncing about around his fashioned tableau. As beautifully as these paintings photograph, you must stand in front of them to truly see them. Still Life with Pomegranates is one of his best and the blues, yellows, oranges and teals absolutely sing with delight. Notice the quality of his brushstrokes of the blue wall. It seems as if he’s painting with light instead of paint. Finkelstein often uses the classical technique of including a mirror in his still life paintings – and in the mirror we might see a window. Paintings as a window to the artist’s world? Absolutely – and in the very best sense.

—KENT BOYER

Henry Finkelstein: Paintings
April 27 – May 25, 2013
Valley House Gallery and Sculpture Garden, Dallas

Untitled Film Still #21, 1978
Cindy Sherman
Gelatin silver print
7 ½ x 9 ½ in. (19.1 x 24.1 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through Robert B. Menschel
© 2012 Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is arguably the preeminent living photographer in contemporary art history and, on March 17, the Dallas Museum of Art opened its latest blockbuster exhibition, a retrospective of Sherman’s work, which will run through June 9, 2013. Dallas is the final stop for Cindy Sherman, which premiered at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, last year, and has since traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Along the way, this tour de force exhibition has garnered well-deserved critical praise as MoMA exhibition curator Eva Respini has beautifully collaborated with the artist and each institution to curate a must-see exhibition filled with approximately 160 of Sherman’s iconic photographs from the mid-1970s to present.

Born in 1954 in Glenn Ridge, New Jersey, Cindy Sherman is part of an elite group of photographers such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, and Sally Mann who have challenged the limitations of the photograph as a fine art medium and made a place for photography in art historical dialogue. Sherman is known for her “self” portraits where she acts as photographer, model, stylist, cosmetician, among the other roles required for her staged photographs to be executed. The word “self” needs to be in quotation marks because, unlike most self-portraits, Sherman in no way is exploring her personal identity. Instead, her presence is simply the vehicle for different types, symbols, and characters to be explored via fashion, cosmetics, expressions, and poses.

Untitled #458, 2007–08
Cindy Sherman
Chromogenic color print
6 ft. 5 3/8 in. x 58 ¼ in. (196.5 x 148 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
© 2012 Cindy Sherman

While many people associate cosmetic alteration with the suppression of the female gender, Sherman shows the power cosmetics provide by giving those who use them control of their outward appearance. In fact, while many of the backgrounds in the works have been inserted using the green screen system, Sherman does not digitally alter her figure or face in any of the photographs. It is simply through Sherman’s skill as a make-up artist, stylist, and actor that her appearance changes so drastically from frame to frame.

Her first, and most famous, series called the Untitled Film Stills were created between 1977 and 1980, shortly after Sherman received her BA from Buffalo State College and moved to New York City. All 69 black and white photographs are part of the DMA show and are presented together, linearly, around a gallery. This series is the only one of Sherman’s to be taken outside of the artist’s studio. In each image, Sherman is shown dressed as various stereotypical characters, from 1950s and 1960s films, as they would have been photographed for publicity shots. Each was taken without trying to mimic a specific actress or film; however, it is easy for our minds to recognize each scene.

We see Sherman as an ingénue, bored housewife, bombshell, sex kitten, career girl, and the list goes on and on. We can envision the scenario the girl is placed in, the ties to film inseparable. In Untitled Film Still #6 (1977) we see a young woman lounging on her bed holding a mirror wearing nothing but lingerie. Looking up she looks as though she is waiting for someone. Yet, if you look closely, the remote cable Sherman used to take the picture is visible in the frame. These little hints of reality help us remember, no matter what we see, Sherman is in complete control of the image.

In another photograph from a later series, informally called the Society Portraits (2008), the control women have on their appearance is tested. If the Untitled Film Stills show a woman’s mastery of her appearance, the Society Portraits show an attempt and failure for the same control. These portraits were originally misconstrued by some as mean spirited, but it only makes sense that Sherman became interested in how age affects beauty and how wealth is correlated with success as she, herself, grew older and more successful.

Untitled #466, 2008
Cindy Sherman
Chromogenic color print
8 ft. 6 in. x 70 in. (259.1 x 177.8 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Robert B. Menschel in honor of Jerry I. Speyer
© 2012 Cindy Sherman.

One photograph, in particular, is a favorite of MoMA associate curator Eva Respini. In Untitled #466 (2008), Sherman is shown as a wealthy society grande dame. We get these visual cues from her low grey bun, long dangling earrings, and floor length caftan. Respini commented that while the woman may be wearing too much makeup as she tries to cover up her age, we get the sense that she is both beautiful and wealthy. However, if you look down at Sherman’s foot through the slit in her caftan, it is covered in a thick, cheap looking stocking and what seems to be a plastic slipper. In fact, Respini revealed, Sherman purchased the slipper at the Dollar Store. Purposefully, because Sherman is always in charge here, there is a crack in the perfect veneer of this society woman.

The recognition of fault is where the original misunderstanding came in. Sherman is not intentionally making fun of, or belittling, women similar to the one in this photograph but, rather, trying to create a dialogue on the idea of female perfection and its ramifications on aging members of our society. Ideas of social class and how wealth equates success, in most circles, also comes into question in this series.

Besides the Untitled Film Stills and Society Portraits the Cindy Sherman exhibition comprises some of all of Sherman’s other series. This includes her Centerfolds created for Artforum in 1981 but never published, her Fairy Tale/Mythology series (1985), the History Portraits (1988-1990), Sex Pictures (1992) which were created using dolls and other inanimate objects alone, her Headshots (2000-02), Clowns (2003-04), Fashion Series (1983-84, 93-94, 2007-08), and a site-specific mural from 2010 which has been placed in the barrel vaulted room central to the exhibition space.

The Dallas Museum of Art is well suited to reinvent the Sherman exhibition as its last stop. I had the chance to speak with curator Gabriel Ritter, The Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA, who worked with both Sherman and Eva Respini to curate the exhibition and we discussed the process of creating the show, which is done thematically instead of chronologically.

“Our galleries uniquely lend themselves to a non-linear exploration of the space…and so as you walk through from one room to the next you get these really great sightlines from one moment in her career to another and these works start to have a kind of dialogue and speak to each other purely by the fact of how you walk through,” said Ritter. “You really are able to explore and…experience Cindy’s work in your own way. You’re able to make your own association as you walk through the galleries.”

Untitled #183, 1988
Cindy Sherman
Chromogenic color print
38 x 22 ¾ in. (96.5 x 57.8 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
© 2012 Cindy Sherman

This thematic approach works because it allows the viewer to immerse him or herself in the pure ideas and themes found in Sherman’s work, instead of being trapped in chronological history.

Photography has always been a medium that has challenged those interested in fine art. What is it, then, about Sherman’s photographs that make them so special?

Ritter believes her success comes from two distinct realms. First, her work came at a pivotal point in art history in the late 1970s and early 1980s where, as Ritter described, “people were looking at video and photography in new ways, not simply as documentation but as a critical and conceptual tool for illustrating ideas that they wanted to work with.”

The break from documentation is not only applicable and a pivotal reason why Sherman’s work is successful, it also ties into Ritter’s second reason for why Sherman is so universally accepted, the familiarity of the portrait.

“On the one hand, you have something as recognizable as the portrait as an actual format and that sort of transcends photography, being faced with another person’s image. These portraits really resonate with people on a level beyond Art Historical themes and medium specificity. From the images, you know, nobody really knows Cindy. But it’s so funny when people see her, they think they know her. It’s interesting how an audience, especially looking at it in terms of a retrospective…starts to create an image, their image, of the artist herself. And she’s not really any of those characters. So it’s one of these things where you’re seeing all and none of the person who is Cindy Sherman.”

In Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida (1979), the author and philosopher discusses one of the crutches of photography as an art form. He states that a photograph always is of something; that it is intrinsically tied to its physical referent because, without it, there would be no photograph. Sherman’s photographs are so successful, not only because of their depth, but also because they transcend this crux. These are not self-portraits of Sherman, even though she is the physical subject. Sherman is able, through her intricate execution, to both be in these images yet completely out of them, allowing her ideas to be the subject instead of her physical form.

Untitled #474, 2008
Cindy Sherman
Chromogenic color print
7 ft. 6 ¾ in. x 60 in. (230.5 x 152.4 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of an anonymous donor, Michael Lynne, Charles Heilbronn, and the Carol and David Appel Family Fund
© 2012 Cindy Sherman

Through her series, Sherman is able to question the essence of a photograph, discuss ideas about age and wealth in society, subvert the male gaze, explore the truth about physical stereotypes, and investigate the physicality of both sex and death, both of which are romanticized in our film-centric culture. It is through this brilliance and depth that Cindy Sherman is a show worth seeing. While the subject matter can be difficult, Sherman maintains a wit and humor that does not say she is laughing at us, but rather, with us, as we all traverse life’s challenges.

–CASEY STRANAHAN

Cindy Sherman will be on view through June 9, 2013 at the Dallas Museum of Art and requires a special exhibitions ticket.

Wade McCollum.

An Interview with Wade McCollum

Wade McCollum as last seen in Dallas as a ripped and highly sexual Emcee in the Dallas Theater Center’s terrific Cabaret in 2011. Now, he’s in his first Broadway tour in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, in which he plays Tick/Mitzi, the Hugo Weaving character in the 1994 Academy Award-winning film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, on which the musical is based.

In the movie, three drag queens cross the Australian desert in a big bus (named Priscilla) to get to a specific gig. On the way, we learn more about them and the people in their lives, and of course it ends with one truly fabulous drag show. Like the movie, the music in the musical comes from the disco era, and includes “I Love the Nightlife,” “It’s Raining Men” and “MacArthur Park,” but also adds in pop hits by Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, Pat Benatar and others.

We caught up with McCollum to discuss the musical, its impact and those fabulous shoes.

Arts+Culture: Do you remember when you first saw the movie?

Wade McCollum: I don’t remember exactly when I saw it, but I remember it having quite an impact. I was 14 or 15. It was that seminal period, a really important movie for me to see about social outcasts finding a sense of belonging, and asserting their flamboyance and strange beauty. It was a very good life-affirming message for me being from a small town [Ashland, Oregon].

A+C: Your last time in Dallas was as the Emcee in Dallas Theater Center’s incredible Cabaret in 2011. Talk about that experience.

WM: That show and the experience with [director] Joel [Ferrell] and Kate [Wetherhead, who played Sally Bowles] and the whole team ─ I’ve been doing [theater] for almost 18 years now and this really is one of the superlative gems of my career. It was the rare alchemy where all of the pieces just made sense. As artists, we felt like we were telling an important story that had social relevance and also had great entertainment value; it was challenging and audience-friendly at the same time, which is a hard balance to strike. Joel is quite a genius. I was very surprised and uplifted by the Dallas theater community; I had no idea that everyone was that close.

A+C: Have you played drag roles before?

WM: Well, yes. I was evil queen in a panto version of Snow White, I was the dame role. Other than I’ve played Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, she’s transsexual; and I played Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in [Doug Wright’s] I Am My Own Wife, she’s was a transvestite her entire life.

A+C: What size shoes do you wear?

WM: I think it’s 11 [in a woman’s size]

A+C: Was it difficult to learn to move in them for “Priscilla”?

WM: These shoes are all hand-made by De Luca. They are crazy, amazing, comfortable, exquisite dance shoes; the shoes I wore in Jersey Boys were less comfortable than these high heels. The more whimsical shoes, the huge platforms and a couple of other ones were custom made by these people in Canada, they are custom for my feet and calves. The movement in this show, there’s a lot of it and it’s hugely complicated in places. We used the rehearsal shoes who we had plenty of time to work it.

A+C: In the film, Tick was the more grounded of the three men. How did you approach playing this character?

WM: I think because it’s based on an iconic film, anybody’s who’s doing an adaptation of something, we most nod in that direction heavily. Because it’s a different medium and we’re playing some large theaters, when I was looking at the medium shift and looking at this character, I had to turn up the volume and allow his psychological process to be more physical, so that people in the back rows who can’t see your eyebrows or a smile or frown can go on the journey as well.

Because it’s musical theater, there’s more of a fantastical element. What made the film so fantastic is that it was so real and gritty, we got to see the insights into these outcasts and the life that they led and the hardships they went through. Here, the grit is turned down and we get a glimpse of the fantastic elements of their imagination; we get to go inside their heads at times. That’s fun.

Specifically about Tick, he’s a reluctant grown-up, a big kid. He’s a reluctant protagonist. There’s a push-and-pull with what’s drawing him; he wants to connect with his son and confront the responsibility and the maturation process that goes with being a father, but he’s also scared of rejection. In a lot of ways he has this free-spirited, childlike eye. There’s some unexpected complexities to his character, which I love.

A+C: In giving us characters who are drag queens and so over-the-top, for general audiences, does that make gay characters more palatable than say a dramatic love story between two gay men?

WM: I think you’re on to something there. The garishness of the drag shows, the over-the-topness is somewhat disarming. It’s almost cartoonish. It’s also so spectacularly beautiful, there’s so much whimsy in the design, it sweeps people away from a design perspective, and those elements help lessen the blow, as it were.

It has been such an incredibly overwhelming response everywhere we go. It’s being treated like a rock concert. People get up and they’re dancing and cheering and having a riot of a good time. I’ve been surprised going into the smaller communities, especially. They’re just so exuberant. I also think we underestimate people. The elements that people think might be shocking aren’t shocking anymore; we’ve come a long way if people aren’t shocked by a drag queen anymore.

-MARK LOWRY

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert the Musical
May 14-26
Music Hall at Fair Park

A 24-Hour Video Race presented by The Video Association of Dallas.

On Friday, May 10, as the clock approaches midnight, teens, businessmen, teachers, housewives and other professionals will converge in the heart of Dallas for instruction on their mission — at 11:59 pm, they will be armed with a theme, a prop, a location and a line of dialogue and set free for 24 hours to compete in the 24-Hour Video Race. All of the films that make it by the 12-midnight deadline the following day will be screened at the Angelika Film Center and compete for awards and bragging rights.

The annual event is produced by The Video Association of Dallas, an organization dedicated to promoting an understanding of video as a creative medium and cultural force in our society, and to supporting and advancing the work of Texas artists working in video and the electronic arts.

Anyone with a camera and the willingness to race can participate. Past teams have included elementary school students to professional filmmakers.  Student teams compete against other student teams and adult teams are categorized by team size rather than skill level.

Bart Weiss, who teaches film and video at University of Texas at Arlington and heads up the Video Association, says there have definitely been changes since the Video Race’s inception.  The biggest one, he points out, being how technology has changed during that time.

“When we started people where shooting mostly Mini DV, which was great, but now when you see people shooting with digital SLR’s the image quality looks amazing [too].

Talking with Weiss, he explains some of the other intricate details that are involved in the Race each year as well.

A+C: How has the media of film in general really had an effect on the changes over the years with the 24-Hour Video Race including video, new technologies, amateur filmmaking and iphone films, for example?

Bart Weiss: Over the years people have shot in 16 mm film, 35 mm film and other crazy formats.  One team even had people shoot in Paris and send in the film over the net. Another team shot in 3D and had no idea if it would work, but it did magnificently. Overall, people have explored many new technologies.  Right now, I am also trying to push the filmmakers to explore the mobile space, where a whole other level of creativity can be unleashed too.

A+C: So, with that said, what do you see for the future?

BW: As for film in the future, media is ever evolving; smaller, cheater, but of course, what matters is good stories.  We all have good stories, but can we make them into good films; some yes, some no.

A+C: Taking a look ahead to next year’s race what changes might be possible in just 12 months from now?

BW: Having just come back from the NAB show where new gear is presented, the buzz is about 4k, I don’t think we will get there next year, but it will be soon.

A+C: So tell me about the 24-Hour Video Race this year?

BW: We usually have around 90 teams involved sometimes a bit more sometimes a bit less. Some teams are just one person and some have as many as 10 people involved.

A+C: How is the winner chosen and what is the prize?

BW: The judging is a long process. First of all, the films are turned in after the 24 hours and the next week we have three nights of screening.  We break down each category,  like for example, high school, college, into subgroups of about six videos that are shown at the Angelika.  After the screening the judges pick the films that will go to the finals the following week and then the next week after the films are shown they are judged.  We have very cool looking trophies and other prizes. There was a time when we had cash prizes, but the tone of the race was not in the spirit of creativity when we had cash prizes so we went back to trophies.

A+C: Tell me about some of the winners in the past and the overall affect this Race has had on local filmmaking and these filmmakers in general?

BW: There have been some great films made in the past from the 24-Hour Video Race that have ended up at other festivals. Students have also used these films to get into schools like USC and UCLA too.  We have had some teams that have participated every year and there are some teams that took part in the race in high school and now come back from all over the country to do it again.

A+C: What is the draw for filmmakers to participate in this 24-Hour Video Race?

BW: Well, the number one inhibitor of creativity is fear of failure so we have taken that out [of the equation] with a great excuse; what do you expect I just had 24 hours.  Beyond that, it gives people a chance to escape the rest of their lives and be creative, which can build confidence.  Some TV news shooters participate because they can be more creative then when they are at work and it is fun.

A+C: What else do you want the readers to know about the 24-Hour Video Race?

BW: We have been working with the students at Booker T Washington to get them involved in the race. These students cannot afford the entry fee so we have a program called Race Angels. This is where people can sponsor  a team from that school so the students can have a chance to participate. This has been a really wonderful program.  Some Angels have been there when the films were screened or when the film made the finals and they really feel like they are helping these creative kids.

—RITA COOK