8A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, March 22, 1999
Artist shares lesson
By Jenui Glenn
Da4l Arts Writer
Writers are known for their insight-
ful comments, while artists become
famous for their creative media. Artist
Barbara Kruger, the lecturer at the final
installment of the year's "Photo-Active
Feminists Artists Series," gained her
rightful place in the spotlight by com-
bining these two elements to form a
political message. Her favorite
Malcolm X quote, which she used in
two of her pieces, embodies the spirit of
her work: "Give your brain as much
attention as your hair and you'll be a
thousand times better off"
Kruger certainly gave the people at
the overflowing Rackham
Amphitheater on Friday night that
attention. In spite ofthe audience filling
the rows, aisles and even hallways lead-
ing to the amphitheatre, no one com-
plained. The atmosphere of intense
concentration punctuated by Kruger's
humor merited the attendance.
Audience members studied slides of
Kruger's works in the forms of sculp-
tures, billboards, room installations and
even a New York City bus with "Don't
look down on anyone" inscribed on the
top. "I'm very suspect of style wars in
the arts" she said. "I think there a mil-
lion ways of working"
Kruger believes this partly because
there are so many types of impulses to
create art. "It's a mixture of premedita-
tion and total white light, Zeitgeist shit,"
she said. "It's our own semblance of
beauty."
She favors a simple format of red
words plastered on black and white pic-
tures, a method left-over from her I11
years as a designer for magazines such
as "Mademoiselle" and "House &
Garden" The insightful text conveys
messages on topics ranging from the
need for free speech to the importance
of fighting domestic violence. In spite
of these obvious attempts to impact
others' opinions, she claims, "I am not
the conscience of the art world."
Yet she often uses her work to argue
against the growing awareness of art as
a commodity. One of her pieces dis-
plays the words "Buy me/I'll change
your life." Although Kruger obviously
wishes the situation were different, she
said the art world can also be looked at
as simply part of the global economy.
"We all need to figure out how to work
within that construct, she said.
On the flip side of these serious
issues, Kruger uses biting wit to make
her point. One of her recent projects, a
sculpture titled "Family," portrays
brothers John F. and Robert Kennedy
with their rumored lover Marilyn
Monroe in a cheerful pyramid. The
audience erupted in giggles after just a
brief glance at the slide of this work.
Although the public perception of the
Kennedys is generally positive, Kruger
set out to illustrate the darker parts ofthe
family reputation. With pieces like this,
she shows that there is no single inter-
pretation for any event. "History to me
is never singular" she said. "There isn't
history, there are histories."
Along with history, Kruger also
deals with the nature of celebrity in
"Family,"an issue she seems to strug-
gle with in her own life. During the
lecture, she tried to dispose of preten-
sion by keeping the video cameras
off her and on the slides of her work.
After responding to one question, she
said, "I don't know if I answered your
question, but I'm happy to be here."
She said the success of her work con-
tinues to surprise her.
' rowd' si
By Lucija Franetovic
For the Daily
For one night, the University Museum of Art
came to life in a play of dance and dialogue
response pieces bearing the message and soul of
famous Polish export artist Magdalena
Abakanowicz. Based on the current exhibition of
Abakanowicz's work, the Museum hosted a show
entitled "The Mindless Crowd: New Studies in
Dance and Theatre." Its themes were divers, uni-
fied often directly with spoken text by the life
experiences of the sculptor.
Along with a small selection of works from a
private collection, the major piece in the exhibition
is "Flock II" (1991), a group of 35 anonymous fig-
ures with no personal identity
but the joint uniformity of
their stance to hold them
together. "I was obsessed by
The Mindless the image of the crowd,
Crowd manipulated like a brainless
organism and acting like a
Museum of Art brainless organism," stated
March 18, 1999 Abakanowicz in a 1998 com-
mentary of her own work.
.. ;Her works contain a bio-
r graphical angle, for
Abakanowicz has endured
family struggles during the
World War II persecution of
aristocrats. She witnessed the
destruction of Warsaw during
that time as well as the severing of her mother's
arm during a raid on their estate.
"With the lack of heads, she has a lot to say
about the destructive impulses of a mind that is
severed from the body," said Western art curator
Annette Dixon in her opening address.
Now one of the preeminent artists of the 20th
Century, Abakanowicz grew up near Warsaw in the
'30s. From a young age, she gathered twigs and
played with mud in the forest, carving and molding
the things she found even if they would later be
thrown away.
In "Preservation of Memory," Atala-Nicole Loud
opened the show with an emotive solo set to
Abakanowicz' text. "I did a lot of relating of
humanity with nature and used a lot of images
from that," Loud explained during the post-perfor-
mance discussion.
Every beautiful and deeply expressive perfor-
mance was inaugurated to a new level by the
Museum's apse atmosphere. The marble gave a
sense of reverence and cold at the same time. An
interesting effect was created in the piece "The
Harrowing of Hell" when narrator Robert Sulewski
talked to the James Ingagiola, who portrayed the
Devil, from the second floor of the Museum.
low enlivens exhibit .
courtesy of The University of Michigan Museum of Art
Magdalena Abakanowicz's "The Flock I" is comprised of burlap and resin figures.
He spoke about retrieving his flock which Satan
had seduced. And Lucifer had a nervous break-
down about the matter before the audience's eyes.
It was later in her life that Abakanowicz first
began casting real human bodies in burlap cloth
saturated with glue and resin. She'd then remove
the hardened hollow shells to reveal often headless
or limbless and sexless figures. Called Crowds and
Flocks, groups of 30, 50 or 80 of these sculptures
stand in museums across the world, challenging
viewers' ideas of the crowd and its respective role
in history.
The figures are arranged rigidly and geometri-
cally to portray a mindless mass which follows
without thinking. But thinking and feeling is exact-
ly what the performance and sculptures provoke in
the viewer.
The dancers portrayed both the loss of individu-
ality of the herd through carefully choreographed
synchronization and an overall sense of detach-
ment through their faces and movements. With the
close semi-circle position of the audience, those
fearful stares and hopeful gazes made it impossible
to turn away from the immediacy of the perform-
ers' passion and the impact of their flawless dance.
At times it seemed like they were personifying
the sculptures, sometimes historical figures'
destructive and constructive moments, and at times
the artist and even ourselves.
Local performer and writer Jeffrey Steiger posed
the ironic message of how a faith or group of peo-
ple can sometimes be blind to the destruction they
create. In his funny monologue about friends try-
ing to comfort a woman that has been saddened by
reading a Tolstoy book, he shows how they can
actually act destructively when they suggest recy-
cling the book as a solution to her saddness.
The performance event and exhibition were col-
laborative endeavors with the Center of Russian
and Eastern European Studies. They will will host
an international conference celebrating the tenth
anniversary of the fall of communism in Poland.
"It is the latest in a series of performances based
on exhibitions at the Museum of Art," commented
public relations coordinator and event organizer
Whitley Hill. Other events included a surrealism
show in the fall, a performance responding to the
work of Monet and another event linked to Jim
Dow's baseball stadium photographs. "In produc-
ing these events we celebrate the bond between the
visual and performance arts," Hill said.
An exciting aspect of the setup was that people
had a chance to stroll around the museum and view
the art before the show.
"We want students to feel this is their museum;
whether they visit on a break or during a date, the
art and events here are for them and they are free,"
Hill said.
Stop by
or call 764-0554 to have your
SENIOR WISH published April 15th
deadline March 31
ALLISON
Thank you for finally graduating. You were the worst
tenant. Please never call here again. Andno, we will
not shovel the driveway. -Your Landlord
LaSalle drops scalpel, joins force
By Jonah Victor
Daily Arts Writer
"ER"'s Eriq LaSalle throws aside his
scalpel and picks up a gun when he stars
Mind Prey
ABC
Tonight at 9
as Deputy Police
Chief Lucas'
Davenport in
"John Sanford's
Mind Prey."
"Mind Prey,"
adopted from
Sanford's novel of
the same name, is
not your standard
TV movie fare.
"We wanted it
to be scary, we
wanted it to be
suspenseful,"
executive produc-
counts, "Mind Prey" succeeds.
"Mind Prey" begins in a mundane
environment as single mother and psy-
chiatrist Andi Manette, played by Sheila
Kelley of "L.A. Law," picks her two
daughters up from elementary school
after a busy day at the office. A disguised
man brutally forces the three into his van
and drives away. The attacker, John Mail,
is a former patient of Manette's that she
sent away to a mental institution 10 years
before. Mail, played by Titus Welliver of
"Brooklyn South," throws the three into
a dungeon in the secluded countryside
where he subjects the family to mad
whims. Davenport is the break-all-rules
detective assigned to the case while
attempting to propose to his girlfriend.
It is easy to be skeptical of adapting
novels for two hours of television, but
"Mind Prey" works. It's a relatively
modest one month production, but it
never falters. The movie is unusualO
because the plot wasn't altered from the
original book. "It's really dark, really
gritty. It looks like a little feature film,"
Braunstein said. "Mind Prey" has a very
competent cast that protrays real charac-
ters that are not glossed over.
Seeing LaSalle out of his surgical
scrubs is a real treat. This is his first
movie. From sensuous to aggressive,.
viewers get to see a side of him they've*
never seen before.
"We just thought he'd be good for it, it
would be a different way to go" said.
Braunstein, who plans to have LaSalle'
do another movie.
"Mind Prey" shies away from being
overly ambitious but does a very thor-
ough job. With it's intensity, some may
not like the dark and disturbing themes
of "Mind Prey," but it's a TV thriller of
cinematic caliber.
er Howard Braunstein said. "We wanted
people to go on a ride." On all those
4
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