Artful Musings
Programs exploring literature in combination with other art forms
Making Pictures and Other Stories
Friday, February 8, 2013, 7:30 p.m.
Horchow Auditorium
Photographer and filmmaker Nic Nicosia has been making directorial photographs for over thirty years. He uses his camera to mimic reality, creating serial scenes that are deliberately artificial yet curiously enigmatic. Through the use of elaborate sets, costumes, and backdrops, he creates a sort of playful tromp l’oeil that makes the viewer do a double take and wonder, “How did he do that?”
His new publication, Nic Nicosia, is the definitive catalogue on his entire body of work. It showcases images from all of his major series, and includes essays by Sue Graze, the Director Emeritus of Arthouse at the Jones Center, who will moderate this event, and Michelle White, Curator of the Menil Collection, who will discuss Nicosia’s work in a broader context.
At this event, Nicosia will share insight into his working habits and creative process while discussing selected images from Nic Nicosia. Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust (on Newsweek’s “Best. Books. Ever.” list), will then reveal the inspiration behind his new short story that powerfully resonates with the sense of wonder and menace in Nicosia’s art. The story debuts in the Nic Nicosia catalogue. This impressive duo of Nicosia and Meyer reminds us of the importance of imagination in the worlds of art and literature, and how one can influence and stimulate the other.
Nicosia’s work has been exhibited at multiple biennials, and his photographs are owned by many premier museums, including the Dallas Museum of Art. He received the coveted Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010.
Meyer is on Granta’s list of “Best Young American Novelists” and has been named one of the best 20 writers under 40 by the New Yorker.
Ticket Prices:
Full: 35
Student: $10
Ticket and book combo: $75 (Buy the book and attend the event for free!)
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Art Spiegelman
Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 7:30 p.m.
Horchow Auditorium
Art Spiegelman has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves. In 1992 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his masterful Holocaust narrative MAUS—a comic-book chronicle of his parents’ experience during the Holocaust. The book was hailed by Jules Feiffer as “a remarkable work, awesome in its conception and execution . . . at one and the same time a novel, a documentary, a memoir and a comic book. Brilliant. Just brilliant.”
MAUS II continued the incredible story of his parents’ survival of the Nazi regime and their lives later in America. His comics are best known for their shifting graphic styles, formal complexity, and controversial content.
In 2004 he completed a two-year cycle of broadsheet-sized color comics pages, In the Shadow of No Towers. Published in book form by Pantheon, it appeared on many national bestseller lists and was selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2004.
He also worked as a staff artist and writer for the New Yorker from 1993 to 2003, and in 2005 he was named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.” A major exhibition of his work was arranged by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the 15 Masters of 20th Century Comics exhibition.
At this event, his topic will be What the %@&*! Happened to Comics? Spiegelman will take us on a chronological tour of the history and evolution of comics, all the while explaining the value of this medium and why it should not be ignored.
Ticket Prices:
Full: 35
Student: $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Please note: There will not be a booksigning following this event.
Visual Verse
Wednesday, April 3, 2013, 7:30 p.m.
Horchow Auditorium
Paul Muldoon was born in Northern Ireland and studied at Queen’s University in Belfast under poet Seamus Heaney, who has since deemed him “one of the best.” Recurring themes of political and social relevance inform his poems, as do family anecdotes. His book Moy Sand and Gravel won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize and the International Griffin Poetry Prize. He is best known for his dry wit as well as his “visual clarity and verbal panache.” The New York Observer said, “Paul Muldoon is one of the great readers alive today. His voice alters with every change in tone and he’ll often pace around a room, his whole body responding to his intricate rhythms.”
Muldoon has written libretti, rock lyrics for his own band, and many books for children. His forthcoming poetry collection, The Word on the Street (February 2013), is a book of rock lyrics, some performed by Wayside Shrines, the music collective of which he is a member. Their themes range from lost love and lost wars to icons as varied as Oedipus and Charlton Heston. Muldoon serves as poetry editor of the New Yorker and as a professor at Princeton University.
Nikky Finney was born in South Carolina and came of age during the civil rights and Black Arts movements. At Talladega College, Finney began to understand the powerful synergy between art and history. She has authored four books of poetry: Head Off & Split (2011, winner of the National Book Award), The World Is Round (2003), Rice (1995), and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). After her National Book Award acceptance speech, host John Lithgow remarked, “That was the best acceptance speech for anything I’ve ever heard in my life.” Finney is the Guy Davenport Endowed Professor of English at the University of Kentucky.
Nikky Finney's National Book Award acceptance speech:
Ticket Prices:
Full: 35
Student: $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Characters in Color: A Serenade to Chagall
Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 7:30 p.m.
Horchow Auditorium
Inspired by the exhibition Chagall: Beyond Color
Pictured (from left, to right): Ashleigh Semkiw, soprano (Chicago Opera Theater, Castleton Festival); Jamie Van Eyck, mezzo-soprano (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Boston Lyric Opera); David Portillo, tenor (Lyric Opera of Chicago, Minnesota Opera); Seth Carico, bass-baritone (Fort Worth Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin); Joseph Li, pianist (Houston Grand Opera, Wolf Trap Opera); Amy Dillard and Emily Boyd of Elledanceworks
Nationally and internationally acclaimed musicians and members of Elledanceworks will bring Marc Chagall’s vivid and whimsical paintings, sculptures, and costumes to life in a one-of-a-kind, one-night-only performance, weaving together music, dance, poetry, and Chagall’s own words. In this multidisciplinary program inspired by Chagall’s travels, dreams, and imagination, experience the master of mood and mise-en-scène reflected in eclectic music ranging from Fauré to Fiona Apple and Rachmaninoff to R.E.M.
A tour of the exhibition Chagall: Beyond Color prior to the performance will generate thought-provoking connections between the visual and performing arts. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a showcase of Chagall’s sets and costumes for the ballet Aleko, commissioned for the New York Ballet Theatre in 1942. When the ballet premiered, there was tumultuous applause and nineteen calls. Art critics exclaimed that it “surpassed anything Chagall has done on the easel scale, and it is a breathtaking experience, of a kind one hardly expects in theater.”
Elledanceworks Dance Company has enjoyed a creative partnership with the DMA in recent years, designing performances and creating new work inspired by the exhibitions All the World’s a Stage (2009), Silence and Time (2011), and Youth and Beauty (2012). Elledanceworks is the professional dance company-in-residence at Collin College.
This is the eighth collaboration between Arts & Letters Live and artistic programmer Ryan Taylor.
Ticket Prices:
Full: 35
Student: $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Image: Marc Chagall, Between Darkness and Night (Entre chien et loup) (detail), 1938–43, oil on paper mounted on canvas, Private collection, Paris, © Archives Marc et Ida Chagall. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Photo of Art Spiegelman by Nadia Spiegelman
Photo of Paul Muldoon by Michael Potiker
Arts & Letters Live is presented by the Kay Cattarulla Endowment for the Literary and Performing Arts at the Dallas Museum of Art, The Hoglund Foundation, The Eugene McDermott Foundation, Annual Series Supporters, and Friends of the Dallas Public Library.
Air transportation provided in part by American Airlines. Hotel accommodations provided in part by The Adolphus. In-kind partners include ArtsDistrictDining.com and Einstein Printing. Promotional support is provided by
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