The room is barely lit with unadorned light bulbs. Rows of beds are lined up in a crowded, spartan room. Cheap foam pads showcase the weighty voids of sleeping figures, yet the occupants themselves are disconcertingly missing. This is hardly the typical dorm room. You had better believe that this is high art.
For Matt Savage, this album was a big test. The 15-year-old jazz piano phenom, who has overcome the barriers of autism to become a renowned child musician, told the Daily last fall that he was ready to move beyond prodigy status.
State Radio will not write its audience a love song. With that little disclaimer out of the way, let it be known that the power trio composed of Chad Stokes Urmston (formerly of Dispatch) on guitar and vocals, Chuck Fay on bass and vocals, and Mike "Mad Dog" Najarian on drums has brought forth a subtle, yet scathing, third full-length studio album.
Nada Surf has long been overlooked in the genre of alternative rock. The band has never truly broken in the pop-charts sense of the word, but over the years they it has certainly accrued a devoted following of people who are unashamed to demand something catchier than run-of-the-mill indie rock.
Allston Skirt Gallery's new show, "Strangefolks," features the works of three artists: Logan Grider, John Copeland and Elizabeth Huey. It is an ambitious undertaking for such a small space.
Some artists are so great that they come to represent their entire era. Think of the opulent Tudor court of Hans Holbein or Man Ray's jazz-baby femme fatales. In the 1980s, Robert Mapplethorpe helped define the athletic, pseudo-neoclassicist aesthetic that would rule the decade.
Anyone who has ever viewed even a small sampling of Asian art knows that bird and floral imagery is quite prevalent in it. What most people may not know, however, is that the use of birds and flowers as artistic subjects in Asian art is deeply rooted in the historical and religious traditions of Asian countries.
Each year, alumni and Fifth Year Certificate students of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) compete for several Traveling Scholarships that allow them to study in a foreign country. The program culminates in an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Since the release of his first album, "Brushfire Fairytales" (2001), Jack Johnson has come a long way.
Nearly everyone over the age of 12 will testify that Ouija boards are fake and a waste of time. But progressive rock band The Mars Volta (TMV) obviously doesn't feel that way.
Zox's latest release, "Line in the Sand," showcases the same hard, driving rock and roll machinery from their previous album "The Wait" (2006) but with a bigger and funkier sound. The band comes out swinging with layers of punchy guitars zigging and zagging in all directions and the dead-on drum tactics of John Zox that single-handedly powered their earlier albums. Themes of self-discovery and the meaning of love waft in and out throughout the album, giving it a sense of cohesion. "Line in the Sand" offers fans and new listeners a reason to take Zox seriously as a talented and adventurous rock band that has yet to be boxed into any one trend, category or sound.
"Champion" might be the second album by Chicago pop-punk outfit The Audition, but it definitely does not sound like a sophomore attempt.
With mash-up masters like Girl Talk and Kanye West in the spotlight of today's music world, it might appear that the singer-songwriter (? la Bob Dylan) is a thing of the past.
Today, we give drawing a level of importance in the visual arts that it never had in the past. Particularly in the Renaissance, when sketches were just plans for immaculately finished pieces, artists like Michelangelo would not want their drawings shown; the only thing that mattered was the final outcome. Today, we treasure these unfinished, dashed off studies for their immediacy and their insight into the artists' working process. "Drawing: A Broader Definition" at the MFA looks past drawing as just a plan for other works. The show presents sketches, ceramics and miniatures from 3850 B.C. to the 1950s, by artists ranging from Hokusai to Picasso, in a way that shows drawing as a medium of its own.
Commercial work is often equated with selling out in the minds of those who fancy themselves as art buffs. But commercial art and art inspired by the commercial world are on the rise. It's definitely something that should be dealt with in a time dominated by materialism and corporate influence. "Branded and On Display," now open at the Tufts University Arts Gallery, showcases a collection of work that plays with the concept of commercialization. Some of the artists approach commercialization as the subject of their work, while others use it as a framework for more conceptual pieces.
Remember that time in high school when you skipped last period and sports practice to go shopping? You probably either coerced your friend to forge a note from a doctor or parent or just did it yourself, struggling through several unrealistic practice signatures before signing your poorly faked note with a nervous flourish.
Like many artists, Spencer Finch seeks to grasp what we ourselves can't reach. His installations combine poetry and beauty with science, investigating the limits of perception in a kind of experimental process that may seem unfamiliar at first, but becomes a generous and accessible opportunity to expand our own horizons through art. Finch is an alchemist of representation, turning visual impulses into physics and back into sculpture. He turns dreams into drawings, transforming them into a Freudian excavation of an artist's subconscious.
With 2007 gone forever, one might think it's time to wind up the latest British Invasion, which included mostly female artists such as the hot mess Ms. Amy Winehouse and "Oops-I'm-Pregnant" Lily Allen, as well as many neo-new-wave bands such as Klaxons. But to do so would be to act far too quickly.
Along with the cold New England weather, endless shopping and glistening decorations, this season also brings with it a plethora of new Christmas CDs. All of these albums cover the classic favorites, and some even attempt to create the newest Christmas hit. The problem with the genre is that its market is so limited - between the fan base and restricted sale period - yet artists still take the plunge on compilation Christmas CDs.
The fracturing of Chinese artistic tradition within the past 50 years is a complex but beautiful result of the Cultural Revolution. The Sackler Museum at Harvard is hosting "Tradition Redefined: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection." The exhibit is divided into five parts, each focusing on one of the various ways that artists adapted their work to the changes in their homeland.
