ABCDE Arts&Style sunday, august 1, 2010 RECORDINGS
Lost in ‘The Suburbs’ Arcade Fire’s highly anticipated latest is more restrained than previous albums and only offers “emotional swells of faux-profundity” as it delves into murky childhood memories. E9
K
BLOGS AND CHATS
washingtonpost.com/style OnLove Both of them prayed for God to send them a spouse. E8 Carolyn Hax His wife and his mother are at odds, and the kids are the prize. E10
Ask Amy, E10 Celebrations, E9 Cul de Sac, E10 Movie Guide, E7 Horoscope, E10 Lively Arts Guide, E7 ART REVIEW
‘Housewives’ develops rot, and a once-harmless network gives all women a black eye
Bravo’s
HORROR SHOW
BY HANK STUEVER
The method to Munch’s madness
National Gallery reveals the crafty organization of the ‘Scream’ artist
by Blake Gopnik With all his “Scream”-ing and “Vam-
pire”-ism, we tend to think of Edvard Munch as the Neurotic from Norway. What’s harder to recognize is that those direct effusions from a tortured soul are, in fact, craftily organized construc- tions worked out over years, some- times decades, until Munch had ex- hausted the options they offered. Many of Munch’s most immediately
expressive paintings were refined in version after version. He
even
screamed his “Scream” a number of times, working through the scene’s pos- sibilities. But to see Munch digging most deeply and systematically into a single subject, you have to head to his prints.
An important new exhibition at the
National Gallery of Art, titled “Edvard Munch: Master Prints,” explores a doz- en or so emotive subjects from Munch’s repertoire, sampled from the gallery’s excellent Munch holdings as well as from the Epstein Family Collection, whose owners are longtime donors to the gallery, and from the important New York collection of Catherine Woodard and Nelson Blitz Jr. That sampling shows how Munch could use sequences of woodblock prints and lithographs, slightly or significantly varied over time, to come to grips with his favorite subjects. Prints allowed the most methodical
exploration of the absolutely unme- thodical in life, letting an artist rework the same plate over a period of years and pull new artworks from it. A black-and-white lithograph, printed in 1895 when Munch was 31 and a rising star, is a reprise of a painted subject originally titled “Love and Pain.” It shows a couple collapsing in the throes of a hopeless romance.
art review continued on E2 E AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM
ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREA LEVY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST TV PREVIEW E
very word of the title is wrong, except “the” and “of.” ¶ Real: What can that even mean any- more? ¶ Housewives: Remember when that bordered on slur? The surgically taut eyes of certain Real Housewives must ache from wink- winking every time Bravo has them say the name of the show. ¶ Here it’s an empowering noun, housewife, a category of women with gi- ant kitchens who nevertheless appear to take
all their meals at enormous-stemware restaurants that always seem to be seating them and their camera crews in backrooms, under the guise of exclusivity, but perhaps safely away from real people. (The home kitchen, that ancient, hearthy symbol of oppression and chores, is useful to Real Housewives only when, say, “Janet Jackson’s personal chef” is coming by for an exclusive cooking tutorial: how to marinate in your own sauce.) ¶ Finally, the word D.C.: Always the ultimate artificial no place, adhering to no map or agreed-upon boundary, having nothing to do with the greater Washington area where many of us live and work normally, having nothing to do even with the “Washington” glimpsed in our many glossy so- ciety magazines, but nevertheless serving as a surreal backdrop for the newest of
ROBIN GIVHAN On Fashion
Outrageous characters, ostentatious costumes
T
he “Real Housewives” franchise, that juggernaut of gossip, gluttony and Botox, incorporates fashion as a kind of
gallivanting character — a constantly striving, ostentatious, insecure troublemaker who believes there’s no such thing as too much cleavage. During each show’s opening montage, the smiling Housewives pose and preen in front of a voyeuristic camera. Wardrobe favorites include jewel-tone dresses in shiny, shiny satin or, for the more demure ladies, georgette frocks with low-cut decolletage. More often than not, said dresses appear to be at least one size too small.
Are gossip rags just soaking up future story arcs that reality shows want to promote? Amy Argetsinger weighs in. E4 tv preview continued on E3
givhan continued on E5
COPYRIGHT MUNCH MUSEUM/MUNCH ELLINGSEN GROUP/ ARS, NY 2009
DO OVER: Three versions of Munch’s "Two Women by the Shore," a woodcut that the artist conceived in 1898 and then reworked over following decades.
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