“For the past quarter-century, Ron English has been waging a quixotic guerilla war against corporate America by hijacking some of its most visually arresting billboards… These sabotage operations can be carried out in about seven minutes flat if all goes well, and even though the hijacked billboards generally get de-hijacked within a matter of days, the raids usually generate enough publicity to get his message across.” English is the subject of a new documentary examining the impact of his guerrilla art on a frequently indifferent society.
Tag: 08.12.06
Sculptor’s Career Cut Short
Jason Rhoades, the controversial pop sculptor who reveled in raunch and seemed to delight in offending middle American sensibilities, has died of heart failure at 41. “Rhoades embedded his three-dimensional blowouts with id, excess, obnoxiousness, rascally ambition and a rampaging life force. His sculpture ran rampant, and as close to amok as he could make it in the 13 jam-packed years of his career.”
England’s Next Great Podium Hope
Edward Gardner is the UK’s “it” conductor of the moment, having made headlines with a production of John Adams’s controversial Death of Klinghoffer last year, and then winning appointment as principal conductor of the always tumultuous English National Opera. Now, he’s opening the famed Edinburgh Festival with a new production of Strauss’s massive opera, Elektra. “It is a big gig even for a musician whose career, at the moment, seems unstoppable.”