Arts - period ended 1.15.2006

Arts/Theater/Business/Poverty/Opening: Moss, Sejanus, Balance, Royal Court 50th/Whatsonstage.com/London/England/UK/15-Jan-2006//... Soho Theatre hosts the UK premiere of Elizabeth Kuti’s The Sugar Wife, staged by Dublin-based theatre company Rough Magic and directed by their co-founder and artistic director Lynne Parker. Set amongst Dublin’s Quaker community in the 1840s, the play revolves around a woman torn between her work with the city’s poor and her husband’s prospering business. Its limited season ends on 11 February 2006. ...

Arts/Theater///Everyone's Talking About Blogs/The Southern/Champaign/IL/USA/11-Jan-2006//... Leverett uses his blogs to instantly publish works such as the plays he composes for his faith group, the Southern Illinois Society of Friends. ...

Arts/Painting/Wyeth, Andrew/Atlanta museum takes new turn with Wyeth/Knoxville News Sentinel/Knoxville/TN/USA/1-Jan-2006//... bar. Don't miss "The Quaker," a tempera-on-panel painting depicting two coats hanging on a mantelpiece in a room with one window. ...

Arts/Painting/War/Penrose, Roland/Secret history: how surrealism can win a war/The Sunday Times/London/England/UK/8-Jan-2006//….

The Sunday Times - Scotland

The Sunday Times January 08, 2006

Secret history: how surrealism can win a war
An exhibition reveals how camouflage was created by an unlikely regiment of artists, writes Mark Fisher
Think of artists in relation to war and you imagine pacifism and protest. You remember Pablo Picasso decrying brutality in Guernica, Wilfred Owen writing poetry in the trenches, or John Lennon giving peace a chance in his bed. But in times of emergency, a nation must draw on all its talents, which is how some of the leading names of early-20th-century art came to apply their creative skills to the battle against fascism.

An exhibition opening this week at Edinburgh’s Dean Gallery highlights the role of fine artists, designers and architects in the creation of camouflage, one of the army’s most vital defence techniques.

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In the UK, the army introduced its Camouflage Section at the end of 1916, while at sea, the marine painter Norman Wilkinson invented the concept of “dazzle painting” — a way of using stripes and disrupted lines to confuse the enemy about the speed and dimensions of a ship.

These techniques took off in earnest during the second world war — with artists at the forefront. Chief among them was Penrose, a Quaker, pacifist and surrealist — and friend of modern art luminaries such as Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Man Ray and Picasso — who held equally strong beliefs about the menace of fascism. He co-founded the Industrial Camouflage Research Unit, a commercial venture offering protection to factories, which was absorbed by the army to help the war effort.

“His lectures were pretty startling. He used colour photographs of Lee Miller, his wife-to-be, in the nude, wearing camouflage paint to blend into the grass,” says Simpson.

Those images are in the exhibition, so you can put Penrose’s claim to the test that “if you could hide such eye-catching attractions as hers from the invading Hun, smaller and less seductive areas of skin would stand an even better chance of becoming invisible.”

Training under Penrose in Farnham were the advertising designer Ashley Havinden and landscape artist James McIntosh Patrick. ...

Arts/Music///Four Seniors Hope to Wear Homecoming Crown at Burlington/Alva Review Courier/Alva/OK/USA/3-Jan-2006//... She is a member of band and vocal and the FCA representative to student council. She is song leader at the Friends Church in Cherokee. ...

Arts/Film/Silence//Walking the fine line/Daily Pilot/Newport Beach/CA/USA/14-Jan-2006//…. Others in the crowd were almost enchanted by Rainer's work. One woman said that "Line" reminded her of going to her first Quaker meeting.

"You're supposed to [enter] in silence and go into a state of meditation," she explained. ...