MORE
AND
MORE
Ditadura
Depois de ter exposto suas obras no MAM, no MIS, na Pinacoteca e no exterior, o fotógrafo Gal Oppido teve suas imagens -muitas delas com corpos nus- censuradas. O veto veio da Digipix, contratada para imprimir cerca de 200 fotos do artista em um livro-portfólio, que seria apresentado a galerias de Nova York. A empresa se recusou a entregar o trabalho por considerar as imagens de "conteúdo indevido", que poderia "ser considerado ofensivo, pornográfico, obsceno (...) que venha a ferir a ética, a moral, os bons costumes". E afirma que "não analisa as imagens com base em critérios artísticos".
INQUISIÇÃO
Oppido, que teve de viajar sem seu portfólio impresso, avalia o ocorrido como "um evento com tons medievais, lembrando a malfadada aventura inquisitória".
MORE
AND
MORE
MAÇÃ VERDE
A suíte presidencial do hotel Grand Hyatt já está sendo preparada para a chegada de Elton John a São Paulo, no dia 14. Nos arranjos, serão usadas apenas orquídeas e rosas; nas cestas de frutas, maçã verde, abacaxi, pêssego e ameixa.
ASTERIX
MORE
AND
MORE
NOVINHO EM FOLHA
A boate Clash reabre hoje reformada. Tem agora um novo palco, mais dois lounges e um sistema de projeção de vídeo que interage com a iluminação. A projeção acontece em oito telas espalhadas pelo clube.
TRAÇO FASHION
MORE
AND
MORE
CURTO-CIRCUITO
BENNY NOVAK e Renato Ades reabrem hoje o restaurante Ici Bistrô, com nova decoração, em Higienópolis.
MORE
AND
MORE
O HOTEL MAKSOUD PLAZA abriga a partir de sábado a primeira edição da TM Fashion, uma feira com estilistas e designers de acessórios, em São Paulo.
Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.
Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.
How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.
Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.
How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.
Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.
How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.
Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.
How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.
Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants.
How to eat: Just drink it.
Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with antioxidants.
How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked.
Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death.
How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.
Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.” They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.
How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.
Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,” it may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.
How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.
Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies.
How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.
Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories.
How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.
You can find more details and recipes on the Men’s Health Web site, which published the original version of the list last year.
In my own house, I only have two of these items — pumpkin seeds, which I often roast and put on salads, and frozen blueberries, which I mix with milk, yogurt and other fruits for morning smoothies. How about you? Have any of these foods found their way into your shopping cart?
MORE
AND
MORE
n response to my recent column on patients trusting doctors too much, several readers wrote in about the difficulty of finding or sifting through information on doctors and diseases. Many asked for suggestions, so a couple of weeks ago I contacted several nationally respected leaders in family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, oncology, surgery and anesthesia and asked them to share their advice on researching doctors and diseases.
Well
Share your thoughts on this column at the Well blog.
Go to Well »
Many of the doctors I spoke to or exchanged e-mail with made commonsense suggestions that were not unexpected. They urged patients to find out which doctors their closest friends really like, to ask a prospective doctor questions like how much experience he or she has with a specific condition or operation, and to make sure that as a patient you feel part of a shared decision-making process and comfortable saying how you feel, or that you don’t understand or that you respectfully disagree.
But many of the physicians also shared links to valuable Web sites, several of which I was unfamiliar with. All the sites are free to the public and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. When I looked at these sites while writing this column, I became really excited as a patient about the amount of information available. For example, one site from the Department of Health and Human Services called Hospital Compare (www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov) allows you to select three hospitals within a 25-mile radius of your home. It also lets you compare a wide variety of quality indicators, like the percentage of heart failure patients who were given discharge instructions, the percentage of surgery patients given prophylactic antibiotics at the right time, or the percentage of hospitalized patients who felt that doctors or nurses “always” communicated well (the differences among hospitals surprised me).
And according to several of the doctors I spoke with, the amount of information available to patients will only increase in the future.
Throughout our conversations and e-mail exchanges, every one of the doctors stressed the importance of patients doing research and becoming an active part of the medical team. “This is a shared responsibility between the physician and the patient for the patient’s health,” said Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Dr. Lisa V. Rubinstein, president of the Society of General Internal Medicine, said that sharing in decision-making “will help raise the quality of care given by any clinician, because it will sharpen the focus on the key decision points and help the clinician put a plan in place that the patient understands and agrees with.”
Here is a summary of these experts’ advice and the Web sites they use themselves and recommend to patients, friends and family.
Choosing a Doctor
All the doctors I contacted stressed the invaluable contribution of a good primary care doctor in helping patients identify specialists or other physicians. “I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for every patient to have a trustworthy primary care physician who can help them navigate our challenging, but potentially excellent, health care system,” said Dr. David T. Tayloe Jr., president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Primary care doctors can identify qualified subspecialists through local and national networks or professional organizations. “Even for a patient in a distant city,” Dr. Rubinstein said, “I can usually find a local respected colleague who knows someone in the general area.”
When a primary care doctor does not have a recommendation or when the patient does not have a primary care physician to turn to, Dr. Rubinstein advised identifying high quality medical groups or hospitals that “carefully monitor the quality of the clinicians affiliated with them” and that provide “decision support, continuous quality improvement and continuing education to keep their clinicians functioning well.”
Data on hospital and medical group quality is more readily available to the public than information on individual physicians, and Dr. Rubinstein offered several Web sites (see below) that patients can use.
One way to help assess the quality of individual physicians is to establish that a doctor is board certified, Dr. Epperly said. To become board certified, doctors must complete a full residency at an accredited training program, pass written and, depending on the specialty, oral examinations, and provide proof that she or he has experience with a defined set of clinical problems and technical procedures. However, cautioned Dr. Roger A. Moore, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, “board certification is one indication, but it’s certainly no guarantee.”
Another way to get a sense of physician quality is to contact the national professional society for that doctor’s specialty.
“There is lots of good information at professional societies compared to years past,” said Dr. Thomas R. Russell, executive director of the American College of Surgeons. “On our Web site, for example, you can go look at a surgeon’s profile and see what they do.”
A breast cancer patient can, for example, find out if a recommended surgeon has a practice devoted exclusively to breast disease versus a more general practice. Or a patient with a colon mass can choose a surgeon who is not only board certified in colorectal surgery but also has a special interest in laparoscopy, or minimally invasive surgery.
1 2 NEXT PAGE »
More Articles in Health »
MORE
AND
MORE
ART REVIEW
Where Outsiders Come in From the Cold
SAVE
SHARE
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: January 8, 2009
A review of one of the first art fairs of 2009 should begin with pronouncements about the plunging art market, the weakening dollar, skittish dealers and the sins of the recent past. Let’s pretend it did, and move on. There’s a fresh fair to be seen, and a new location to adjust to.
Enlarge This Image
Clementine Hunter/Gilley's Gallery
“Abstract Face” by Clementine Hunter is among the works at 7 West 34th Street in Manhattan. More Photos »
Multimedia
Slide Show
New Discoveries, New Artists
Enlarge This Image
Amos Ferguson/Galerie Bonheur
“White House Media,” by Amos Ferguson. More Photos >
Enlarge This Image
Elisabeth Aldwell/Maxwell Projects
Elisabeth Aldwell’s “Acid Trancescape,” acrylic on canvas, at the Maxwell Projects gallery. More Photos >
Enlarge This Image
Ted Ludwiczak/American Primitive Gallery
“Banded Granite Head” by Ted Ludwiczak. More Photos >
Enlarge This Image
Stephen Palmer/Ricco Maresca Gallery
“Untitled,” around 1950-65, by Stephen Palmer, a Wisconsin farmer who created shrinelike portraits of religious figures. More Photos >
Enlarge This Image
Violetta C. Raditz/Luise Ross Gallery
“VR 7 Untitled” (1920), in pencil and crayon on paper, by Violetta C. Raditz, who was an artist from Philadelphia. More Photos >
The Outsider Art Fair, now in its 17th year, has forsaken the Puck Building — the only home it has ever known — at the epicenter of downtown, for the blander environs of midtown. Fifth Avenue and 34th Street to be exact, on the 11th floor of an undistinguished, recently minted structure opposite the Empire State Building.
There are losses and gains. The ground floor convenience, downtown allure and outsiderish rusticity of the Puck will be missed. But not its drafts, paper walls and comfort-challenged amenities. Word has it that the space is scheduled to become a large restaurant, which befits its locale, size, charm and hourglass, bottlenecking layout. (The hintermost space of the Puck ground floor is a potential Siberia worthy of being sighted from Sarah Palin’s kitchen.)
The Outsider Art Fair’s new setting is art-fair generic in style. It feels, as one dealer put it, “grown up.” There are carpets, relatively sturdy, anonymous white walls; openness and improved visibility.
Some dealers are using the added space to give the art some breathing room and to make their selections look more considered. Others are just using it for more art, homing to a customary thrift-store density, but on a grander, slightly more ordered scale. That outsider art dealers can abhor vacuums every bit as energetically as outsider artists is perhaps best illustrated by the fabulous mélange of Haitian and American works at Galerie Bourbon-Lally.
But at every turn this fair has a new clarity. The art rises to the occasion of the more refined environment. Each stand contains at least one example of excellence and sometimes several.
By now the term outsider has become close to meaningless in its elasticity. It implies self-taught, which many insider artists are; it also means isolated, although these days younger outsiders are being influenced by previous generations. One of several new names at the fair is Timothy Wehrle, a 30-year-old artist from Iowa at the Cavin-Morris stand. It is impossible to imagine the teeming emphatically patterned compositions and hazy tones of his colored-pencil and graphite drawings without the antecedent of Adolf Wölfli’s rhythmic orchestrations. But Mr. Wehrle has given them a strongly figurative pulse and contemporary themes — the daily mayhem of the supermarket for example.
The time may be past when outsider geniuses are discovered, or rediscovered with astounding regularity — from Joseph Yoakum, Martín Ramírez, Henry Darger and Bill Traylor in the late 1960s and ’70s to Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Morton Bartlett and James Castle in the 1990s. While less dominant than in past fairs, these artists are all present, mostly in stands on the first aisle. At Phyllis Kind, Ricco/Maresca, Carl Hammer, Maxwell Projects and Marion Harris you’ll find a kind of outsider art Hall of Fame. Other old guards in the vicinity include Grandma Moses, represented by paintings and an embroidery at St. Etienne; at Gilley’s Gallery, Clementine Hunter (1887-1988) is represented by two walls of paintings (including some strange Cubist heads from around 1970), and a quilt that gives her pictorial language a new complexity.
But the fair harbors new talents of all kinds, which bodes well for modest prices, and other artists who aren’t yet household names among outsider fans. Maxwell Projects has vividly detailed paintings of painters at work in a studio (the same one every time) by Elisabeth Aldwell.
Ricco/Maresca has tiny symbol-laden landscapes by Ben Hotchkiss. Andrew Edlin is introducing the work of Frank Calloway, an Alabaman whose images of houses, cars and animals executed in saturated colors on large rolls of paper, approach billboard scale. Keep a special eye out for Stephen Palmer (1882-1965), a Wisconsin farmer who, after becoming bedridden, turned out shrinelike portraits of Jesus and other religious figures framed in bright curvilinear plant patterns that suggest fancy, demonic playing cards. His work, recently discovered in the estate sale of his caretaker, is making a double debut at the Carl Hammer and Ricco/Maresca stands. He stands a good chance of joining the outsider pantheon.
Other firsts include the mesmerizing childhood crayon drawings of a Philadelphia artist named Violetta Raditz (1912-1998) at Luise Ross. They were all made around 1920, and their suave lines and rich, subtle palette reflect a precocious talent fed by an early exposure to the Ballet Russe, Japanese art and possibly Aubrey Beardsley. The Ames Gallery is introducing the large, lusciously colored canvases of Ursula Barnes (1872-1958), whose experience as a dancer on the New York stage may have encouraged a penchant for blond Mae West-like damsels and turn-of-the-century dress.
Across the aisle the related, but contemporary paintings of Y. G. Casey (1923-2002) stand out at Rising Fawn Folk Art. Ms. Casey stippled obsessively with tester paints on plastic, achieving large enamel-like scenes best described as Neo-Victorian with a sexual slant. Nearby, Virginia Green, a dealer of modern and contemporary art, has devoted her stand to the work of Douglas Desjardins. This 31-year-old artist usually sells his exuberant, often tropical paintings, executed on found scraps of plywood, on the streets of SoHo. Ms. Green bought one last spring, was struck by its staying power and there you have it: both artist and dealer are making their Outsider Art Fair debuts.
Gary Snyder’s stand is all about Janet Sobel (1894-1990), the canny outsider credited with developing a version of drip painting that influenced Jackson Pollock. The selection here traces the development of her figurative work during the 1940s and early ’50s, from conventional folk art to increasingly wild, colorful and all-over compositions. They establish a telling call-and-response with the wild women of the great Swiss outsider Aloïse Corbaz (1886-1964) at Safian.
What else? Plenty. Not to be missed are the hallucinatory abstract patterns of Eugene Andolsek at American Primitive; the heated-up Ecuadoran tourist paintings of Luis Millingalli at Grey Carter; the intimate painted and annotated collages, made from cereal boxes, by Jerry Wagner, a former handyman, Yeshiva student and folk singer from Rhode Island at George Jacobs Self-Taught Art; the billowing images of Amos Ferguson, the 88-year-old Bahamian artist at Bonheur known as the Picasso of Nassau; and the wall of African salon signs at Pardee. Did I mention the hypnotic portrait of André Breton, the autocratic pope of Surrealism, by Miguel Hernandez (1893-1957) at Ritsch-Fisch? It does full justice to the pontiff’s famously capricious charm.
The Outsider Art Fair is at 7 West 34th Street, 11th floor, near Fifth Avenue, until Sunday. (212) 777-5218, sanfordsmith.com.
Comentários