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TROPICALLIFE MSUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 2008 EDITOR: MARGARIA FICHTNER mfichtner@MiamiHerald.com 305-376-3630 or 954-764-7026 ext. 3630

CARL JUSTE/MIAMI HERALD STAFF

A LOAD OF RESEARCH: Art historian Helen Kohen digs through archives at theMiami-Dade Public Library to prepare for a presentation on the Miami artscene before the arrival of Art Basel.

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Filling in the pictur e of Miami’s early arts sceneBY BRETT SOKOLSpecial to The Miami Herald

‘‘It’s a freak show, an abso-lute freak show!’’ Helen Kohenchuckles. That’s the false por-trait of the Miami art scenefound in the Lynn and LouisWolfson II Florida MovingImage Archives, where Kohenhas been sifting through almostsix decades of locally producedtelevision shows. Miami’s TVstations ‘‘weren’t interested inthe visual arts unless it had an

absurd hook. For three Hallow-eens in a row, [then-CBS affili-ate] WTVJ visited the home of aman who placed huge, gro-tesque sculptures on his frontlawn. Why? Not because he wasan accomplished artist. Butbecause he claimed to be a war-lock!’’

With a sigh, Kohen contin-ues, ‘‘Miami has always hadsome of the finest artists of anyplace, but they’ve never gottencoverage on TV. The audience

there never got the whole pic-ture — we have to fill it in.’’

To that end, Kohen is kickingoff this year’s edition of theWolfson Archives’ Rewind/Fast-Forward Film Festival onThursday with a presentationon Miami’s hidden art history —sans warlocks such as the afore-mentioned Lewis VanDercar.To annotate the cringe-worthyarray of vintage television clips

•TURN TO ARTS, 4M

BOOK S

Her Brazil hasmor al banditsand hard choicesBY CONNIE OGLEcogle@MiamiHerald.com

Frances de Pontes Peebleswould like us all to understandsomething about Brazil, whereshe was born: ‘‘It’s not just sambaand soccer and the Amazon.’’

Peebles, who grew up in Surf-side and Coral Gables and gradu-ated from Gables High in 1996,goes a long way toward provingthat assertion in her breathtakingdebut novel. Her rollicking, vio-lent and heartbreaking story isset during the late 1920s and early

’30s in northeast-ern Brazil, a region‘‘completely differ-ent culturally’’from the rest ofthe country with‘‘its own way ofdoing things. Peo-ple there speak alot of Portuguesethat can’t be trans-lated into English.’’

The Seamstress (HarperCol-lins, $25.95), from which Peebleswill read Friday at Books &Books in Coral Gables, is asweeping historical saga thatencompasses elements of Brazilunfamiliar to most of us: vaststretches of desert scrubland,daring bandits, crippling drought,a harshly repressive society andthe lives of two sisters eager —desperate, even — to escape theirimpoverished existence in a tinymountain town.

And lest you suspect the titlereflects only a frilly, femininesensibility, know this: While TheSeamst r e s s is rich in detail aboutsewing and its skills — ‘‘A goodseamstress had to pay attentionto detail. . . . A good seamstresshad to be decisive’’ — the novelalso features more decapitationsthan you’ll find in a Quentin Tar-

•TURN TO PEEBLES, 2M

3M ARCHITECTURE: MIAMI DOESN’T NEED A BIG-BOX STORE DOWNTOWN 6M BOOKS: THE FRIENDSHIP OF A POET AND A CRITIC

BOUTIQUE OF THE WEEK: ACCESSORY LINE SEPTIMO DOES MORE THAN JEWELRY AT ITS NEW SHOP

BY RENE RODRIGUEZrrodriguez@MiamiHerald.com

ince its release on July 18,The Dark Knight hasbecome a rarity amongsummer movie blockbust-ers: It has transcended hitstatus and become a pop-

culture phenomenon, grossingmore than $700 million worldwideand luring viewers of every age intothe multiplex, many more thanonce.

It may also be the last of its kind.Hollywood, like every other

industry, is coming to grips withthe far-ranging changes the Inter-net and digital media have wreakedon its long-standing business mod-els. The Internet has foreverchanged the way we shop, date,stay in touch with each other andget our news. And it is also chang-ing the way we view and thinkabout movies.

‘‘We are at a moment right nowwhere this change that has beenbuilding for the last 10 years or so isexploding,’’ says Mike McGuire,vice president of research for Gart-ner Media Industry Advisory Ser-vices. ‘‘At the heart of this change isthat the consumer is in absolutecontrol — if they want to be — oftheir media consumption experi-ence.

•TURN TO MOVIES, 11M

MiamiHerald.comClick onEntertainmentto read anexcerpt

MiamiHerald.comClick on Entertainment for aTV interview with Christo.

In the digitalage, moviesscreen whereand whenyou wantthem

PEEBLES

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RAUSCHENBERGCHRISTO YOUNGHANSON’S SCULPTURECANO

OVERLOOKED: University of Miami art students protestthat their work is being ignored by curators at theLowe Art Gallery in 1967.

4M SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 2008 A MiamiHerald.com/Tropical_Life THE MIAMI HERALD

F illing in the picture o f Miami’ s earl y arts scene•ARTS, FROM 1M

she has unearthed, she’lldraw on her experience asThe Miami Herald’s artcritic from 1978 to her 1995retirement, as well as hercurrent consulting effortsfor the Miami-Dade CountyLibrary’s Vasari Project, anarchive chronicling area artsince 1945.

The program won’t b e acomplete visual train wreck,though. Kohen has found afew bright spots amid thehistorical ‘‘butchering,’’including sharp program-ming from PBS stationWPBT. And WTVJ partiallymanaged to redeem itselfwith segments on RobertRauschenberg’s 1979 trip toMiami to design the coverof The Miami Herald’s now-defunct Tropic magazine, aswell as Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1983 Surround e dIsland s, for which the duoencircled 11 Biscayne Bayislands with 6.5 millionsquare feet of hot-pink poly-propylene.

Also to be screened: 1967footage of University ofMiami art students demon-strating over their work’sbeing ignored by the cura-tors at their school’s LoweArt Gallery (‘‘Local hasalways been a four-letterword in Miami,’’ Kohenquips); a 1981 look at theeerily lifelike sculptures ofDuane Hanson; a 1985 chatwith draftsman Pablo Cano,and a 1973 profile of PurvisYoung, whose paintingsthen adorned the outsidewalls of abandoned build-ings along Overtown’sGoodbread Alley. TheWTVJ interviewer’s tonemay be risible (meet ‘‘theVan Gogh of the ghetto’’),but the early snapshot ofYoung is fascinating.

But the point of Kohen’spresentation isn’t just towander down memory lane.It’s also to remind the com-munity that a rich art scenetook root long before ArtBasel Miami Beach estab-lished Miami’s internationalreputation as the most vitalU.S. art burg outside of NewYork and Los Angeles.

AFTER THE BOATLIFT

Ironically, for all theirobsessive image-conscious-ness, our august city fathers

didn’t set Miami down itspath towards art stardom.Rather, more recent Cuban-exile arrivals, particularly inthe wake of the 1980 Marielboatlift, first nudged Miamionto the international stage.

‘‘They came from a cul-ture that thought it was OKto have a son who was anartist,’’ Kohen explains. ‘‘Ina Cuban family, if you hadartistic talent, you wereencouraged to pursue it. Inan American family, if youhad artistic talent, you wereencouraged to become anorthopedist. That [Cuban]community got behind itsown very early on.’’

In the ensuing wave oftraveling museum showsand glowing press, as Cubanexiles such as the late Car-los Alfonzo and José Bediagrabbed the spotlight, 1980sand early-’90s Miami artbecame perceptually synon-ymous with Cuban-Ameri-can art. Previous genera-tions of talented Angloswere often erased from thisvibrant new picture, insteadremaining where they hadalways been — at local col-leges and universities, qui-etly teaching.

‘‘The whole idea of ‘mak-ing it’ as an artist was a veryprivate thing,’’ recalls sculp-tor Robert Thiele of his 1966arrival in Miami to join thefaculty at what was thenMiami-Dade CommunityCollege, where he taught artfor the next 30 years. At thattime, Thiele says, Miami’sart world began and endedat the campus grounds —

collectors who bought localwork were virtually nonex-istent. For artists like him,‘‘The only option was toteach. Unless you wanted tostarve to death. There wasno support structure.’’

Indeed, though Thieleand fellow Miami-Dade pro-fessor Salvatore La Rosawere featured alongsideeach other in the 1975 Whit-ney Biennial, neither experi-enced the kind of careerboost and sales boom thathas greeted Miami’s morerecent Biennial picks —such as Hernan Bas, DaraFriedman, Mark Handforthor William Cordova, one ofThiele’s students.

ON AN ISLAND

Of course, to illustratethose changes further,Thiele has only to look tohis daughter, Kristen, anaccomplished painter.Although she received a fullscholarship to the Univer-sity of Miami in 1986, shefound the notion of a life inacademia creatively stiflingand dropped out after twoyears. She subsequentlymoved into a studio onMiami Beach’s then artist-dotted Española Way andenjoyed the productiveatmosphere, ‘‘but it didn’tfeel like any of it was reach-

ing beyond Miami,’’ shesays. ‘‘We were literally liv-ing on an island in everysense.’’ Kristen movednorth in 1992, eventuallygraduating from the Schoolof the Art Institute of Chi-cago.

Yet when she returned toMiami in 2000, ‘‘I wasshocked!’’ she says. ‘‘In Chi-cago it seemed like every-one was playing in a band.In Miami it seemed likeeveryone now was an art-ist!’’ The air was filled withmore than paint-splatteredpretensions; a homegrown,cross-ethnic market hadfinally emerged.

‘‘To be able to pay myrent from selling my ownwork was such a novelty,’’Kristen says. ‘‘It really made

me feel hopeful aboutMiami for the first time.’’Growing national notices, aswell as her solo show inBasel, Switzerland, this pastJune would seem to confirmthat sentiment.

Now the Miami art worldhas moved so far off campusthat much of the excellentwork of visual-art facultyand M.F.A. students at UMand Florida InternationalUniversity often is ignoredwhile the crowds flock toWynwood gallery shows.O n a note of ‘‘We’re stillhere!’’, UM’s art departmenthas even opened a Wyn-wood exhibition space. Theschool also administers andco-funds the Design Dis-trict-based Art + Research— a ‘‘post-graduate’’ institu-

tion spearheaded by localdeveloper and collectorCraig Robins. Its 2009launch is bound to furtherovershadow UM’s M.F.A.program.

‘‘The art scene has defi-nitely passed on from theuniversities,’’ Kohen agrees,but despite its greater pub-lic exposure and a corre-sponding swarm of TV cam-eras that serve upeverything from charminglygiddy profiles on theBeach’s Plum cable channelto Art Basel reports onCNN, she still finds a crucialintellectual componentmissing.

‘‘Visual art is not enter-tainment,’’ she insists. ‘‘It’sphilosophy.’’

IF YOU GOWhat: The Rewind/Fast-Forward Film &Video Festival presentsInvasion of the Histori-ans: Art in Miami BeforeArt Basel with Helen L.Kohen

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Where: Miami-DadePublic Library, 101 W.Flagler St., Miami

Cost: Free

Info: 305-375-1505;www.wolfsonar-chive.org

ART S BRIEFS

Manhat tan g ets its ow n rock ’n’ roll hall of fame

The Rock and Roll Hall ofFame is coming to New York.

M a y o r M i c h a e lB l o o m b e r g, joined by B i l l yJoel and Clive Davis,announced Wednesday thatthe Cleveland-based museumand hall of fame is opening anannex in downtown Manhat-tan’s SoHo neighborhood. Itwill be the hall’s first expan-sion outside Cleveland.

The 25,000-square-footannex will house B r uceS p ringsteen’s 1957 Chevyand will feature a number ofexhibits.

Meanwhile, the Museumof the City of New York isopening an all-glass gallerythat will include cold roomsto store the institution’s valu-able photographic negatives.

The $28-million pavilion

marks the first expansionsince 1932 of the landmarkedbuilding on Fifth Avenue at103rd Street. It is the firstphase of a $97-million mod-ernization project expectedto be completed in 2011.

The gallery opens to thepublic on Oct. 3 as themuseum launches the showParis/New York: DesignFashion Culture 1925-1940.

2 PRINCES AND A SPY

The producers of the lat-est James Bond movie sayPrince William and Princ eHarry will join Britain’s mostfamous fictional spy on thered carpet at the London pre-miere on Oct. 29.

The event will raise fundsfor two military charitieschosen by the princes. Themovie, Quantum of Solace, isthe 22nd installment in theBond series. It will bereleased around the worldbeginning Oct. 31.

MARRIAGE PLAYNorbert Leo Butz will

play the husband to Eliza-beth Marvel’s wife in theworld premiere of Micha e lWeller’s play, Fifty Words,opening Sept. 28 at NewYork’s Lucille Lortel Theatre.

The MCC Theater pro-duction, directed by Aust i nP e n d leton, begins previewperformances Sept. 10 for arun through Oct. 25. Butzportrays Adam, and Marvel isJan, a couple whose liveschange during one long night.

The actor was seen lastseason in David Ives’ adap-tation of Mark Twain’s long-lost farce, Is He Dead? Andhe won a best-actor TonyAward in 2005 for his por-trayal of an unrepentant conman in the musical Dirty Rot-ten Scoundrels. Marvel wasseen last season in the revivalon Broadway of Caryl Chur-chill’s Top Girls.

WOLFGANG VOLZ

PRETTY IN PINK: Christo’s Surrounded Islands was staged in Biscayne Bay in 1983.

THIS FRIDAY, LET SEXYJESUS ROCK YOU!

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“SCATHINGLY FUNNY!”

“SCATHINGLY FUNNY!”– BRUCE HANDY

“COMEDY HEAVEN!”“COMEDY HEAVEN!”

– PETER TRAVERS

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ROCKING IT: Billy Joel and Mayor Michael Bloombergat the press conference Wednesday announcingthe hall of fame annex.

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