'Recapturing the Real West' at the Society of the Four Arts features works like Philip Goodwin's 'A Pause on the Journey'. (John Woolf / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

ART-A-PALOOZA TIME!

Big fairs and new exhibits are stretching from West Palm Beach to Delray Beach.

The American International Fine Art Fair opens tonight and runs through Feb. 12 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach. Click here for more

One of the most intriguing museum exhibits of the season opens Saturday at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach. Recapturing The Real West: The Collections of William I. Koch looks at the true story of Western expansion through paintings, photos and more, including the only known tintype of Billy The Kid. Koch, the Palm Beach energy magnate, has long been fascinated by the West and has meticulously collected its lore. The show will kick off with a lecture by Koch at 11 a.m. Saturday. Information: (561) 655-7226. | Directions, invite a friend

Opening today at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach is Tacita Dean, a self-titled show of the English artist’s "photo-based" work, in which she uses film images and adds to them everything from paint to text. Information: (561) 832-5196. | Directions, invite a friend

In Delray Beach at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, two shows open on Tuesday. Old Techniques, New Interpretations: Japanese Prints from the Paul and Christine Meehan Collection features 75 prints from masters of the form in 20th-century Japan. A second show, Mariko Kusumoto: Unfolding Stories, features the artist’s ability to turn metal sculptures into everything from street scenes to music boxes and clocks. Information: (561) 495-0233. | Directions, nearby dining

Read the full story

2011-12 season preview: Art | Theater | Dance

Jay-Z and Kanye West bring their Watch The Throne Tour to South Florida for two shows: Nov. 14 in Sunrise and Nov. 15 in Miami. (Kevin Winter / Getty Images)

SEASON UPSIDE: The Kravis Center really ups its game in the stand-up area, with appearances by Wanda Sykes, Dennis Miller, Martin Short and one-time local boy Larry the Cable Guy.

SEASON DOWNSIDE: If you’re not a hip-hop fan, the big must-see concert is nowhere to be seen.

JOHN OATES
Oct. 26, Bamboo Room, Lake Worth
The greatest ’stache in pop-soul history brings his solo side (no Hall, just Oates) to this intimate venue. It’s rare to see a big star in a neighborhood joint.

MY MORNING JACKET
Dec. 10, Sunset Cove Amphitheatre, Boca Raton
One of the most acclaimed indie rock bands of the past decade in a small amphitheater show? And you haven’t gotten your tickets yet?

JAY-Z AND KANYE WEST
Nov. 14, BankAtlantic Center, Sunrise; Nov. 15, American Airlines Arena, Miami
BLACK-EYED PEAS
Nov. 23, Sun Life Stadium, Miami Gardens

The monster shows of the fall season. Jay-Z and Kanye are the double bill every hip-hop fan has been waiting for, while Fergie and Will.I.Am put on the kind of visual spectacle that only football stadiums can handle.
Read the full story

Kids will love Knuffle (left) in the morning on Saturday, and adults will be enthralled by k.d. lang's (right) sultry torch songs Saturday evening at the Kravis. (Photo courtesy of the Kravis)

It’s easy to take the Kravis Center for granted. It’s been here for nearly two decades. (That means nearly two decades of Johnny Mathis, Engelbert Humperdinck and Paul Anka concerts. We kid! We kid!)

If the West Palm Beach performing arts venue doesn’t always bring in the acts that critics would like to see, it sure brings in a lot of acts that its audience does, with a range from classical music to Broadway shows, and it has been known to experiment boldly from time to time.

Read the full story

Last week, at age 85, Tony Bennett scored his first No. 1 record on the Billboard charts for his disc Duets II.

Congratulations, paisan! It’s never too late to be No. 1.

So, do you want to be the top of your personal charts at age 85?

According to a 2006 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, you need to start by the age of 54.

Read the full story

Guns 'N' Roses

The first round of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees were announced today.

The nominees are: Heart, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Rufus with Chaka Khan, Laura Nyro, Guns N’ Roses, the Cure, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, the Spinners, the Small Faces/Faces, War, Donovan, Freddy King, and Erik B. & Rakim.

Of those nominees, five will be selected for induction into the Hall next year.

Overall, it’s a respectable mix of old and new. The Gunners are getting their first nomination — but can anybody imagine Slash and Axl Rose reuniting? Women performers, often overlooked by the Hall, are getting a fairer shake with nods to Jett, the Wilson sisters of Heart, Khan and the late ’70s singer-songwriter Nyro (Stoney End, Eli’s Coming). And it’s good to see groups like the Spinners, the Faces and War getting some notice. Even the goths get a nod for Robert Smith and the Cure.
Read the full story

Let Them Talk, Hugh Laurie (Warner Bros.)

On the sixth song of Hugh Laurie’s new album of Southern blues and New Orleans jazz, Dr. John steps up to the mike and, without huffing or puffing, he blows Dr. House down.

KO’d. On the mat. No contest. No need to count to 10.

Read the full story

Brian Wilson at Hard Rock on Friday night. Photo by Andrew Nathanson.

In the late 1970s, for my 16th or 17th birthday, I talked my parents into buying me a ticket to see the Beach Boys. In a scene straight out of Almost Famous, my mother dropped me off at the concert hall and I went in alone, taking up with some longhairs and a soldier who were clearly fellow fanatics. The band was touring in support of its last excellent studio album, The Beach Boys Love You. Brian Wilson had returned in a massive publicity splash, but he looked uncomfortable on stage, sitting in the corner and noodling absently on his piano. It was a great concert, though. They started with California Girls and ended with Fun, Fun, Fun. They played my favorite song, Sail On Sailor. Everybody danced and sang along. We all walked out with goofy smiles on our faces.

Some three-and-a-half decades later, I drove myself to see Brian Wilson and his band Friday night at the Hard Rock Live in Hollywood. He was no longer hiding in the corner, he was front and center. He still looks uncomfortable on stage. But some things never change. It was a great concert. He started with California Girls and ended with Fun, Fun, Fun. He played my favorite song, Sail On Sailor. Everybody danced and sang along. And we all walked out again with goofy smiles on our faces.

A Brian Wilson concert can be a surreal experience: all that blissful music coming from a man who looks like he’d rather be elsewhere. He sits mostly blank-faced behind his keyboard, reads lyrics and patter from a Teleprompter and never seems to notice the applause, as he charges right into the next song or segue. Sometimes, you wonder if he’s having fun, fun, fun. He appears to be studying his moves with a frightened focus, in order to keep from losing his place. Is this awkward public exposure the best thing for a fragile artist whose years of mental struggle are part of rock and roll legend?

Photos: Brian Wilson at the Hard Rock

I’ve pondered that when I’ve seen his two previous solo tours, but there was one difference on Friday night. He seems to have finally become as comfortable as possible with what is expected of him on stage. His patter, while scripted, was looser and more energetic. His vocals were stronger. When he sang God Only Knows, he grabbed the mike and crooned with a surprisingly sweet intensity, as though he wanted the audience to truly feel the good vibrations.

And we did. Read the full story

'Tree of Life' with Brad Pitt (right), Jessica Chastain (left), Tye Sheridan (center) and Sean Penn (not shown), is not the typical linear-narrative film, but rather a complex, philosophical story with lots of flashbacks.

Movie Listing: Showtimes, reviews, more

They go in thinking well…who knows what they are thinking…but it looks like a certain number of people went to the multiplex last weekend thinking they were going to see your basic Hollywood drama starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn.

And as they were adjusting to a sad, heavily flashbacked tale of a dysfunctional family in ’50s Texas, there comes this looong, sloow sequence about the creation of the Earth and a lot of planetarium-style imagery and then a dinosaur rises up out of the muck and…

"That’s it, Martha. We’re outta here!"

Or something like that.

While cinephiles delight in deciphering the complexities of Terrence Malick’s new film, The Tree of Life, movie theaters across the country are dealing with something else: a steady stream of walkouts.

I counted 12 to 15 people leaving a showing I attended last weekend at the Cobb Jupiter 18 theater. A colleague at another screening counted 17.

At a Connecticut art-house theater, enough people were asking for refunds, which the theater does not permit, that management posted this notice: "We would like to take this opportunity to remind patrons that The Tree of Life is a uniquely visionary and deeply philosophical film from an auteur director. It does not follow a traditional, linear narrative approach to storytelling."

Talk about stating the obvious. It’s not like Malick is an unknown quantity among the supposedly movie-literate.

His previous epics, such as The Thin Red Line and The New World, also have been accused of not following an easily discernible pattern and getting lost in gauzy shots of sunlight filtering through stands of trees (Malick likes trees like Quentin Tarantino likes feet).

Apparently, some online commenters have been gleefully quick to target "geezers" among the walkouts. As though it’s always those old people who aren’t hip to things.

Well, No. 1, Terrence Malick is a borderline geezer himself at age 67. (Depending on which age geezerdom begins these days.)

And the only reason there is anything resembling an arthouse cinema in Palm Beach County, and an arty culture here in general, is because of smart, discerning, and more often than not, older audiences who frequent these films and not ones about green superheroes or blond Vikings wielding giant hammers. I didn’t see any Transformers fans at the Jupiter 18 last weekend.

Here’s the important thing to remember: For the small number of people drifting out, most of the audiences are staying.

True, there wasn’t any applause at the end of the screening I attended. It was more of a stunned "What the heck was that all about?" silence.

But as the audience departed, they began to talk it out. Some clearly thought it was overwrought and pretentious (i.e., the dino). I thought it was a beautiful, if imperfect, spiritual poem about the universality of life, with scenes that seemed ripped out of my childhood (and maybe yours, if you ever had a stern father with serious issues about the proper maintenance of his lawn).

Here’s the only warning I would post: Go see it now before it leaves theaters to make room for dinosaur movies of a much more predictable kind.

Paul Gauguin's 1889 masterpiece 'Christ In The Garden Of Olives' was the center of controversy in London and Washington DC. (Photo courtesy of The Norton Museum of Art)

A two-continent, 10-month tour. An act of crazed violence. Complaints of overcrowded venues.

The problems of a rock superstar?
No, just the recent life of the Norton Museum of Art’s most famous painting — Paul Gauguin’s 1889 masterpiece Christ in the Garden of Olives.

Of all the museum’s name paintings, this one boasts a unique celebrity cache. “In rock terms, it is our Bob Dylan,” says Norton communications director Scott Benarde.
The museum reinstalled its icon this week, after it has been gone since last fall on a transAtlantic tour, where it drew a mix of headlines and critical curiosity.

It was loaned out for a blockbuster exhibition, “Gauguin: Maker of Myth,” which traveled to the Tate Modern in London and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Like any good celebrity in the age of TMZ, the painting created buzz and was featured in newspapers, magazines and blogs. Its subject matter — a downcast Jesus, with Gauguin’s face, turning away from his disciples in the garden — spurred critics on both sides of the pond to parry over its religiosity and symbolic intent.

Z THE CRITICAL BROUHAHA: British critics called the painting everything from “controversial” for its time to pushing acceptable boundaries “dangerously far.” Did we mention that Gauguin gave his Christ figure a shock of vibrant orange hair?

Others said it was all a put-on, part of Gauguin’s unique unpredictability.
“Gauguin told stories, invented private myths, and just made up stuff,” wrote a critic for Bloomberg News. “What’s going on here? Is it self-dramatization, irony, identity theft? Perhaps a bit of all three. It’s characteristic of Gauguin’s art that you’re never sure what’s going on. You can never pin him down.” (Sounds like Dylan, too, doesn’t it?)
Z THE ‘GALLERY RAGE’: Just like a popular rock star, everybody demanded tickets to this “concert.” In London, the show was considered a cultural imperative, the first major retrospective of Gauguin works there since the 1950s.

It created what one art critic dubbed “gallery rage,” where so many people wanted to see the Gauguins that they thronged in packs around the paintings, leaving little room to appreciate the works. Some people left in a huff.

London’s Observer newspaper wrote, “The crowding in front of the paintings on display was so bad, according to angry art fans and critics, that they have vowed never to go to such a big show again. A fraught debate is now expected in the art world over the need for different forms of crowd control for Britain’s major art shows.”

THE OTHER RAGE: When the show hit the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., in late March, a woman suddenly attacked the Gauguin painting, Two Tahitian Women, screaming “This is evil” and trying to pull it off the wall, according to The Washington Post.
“She was really pounding it with her fists,” a visitor told the paper. “It was like this weird surreal scene that one doesn’t expect at the National Gallery.”

Thankfully, the Norton’s Gauguin escaped the rigors of road life and returned unscathed to West Palm Beach .

The painting is back where it’s supposed to be, hanging on the third floor of the Nessel Wing, cozily close to a Renoir, Cezanne and Monet.

After all, even a rock star needs a summer vacation.

For the past few weeks on his Twitter feed, Alec Baldwin has turned into a one-man tourism bureau for Fort Lauderdale, where he is filming the ’80s musical Rock Of Ages with Tom Cruise (or TC in Baldwin’s Twitter-speak).

In between his thoughts on Tracy Morgan, politics, his favorite Rolling Stones songs, his seating arrangements at the Tonys (in between Al Pacino and Mattthew Broderick) and his top 10 underrated movies (1. Five Graves To Cairo), he’s managed to keep us up to speed on his thoughts about the movie and his livin’-large life in Ft L (more Twitter-speak): Read the full story