Seattle Gay News
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Issue 25, Volume 42, June 20, 2014
courtesy of SAAM
by James Whitely SGN Staff Writer “DECO JAPAN: SHAPING ART & CULTURE, 1920 - 1945” SEATTLE ASIAN ART MUSEUM Through October 19 “Knowledge of the types of Western liquor and a willingness to flirt to get them for free,” “Devotion to Jazz records, dancing and smoking Golden Bat cigarettes from a metal cigarette holder,” “Offering one’s lips to any man who is useful, even if he is bald or ugly, but keeping one’s chastity because ‘infringement of chastity’ lawsuits are out of style” – these are just a few of the tenets of the MOGA or “modern girl” of Japan of the 1920s and 30s. As economies boomed across the globe post-WWI, Art Deco was the aesthetic tradition of the day that heralded each power’s entry into modernity and consumer culture. Seattle Asian Art Museum’s current exhibit, “Deco Japan: Shaping Art & Culture, 1920 - 1945,” reveals Japan was no exception. Coupled with the rise of film, Deco’s celebration of that potential made Western fashions and lifestyles tremendously popular in Japan. The MOGA sported short hair and a short skirt; her drink was a gin and tonic,
she kept up on the latest trends from Hollywood and Paris. Lithographs on display that range in size from poster to post-card reveal a spectrum of this transformation; some appear mostly traditional with just a subtle nod to modernity, while others so embrace the Deco style, their Japanese origin feels nearly obscured altogether. “Deco Japan” consistently surprises by showing how fluidly the formal line manipulations of Art Deco melded with the nation’s traditional aesthetics. Geometric abstraction and a narrower color palate accent the natural motifs that had long been aesthetic staples in Japanese art, and lend a significantly different attitude to landscapes. Pottery and decorative boxes appear as true curios to the untrained eye – both distinctly Japanese and distinctly Western. Other modernist motifs and influences such as Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Russian Constructivism and others can be seen here, too. A 1930s sake washing bowl calls to mind De Stijl, while a lithograph of a bullet train reveals the influence of Futurism – a blurred train speeds through a predominantly blurred landscape; the only still object in the foreground is the nation’s flag at the head of the mighty machine. Art Deco’s cultural ubiquity was due in part because of the adaptability of its aessee DECO page 7
Warner Bros.
Scene from Jersey Boys
Diverse Harmony, Seattle’s and the nation’s first LGBTQ and straight alliance youth chorus, celebrates their 12th season with “Walt’s Vault,” a concert featuring their favorite songs from childhood cartoons. Diverse Harmony will present their concert on Friday and Saturday, June 27 and 28. Through their music, they will examine gender, performance, sexuality, fear, love, and acceptance. Broadway Performance Hall (Broadway & E. Pine St.) at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $20-general admission; $30-VIP at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/660268 or 1-800-838-3006, and at the door. As always, youth 22 and under are admitted free.
by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN A&E Writer Everyone knows a song sung by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons whether they realize it or not. Their signature tunes, stuff like “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like a Man,” having a timeless singularity to them that transcends
genre and era. With Valli’s unique voice giving them inspiring resonance, the group’s influence can be felt in wide-ranging fashion spanning the gamut between Rock, Pop, Country, R&B and Hip Hop, making them as vital a part of 1960s musical American as any artist birthed during the decade. Clint Eastwood probably seemed like an unlikely choice
to helm a movie version of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Jersey Boys, the chronicling of Valli and his bandmate’s rise to fame not initially seeming as something that would be in the Unforgiven, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby filmmaker’s wheelhouse. Yet his old see Jersey Boys page 9