Latest news with #Glasses
Boston Globe
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
The exuberant work of an artist who lived in her husband's shadow shines at the Addison
From left: June Leaf, "Shooting from the Heart," 1980; Robert Frank, "June's Hand and Sculpture, Mabou," circa 1980. Frank E. Graham/Tim Nighswander Words matter as much as things in 'June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart,' the exhibition's proper title and as good a teaser of Leaf's prodigious output as you'll find. It's also the title of a small 1980 sculptural work here, a ragged profile-in-tin silhouette of a woman in spiked heels, leaning precariously forward into the unknown, and loving it. Words are important largely because the exhibition cannily uses so many of the artist's own throughout its display, vignettes of thought and feeling about works they're attached to. I don't know if I've ever been as drawn to read an exhibition as much as look at it, but from the first few phrases you encounter, you're hooked; Leaf, in her own words, is irresistible. Advertisement Installation view of "June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart" at the Addison Gallery of American Art. Julia Featheringill 'The problem is what do you do when there aren't any angels around?' reads the text panel next to 'On the Pain of Growing a Wing,' 2016, a stirringly visceral charcoal drawing of three human figures shrouded in a gestural fury of ash-black swiped violently on paper. 'As soon as I put my brush to the canvas they're not there at all, ever, it's just when I hear that little tap of the brush. It comes, that part, like music.' Lovely. Advertisement Another out-of-the-blue wonder: 'They are about the pleasures of focusing and not being distracted,' she wrote of 'Glasses,' 2003, a pair of spectacles, slight and wiry, with long cones tapering away from the lenses. Another set she made was fitted with mirrors, 'so you only see what is behind you. … Who needs to paint? Who needs to take photographs? You can just go around loving everything.' June Leaf, 'On the Pain of Growing a Wing,' 2016. Murray Whyte/Boston Globe Not to put myself out of a job, but I'd actually prefer you to just read the show yourself, piece by piece, word by word. But maybe I can provide some connective tissue for Leaf's intoxicating verbal adventures. Leaf, who died just last year at the age of 94, was a heartfelt polymath bursting with feeling. Her deeply humane work — figurative, narrative, personal — began in 1950s Chicago, as the dominant strain of American art began to bend toward the abstract and esoteric. As she matured into the 1960s, conceptualism took hold, making her a tough fit with the reigning ethic, cerebral and bloodless as it was. And, she was a woman — no small thing in a field dominated by men. 'Woman Machine,' a small 1951 collage here with three curvaceous female forms, semi-abstract and awash in muddy earthtones like a feminine version of Cubism, is a touchstone for all else here, I thought. 'An artist is given one thing in life to do,' are Leaf's words alongside it; 'mine was to recognize that so much of what my life was about was the love of women.' Advertisement Installation view of "June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart" at the Addison Gallery of American Art. Julia Featheringill A hard path in a male-dominated realm, to be sure. But for Leaf, it was no choice at all. She had ridden alongside the American avant-garde with her husband, Robert Frank, the iconic documentary photographer whose 1958 book, 'The Americans,' endures as a totem of the form. Frank, a Swiss immigrant, famously set out on a nation-spanning road trip in the mid-1950s, photographing an America post-World War II and pre-civil rights. His work, unflinching in its truth-telling, captured an uneasy nation riven with inequities — racial, social, economic — amid the sunny postwar optimism that still dominates nostalgia of the era. In New York, Frank fell in with beat poets like Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg, . (Frank died in 2019.) In the midst of her husband's expanding notoriety, Leaf did what she always did: She worked, all day, every day, the spring-coil inside her propelling her into new experiments moment to moment. 'Shooting from the Heart' is disorienting in its material breadth, to the point of confounding. Advertisement June Leaf, "Ascension of Pig Lady," 1968, installed in "June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart" at the Addison Gallery of American Art. Julia Featheringill Huge dioramas like 'Ascension of Pig Lady,' 1968, with its life-size figures cobbled from wood and tin and festooned in bright paint and oil stick, speak to Leaf's penchant for the theatrical; dozens of urgent, made-in-moments charcoal and pastel drawings — rough and visceral, like loose thoughts crash landing on paper — reveal the intimate process of an artist living in the immediate now. Paintings, some vast, some minute, reveal a certain restlessness: 'Marat Sade Ballroom,' 1966, big, expressive and raw, meaty gorgons astride toy horses in an opulent ballroom, a scene of decadent rot; 'Arcade Women,' 1956, is its opposite, strict and grid-like, with its figures imprisoned by taut structural lines. June Leaf, "White Scroll with Dancing Figures," 2008. © The Estate of June Leaf. Johan Vipper Sculptures, though, 'are my love affairs,' she wrote. And with this, where to begin? She created everything from tiny, intricate dioramas and scenes (a dizzying, intricate mirror-box version of Vermeer's 'Gentleman and Lady') to bolts of tin and steel, sparse and minimal, that seem to capture a single gesture ('To the Sky,' 2022, a spiral of steel stretching 8 and a half feet high, seems like the spring itself that propelled her forth). She made working spools hand-drawn with narrative scenes, meant to be hand-cranked; she crafted women warriors from bent and rusted window screen, spear-wielding and ready for battle. Whatever material, medium, or idea, the wonders are endless; making for Leaf was ever and all. A 2019 video of her here, 'The Life With Others,' is a joy. In fact, the show would feel incomplete without it. It shows Leaf, by then in her 90s, toiling in her studio in the tiny Nova Scotia village of Mabou, where she and Frank moved in the 1970s. 'I have a painting from 1965 I still work on,' she says. 'I could take it out now and work on it.' For Leaf, art was a continuum, not a procedure of finished product. Nothing was ever over, which was how she liked it. Advertisement Film still from 'The Life With Others," 2019. Roman Chalupnik I think it's telling that Frank is not mentioned by full name anywhere in the exhibition. He appears only once in her work here, at least by my count, in 'Robert Carrying Wood,' an expressive 1973 painting of a dissembling landscape overlaid with a shaky spiderweb. A small black-and-white Polaroid of Frank in that very act is stuck to the paper with paint. 'Shooting From The Heart,' bursting with warmth and charm, is as much an effort to pull Leaf out from Frank's shadow as it is to acknowledge her supercharged, uncategorizable oeuvre itself. Leaf, as usual, puts it best herself: 'I must have done something right in my long life as an artist,' she wrote not long ago, 'because the wind is behind me.' It was, and she did. JUNE LEAF: SHOOTING FROM THE HEART Through July 31. Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, 3 Chapel Ave., Andover. 978-749-4015, Murray Whyte can be reached at
Korea Herald
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Cannes-selected Korean animated short heads to theaters
Megabox to screen Joung Yu-mi's 'Glasses' along with earlier work in rare commercial run Multiplex chain Megabox will screen director Joung Yu-mi's animated short "Glasses" in theaters starting June 11, following its selection for the 78th Cannes Film Festival, the company announced Thursday. Competing in the Critics' Week short film section, the 15-minute animation was one of only two Korean works at this year's Cannes. No Korean films appeared in the main competition or other official sections, the first such absence in 12 years. "Glasses" centers on a woman who begins seeing shadowy visions of herself during an eye examination. The silent animation, rendered in expressive black-and-white pencil strokes, explores the themes of identity and perception. The screening will also feature Joung's earlier short "Paranoid Kid," previously shown at the Zagreb International Animation Festival. Based on the director's own picture book, the film is narrated by actress Bae Doo-na. 'Short films rarely find space outside the festival circuit, so I'm grateful for this chance to share my work in theaters,' Joung said.
Korea Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Heo Ga-young's 'First Summer' wins top honor at Cannes' La Cinef
KAFA graduate becomes first Korean filmmaker to win La Cinef's top prize Heo Ga-young's graduation short "First Summer" won first prize at La Cinef at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Korean film to receive the top honor, festival organizers announced Thursday. The Korean Academy of Film Arts graduate beat 15 other student films selected from nearly 2,700 entries worldwide. Her 15-minute work pairs veteran actor Heo Jin with Jung In-ki in a story about an older woman charting new territory after years devoted to her family. Jury president Maren Ade presented the 15,000 euro ($17,000) first prize during Thursday's ceremony at Bunuel Theatre in Cannes. Beijing Film Academy's Qu Zhizheng took second for "12 Moments Before the Flag-Raising Ceremony," while Japan's Miki Tanaka and Estonia's Natalia Mirzoyan shared third. The winning films screen at Paris's Cinema du Pantheon on June 6. The film marks Korea's second selection this year alongside animator Jung Yu-mi's "Glasses" in Critics' Week. No Korean feature film made it into the festival's lineup this year. La Cinef, formerly Cinefondation, serves as the festival's dedicated platform for student films. It selects 15-20 short and medium-length films annually from film schools around the world. Korean entries have appeared regularly since 2001, with several securing runner-up and third-place positions. Most recently, Hwang Hye-in's thriller "Hole" won second prize in 2023. Yoon Dae-won's "Cicada" also took second place in 2021.
Indian Express
21-05-2025
- Indian Express
I tried out Google's Android XR Glasses and I'm convinced this is the AI assistant I have been waiting for
For me, the most exciting part of the Google I/O keynote came right at the end — the Android XR announcements which included the return of what some of us remember as Google Glasses. So, when the chance presented itself to check out the Glasses at a demo zone, I queued up for the same without any hesitation. As I was in the queue, a representative of the Android XR team took away my glasses to scan them for their power. As I reached my turn at the demo a few minutes later, they had a custom lens ready for me. The Glasses, though a prototype, are comfortable to wear and not really heavy. They have an inbuilt camera, a touch-sensitive temple lined with speakers. The right lens had a small prism on which I could see the time and temperature. As you tap the temple, Gemini wakes up and is ready for your queries. You tap again to pause Gemini. My first demo was with a painting on the wall as I asked the Glasses to identify the painter. Soon, I could hear a detailed explanation on the painter, with the text of what Gemini was saying showing up on the in-lens display. This took some time for me to adjust to as I use progressive lenses to help me with reading too. But in a few seconds, I could see the text clearly, though this does come in the way of what you are seeing. I think a lot of users might prefer to be guided only by voice when they use the XR Glasses full time. Then I walked over to another demo zone where I was staring at a very unique coffee machine. I asked Gemini how I could make an Espresso with this contraption. The Glasses immediately started telling me how to use the machine. But this is where I found the text coming on the lens a bit of an irritant — again voice would be perfect in a situation where I just needed instructions. For the next demo, I asked the Android XR Glasses to summarise a page from a Lonely Planet travel guide. Again, it gave a quick summary about the Southern Alps which would have saved me a lot of reading. That's when I went off script and asked it to count the number of apples in a bowl on the table. 'Six apples,' came the answer. And it took me a while to realise Gemini was right as I thought there were much more apples there. In fact, there were four pears too and the Glasses did a good job of isolating and counting the apples. The demo lasted just a few minutes, but it left a lasting impression and made me feel the real power of having an AI assistant like Gemini being there to help you with everyday functioning. You can access any app on the phone, take photos, dictate replies to emails and messages. But what makes it even more powerful would be the power to remember everything the camera saw and not just what registered in your brain. Also, this could be like a rewind for your life, and you can technically go back a few days and remember where you left the locker key, or what exactly your friend told you during an argument. The possibilities are endless. And remember, what I used was a prototype, and the final product is sure to be much better. I am waiting to buy one, provided it can get my prescription glasses right. Nandagopal Rajan writes on technology, gadgets and everything related. He has worked with the India Today Group and Hindustan Times. He is an alumnus of Calicut University and Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal. ... Read More
South China Morning Post
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Why are Korean films absent from the Cannes Film Festival? A brain drain, Netflix and more
South Korean films are absent from this year's Cannes Film Festival for the first time in more than a decade, and observers say it highlights a brain drain plaguing the industry. Advertisement According to the line-up released by the Cannes Film Festival, which runs from May 13 to 24, no Korean films will be screened in its official selection. A short South Korean animated film, Glasses, directed by Jung Yoo-mi, will be screened as part of Critics Week, an event organised by the French Union of Film Critics that runs in parallel with the festival. It is first time since 2013 that no Korean movies have been included in the official selection. It is also the third year in a row that no Korean films will be screened in competition in Cannes. Director Park Chan-wook accepts the award for best director for Decision to Leave at the 2022 Cannes festival. Photo: Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP Korean films have been screened regularly at Cannes since 1984, when Lee Doo-yong's Mulleya Mulleya became the first Korean production to be selected for the festival, and they and their directors have earned strong recognition on the French Riviera.
