New visions of New York and America in CityArts

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Stone Roberts puts New York City on canvas with lifelike details of people and daily life. Valerie Gladstone describes Roberts' vision in "Brueghel for the City," a review of the Roberts exhibition currently at the Museum of the City of New York.

Roberts does for New York what Brueghel did for Holland and what Georges Seurat did for Paris. His canvases capture city life with all its multiplicity and verve.

CityArts Editor Armond White reviews the new gangster movie Lawless from director John Hillcoat and producer Harvey Weinstein. Not simply a genre movie, Lawless, about a family of Virginia moonshiners during Prohibition, is the latest example of excessive screen violence since the Dark Knight Returns controversy. In "Atrocity Exhibition," White discusses Weinstein's reaction to the issue of movie violence.

The discussion continues in "Running From the Past," White's review of Hit & Run, the new California-set road where violence is mixed with comedy. Get up to date with these new visions as CityArts brings thinking back to culture.

Brueghel in New York

After ascending the grand staircase from the lobby of the Museum of the City of New York to the second-floor Marble Court, you come upon Stone Roberts' monumental painting "Grand Central Terminal: An Early December Noon in the Grand Concourse" (2009-2012), on exhibit with three other works of his in a separate gallery through Sept. 16. A terrifically satisfying, almost literary experience, it captures the station's variety, humanity and stunning architecture. He has carefully characterized each individual in the scene, among them the short-skirted young woman checking her phone, the delivery man in white wheeling his cart, an embracing couple, two cops and various individuals with suitcases checking schedules. Into this urban landscape, he brings poetry, making sure that each element fits into the overall choreographed work. Read more here.

Atrocity Exhibition

Harvey Weinstein called for a summit meeting on movie violence soon after the Dark Knight Rises massacre. It hasn't happened yet but Harvey's word becomes cultural law. So, instead, The Weinstein Company this week releases John Hillcoat's Lawless, the most promiscuously violent movie since The Dark Knight Rises. If you go to see Lawless, duck. Read more here.

Running From the Past

Dax Shepard, the lead actor, co-writer and co-director (with David Palmer) of Hit & Run, aims for the bleachers. He's made a lowest common denominator comedy with a road movie premise about Charlie, a guy who leaves his witness protection location in rural California to transport his girlfriend Annie to a job interview in Los Angeles. The road trip becomes a chase not simply with the criminals he was hiding from but also from his past. Read more here.

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