Author Archives: Melissa Henderson

In the painting “The Treachery of Images,” which presents a pipe, but also says quite clearly, “This not a pipe,” Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte juxtaposed an ordinary object in an unusual context, giving new meaning to something familiar.

Most of us would deny the fact that we secretly enjoy flicking through sordid tabloid stories in the grocery store checkout stand.

If all art is meant to evoke a response, then Neil LaBute’s cynical play “Fat Pig” is a resounding success. As the audience flinched its way out of the tiny Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at Westwood’s Geffen Playhouse, the mirror that LaBute reliably holds up to our wobbly sense of political correctness had us all questioning our smug conviction in our own social consciences.