"Images" from Detroit's Cass Corridor

June 23

It's a great time for a 101 course on the last half-century of Detroit art. Kathryn Brackett Luchs and Shaun Bangert's film is hyped as "a tense visual montage combining original silent footage with new information and bringing to light the mood and art of the time." The time discussed is the '60s and '70s, when Cass Corridor artists were setting the stage for much of the Detroit art that would follow. Included in the film are such artists as John Egner, Steve Foust, Michael Luchs, Nancy Mitchnick, Gordon Newton, Ellen Phelan, Paul Schwarz and Robert Sestok. Just so happens that some of those artists are on display a block away at the N'Namdi Center in the show Menage a Detroit: Three Generations of Expressionist Art in Detroit 1970-2012, with Cass Corridor artists like Sestok and Newton in the first generation. Some of the figures of the film and Menage overlap again with Jim Pallas' amazing exhibit of 16 portraits Art Giants in Detroit, also the N'Namdi Center. "Images" is a one-night, free-admission event at 8 p.m. on June 23, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (with a soundtrack by the late Mick Vranich), at 4454 Woodward, Detroit; 313-832-6622. Menage and Giants show through July 21 at N'Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, 52 E. Forest Ave., Detroit; 313-831-8700. Jim Pallas gives an artist talk about his work at 6 p.m. on June 21 at the N'Namdi Center.