Intrude, the fantastic outdoor/indoor exhibit at the Brooks Museum of Art, concludes this weekend. The group of giant, inflatable bunnies create a delightful presence in Overton Park and inside the museum, and they carry an important message about the perils of environmental degradation in our crowded, connected world. Amanda Parer chose rabbits as her subject because they are an invasive species in her native Australia, driving native wildlife from their natural habitat. Sure, the giant inflatable bunnies are cute, but when you get up close to them, you can’t help but feel small and a little threatened.
A 23-foot tall bunny stalks Overton Park in Australian artist Amanda Parer’s installation Intrude.
To honor the last weekend of the exhibit, the Brooks is presenting two fun, bunny-themed films. On Saturday at 2 PM, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie brings the world’s most famous rabbit to the big screen. First released in 1979, the film is a compilation of classic Warner Brothers cartoons, most of which would have been familiar to young audiences from Saturday morning animation blocs on network television. Included in the 20+ shorts are some stone-cold classics of Western culture, including “Rabbit Fire”, the 1951 Bugs/Daffy combo picture that introduced the Looney Tunes answer to the “Who’s On First?” sketch, the “Rabbit Season/Duck Season” routine. If nothing else, the screening will be worth it for the rare opportunity to see Chuck Jones’ masterpiece “What’s Opera Doc?”, six minutes of mind-blowing mid century modernist design supporting a cross-dressing parody of Wagnerian pomp, on the big screen.
Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny in ‘What’s Opera Doc?’
On Sunday afternoon, another all-time comedy classic with a star turn by a rabbit. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the 1975 film that broke the British comedy troupe into the mainstream in America, and still stands as one of the funniest films ever created. The episodic adventures of King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his inept Knights of the Round Table, played by various members of the Pythons, includes a memorable scene in which the tiny Rabbit of Caerbannog punches way above its weight. The film begins at 2 PM in the Brooks’ lower level theater.
