Fine Arts
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Matisse in the Studio at the MFA
Collectibles Demonstrate Master Artist's Theatricality
By: - May 13th, 2017Matisse’s collectibles had a profound influence on his creative choices. Allowing us a priceless opportunity to see how the artist’s mind worked and the ways his creative process unfolded, this magnetic exhibition at the MFA Boston allows us to examine them in relationship to his art. As its only North American venue, Matisse in the Studio will only visit Boston.
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Massive Rauschenberg Exhibition Headed to NY
Mulling Over Perls of Wisdom
By: - May 12th, 2017When visiting the Frank Stella retropective at the Whitney in 2015 the critic had his car towed. The event was so costly and inconvenient that Martin Mugar is thinking twice of driving to Manhattan to view the upcoming Rauschenberg exhibition. Many of his concerns and misgivings are informed by the critical comments of the critic Jed Perl. Here Mugar refects on Perls of wsdom. They enforce his own ideas of how Rauschenberg is emeblematic of the decline and fall of art in our time. As Mugar states "If you like your postmodern condition you can keep your postmodern condition and Rauschenberg's your guy."
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WOW at Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mssachusetts
What a World of Wearable Art
By: - May 10th, 2017A recommendation for the Peabody Essex Museum to see particularly the special exhibition 'WOW' came in an understated manner, or I just did not pick up quickly enough what a delight the show would represent. We drove to Salem from Gloucester, where we were visiting, on a rainy and miserable afternoon and that made our day!
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Into the Woods with Artist Gabrielle Barzaghi
Hermit of Dogtown Previews Trident Gallery Exhibition
By: - May 09th, 2017Some years ago they built a home and studio on some 20 acres deep in the woods of Cape Ann's legendary Dogtown Common. They like the privacy and seclusion. During a recent week in Gloucester we met for an extensive studio visit and discussion of the upcoming June exhibition "Gabrielle Barzaghi: Perfect World" at Trident Gallery. Several drawings created in enraged response to outrageous statements by Donald Trump were included in The Body Politic a group exhibition and performance series at the gallrery.
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Muntadas: Projects/Proposals
At New York's Kent Gallery
By: - May 05th, 2017Muntadas’ original version of Emisión/Recepción was made in Madrid at a moment when Franco’s control over the media left Spain with but one TV station. All locations and all viewership was confined to the same exact broadcast at all times.
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Turner at the Frick
Britain's 19th Century Painter of Light
By: - May 02nd, 2017A beautifully presented exhibition built around works from The Frick Collection, Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages through Time, brings together 37 water colors, drawings, engravings, sketchbooks and oil paintings, from 1817 – 1845, a turning point in the artist’s career.
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Trident Gallery in Gloucester
Bringing Relevant Art Back to Cape Ann
By: - Apr 30th, 2017During the 19th Century and era of modernism Cape Ann was home to leading American artists. That faded in the post war era leaving a mostly tacky, conservative, artist colony. Several years ago Matthew Swift launched Trident Gallery as a matrix for Gloucester's best and brightest contemporary artists. While visiting we attended the closing party and special performances of the provocative exhibition The Political Body.
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Agita of the Artist Martin Mugar
Innocence and Experience
By: - Apr 26th, 2017For Blake, Christ was both a child and a lamb putting the innocence of the child and the lamb of the poem a priori in the realm of the godly. One cannot be a lamblike or a childlike without that innocence of God, which raises the question: what then is experience without innocence? Experience can only be a loss of innocence. Why do I in my painting linger in this realm of peachy keen colors if not to insist on the importance of this innocence that precedes experience.
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Free Sunday at Clark Art Institute
Last of the Off Season
By: - Apr 20th, 2017Celebrate spring in the Berkshires with the Clark Art Institute’s final First Sundays Free program of the season on Sunday, May 7 from 1–4 pm.
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MASS MoCA Season Starts May 28
Gallery and Performance Updates
By: - Apr 18th, 2017MASS MoCA launches into the summer season on May 28 with the opening of Building 6, the third phase of campus development, which encompasses more than 130,000 square feet of interior renovations to its 19th-century mill buildings.
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Ross Moffett from the Permanent Collection
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
By: - Apr 11th, 2017Ross Moffett (1888-1971) first came to Provincetown in 1913 to study with Charles Hawthorne. A year later a group of artists formed the Provincetown Art Association (later and Museum). In 1964 he published Art in Narrow Streets the first study of the art colony. Currently, the museum is exhibiting Ross Moffett from the Permanent Collection. It provides a rare opportunity to evaluate the work of a seminal Provincetown artist.
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Lester Johnson Works on Paper
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
By: - Apr 10th, 2017The sixteen works on paper that comprise the small but evocative exhibition Lester Johnson from the Permanent Collection provide rarely seen early works, starting in 1951. They provide examples of how the artist was looking at and deconstructing or abstracting seascapes, facades of houses, and breaking down the human figure. It is on view at the Provinctown Art Association and Museum through May 7.
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Biotope: Friends, Life Forms, Landscapes
Exhibition at Gallery 51 in North Adams
By: - Apr 04th, 2017In the show Biotope, at Gallery 51 in North Adams, the viewer is given the chance to experience life from the perspective of other life forms: animals, landscape, and vast fields denoting the pattern and apparent chaos in nature. Biotope refers to “habitat –an area within a biome where smaller subdivisions of species live,” suggesting a search for the “spirit of place” mentioned in the show’s introduction.
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Boston Art Dealer Alan Fink at 91
Art Was the Family Business
By: - Apr 04th, 2017Alan Fink met his artist wife, Barbara Swan, in Paris where he lived for three years on just $700. They married in 1952 and relocated to Boston. There he went to work for the next 16 years at Boris Mirski Gallery. In 1967 he founded Alpha Gallery now run by their daughter Joanna. Their son Aaron is an expressionist painter.
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Remembering Jim Rosenquist
Billboard Painter to Pop Artist
By: - Apr 02nd, 2017For a period of time in the late 1960s I worked in the studio of Pop artist James Rosenquist. He passed away recently at 83. When Jim first arrived in New York he painted billboards high above Times Square. He later used those techniques as a key but undervalued Pop artist.
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Artists As Pinball Wizards
Exhibition at the Elmhurst Museum
By: - Mar 11th, 2017Kings & Queens: Pinball, Imagists and Chicago sets 16 working vintage pinball machines in several galleries with about 30 pieces of art by the pioneers of 1960s and ‘70s Chicago Imagists: Ed Paschke, Karl Wirsum, Suellen Rocca, Ed Flood, Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Christine Ramberg, Roger Brown and Ray Yoshida. The connection, of course, is that the artists were influenced in childhood and adolescence by the art of pinball machines and comic books.
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ICA To Lease Expanded Space
Two if by Sea in East Boston
By: - Mar 07th, 2017When the Institute of Contemporary Art opened its waterfront home there were awards for the dramatic design by Diller Scofido and Renfro. Immediately, however, it was obvious that with 65,000 square feet, and just its top floor for exhibitions, there was no plan for expansion and growth. For the next five to ten years the ICA is leasing a 15,000 square foot industrial place in East Boston. Visitors will commute by ferry to the seasonal Watershed which opens in the summer of 2018.
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Federal Support for the Arts Under Attack
Five Boston Museum Directors Express Concern
By: - Feb 24th, 2017Five Boston museum directors have signed a letter of concern over reports that the National Endowment for the Arts is under threat of being abolished, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Under the conservative agenda of the Trump adminsitration this is an attack on the arts in America. Guarding the Trumps in NY, DC and Palm Beach for a week is on a par with endowment support.
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Kerry James Marshall: Mastry
At Met Breuer
By: - Jan 08th, 2017Through January 29 there is still time to see the stunning and riveting retrospective at New York's Met Breuer. He is among the elite of African American artists of his generation. His work is fresh in its timely subject mater as well as traditional with roots in American genre and social realism.
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Francis Picabia at MoMA
The Finest Modernist You Have Never Heard Of
By: - Jan 08th, 2017The enigmatic modernist, Francis Picabia, suggested that artists change styles as frequently as their shirts. He is the subject of an eclectic and intriguing retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.
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Spectacular Modernist Shchukin Collection
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
By: - Dec 26th, 2016Between 1897 and 1914, Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (Chtchoukkin) 1854 -1936, acquired 275 masterpieces, including 41 Matisses, 50 Picassos, 8 Cézannes, 13 Monets, 16 Gauguins, as well as works by his fellow Russian artists Malevich and Rodchenko. In 1918 the collection was seized by the government under Lenin. Some 127 works are now on view at the Frank Gehry designed Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.
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Touring Chelsea Galleries
A Selection of Exhibitions
By: - Dec 19th, 2016Extracted from a recent tour io Chelsea galleries we present a selection of highlights. The artists include Benny Andrews, Alfred Leslie, Mark di Suvero and Carrie Mae Weems.
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Ai Weiwei Shown in Three NY Galleries
Lisson, Mary Boone and Jeffrey Deitch
By: - Dec 13th, 2016In three concurrent New York gallery exhibitions- Lisson, Mary Boone and Jeffrey Deitch- the dissident Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, has created poignant and roiling new works. This is a massive project by arguably our greatest living artist.
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Ai Weiwei: Laundromat
Jeffrey Deitch Gallery
By: - Dec 13th, 2016Three New York galleries- Jeffrey Deitch, Mary Boone and Lisson Gallery- have collaborated to create a massive, museum-level overview of work by the dissident Chinese artist, Ai Weiewi. This is an interview with the artist in a release from Deitch gallery.
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Grant Wood's American Gothic
Iowa's Most Famous Artist
By: - Dec 10th, 2016American Gothic, arguably the best known and most iconic painting by an American artist, was created by Grant Wood when he was on the dole from the WPA. Artists had to pass in work to get their monthly checks. This painting was part of the inventiry when the relief program was shut down. It was given to the Art Institute of Chicage where it has deliughted viewers ever since.
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