Fine Arts
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Adrian Ghenie’s Golems at Pace London
Figurative Works by a Romanian Artist
By: - Jun 21st, 2014Adrian Ghenie highlights an era that questioned man’s significance, the existence of God, and the question of Creationism —through a use of paint that suggests the anamorphic nature of identity through the evolution of scientific understanding, and contradiction of the Baconian flesh that presents it.
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Franz West at Mass MoCA and WCMA
From Actionism to the Absurd
By: - Jun 21st, 2014The Austrian artist Franz West (16 February 1947- 25 July 2012). is being featured this summer in the Northern Berkshires. There is a display of several large scale, puffy, pink phallic sculptures at Mass MoCA and a tandem exhibition of works on paper and smaller scale sculptures at Williams College Museum of Art. The artist was widely included in global biennials and museum exhibitions including a retrospective at the Baltimore Museum of Art. We consider West in the milieu of post war artists in Vienna including its outrageous Actionists.
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Emotional Impact: American Figurative Expressionism
April Kingsley's Catalogue for Michigan State University
By: - Jun 19th, 2014While curator of Kresge Art Museum at Michigan State University from 1999 to 2011 April Kingsley had the resources and inspiration to collect works by the undervalued and poorly understood artists of the Figurative Expressionist movement. It was widely felt among artists that there would be a return to the figure informed by but diverging from abstract expressionism. Aspects of this experimentation occurred with little or no direct communication in New York, Provincetown, Boston, and the Bay Area of San Francisco. This book fails to present a cohesive overview of those complex developments.
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The New Realism: Ananian, Deyab, Lee and Mugar
Why We Fight
By: - Jun 18th, 2014The Neo-Expressionism of the 80’s seemed to be the last gasp of that self-centered version that came out of Germany in the 20’s and 30’s.I wanted a language that would embody the state of things of things as they are. Things as they are swimming in a sea of forces bigger than themselves
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Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges
Bringing Iconic American Art to Arkansas
By: - Jun 11th, 2014During our visit to Crystal Springs Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas we met with museum spokesperson Diane Carol. Fending off questions of media controversy regarding aggressive acquisitions she emphasized that the museum is free and serves a region that lacks resources of its quality. As she pointed out since opening in 11/11/11 some 1.3 million visitors have viewed "Kindred Spirits" by Asher B. Durand which formerly hung in the New York Public Library.
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Crystal Bridges in Bentonville Arkansas
All the Museum that Walmart Money Can Buy
By: - Jun 10th, 2014After extensive renovation and expansion the Clark Art Institute reopens this summer. Much is being made of how its Tadeo Ando designed low lying horizontal line and large reflecting pool embrace nature and the background rolling mountain range. The paradigm for architecture set into natural surroundings, however, is the Moshe Safdie design for Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas. It is nestled into a ravine with a series of pontoon "bridges." The museum which opened on 11/11/11 has some 500,000 annual visitors for its controversial collection of American art.
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Betty Vera Hiding in Plain Sight
Jacquard Weavings at Eclipse Mill Gallery
By: - Jun 09th, 2014Cotton was the material that drove the economy of numerous mills in the Northern Berkshires. That left a terrible legacy of involvement with slavery and child labor during the era of King Cotton. As a part of a healing process the fabric artist Betty Vere is bringing cotton back to the gallery of the Eclipse Mill in North Adams. In the exhibition Hiding in Plain Sight she is displaying a series of Jacquard weaving.
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Searching Yet Again for Aviator Amelia Earhart
America’s Most Famous Missing Person
By: - Jun 04th, 2014This review was written for the Amelia Earhart Image and Icon exhibition at International Center for Photography from May 11 – September 9, 2007. Published here for the first time Rubin considers it as one of his best articles.
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Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010
German Master Surveyed at MoMA
By: - Jun 03rd, 2014Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) was one of the most important Post War German artists. He is the subject of a dense, sprawling and and messy retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art through August 3. It would be a folly and conceit to attempt to review such diverse and eclectic, mind boggling work. For that we refer you to mainstream critics all of whom fail, to varying degrees, to nail down the work of one of the most fascinating and daunting artists of our time.
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Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe
Art Under Fascism Explored at Guggenheim Museum
By: - Jun 02nd, 2014The Italian artists circa World War I advocated destroying the past while embracing the future. Hence Futurism the subject of an enormous and fascinating survey Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe on view at the Guggenheim Museum through September 1. In their enthusiasm and nationalism they embraced the Fascism of Mussolini.
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From Primitivism to Propaganda: Russia’s Modern Masters
Works from Marina and Nikolay Shchukin Collection at National Arts Club
By: - May 31st, 2014From the late 1890s through the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Moscow based business man Sergei Ivanovich Schukin (1854-1936) assembled one of the great collections of early modern art. When the Soviets confiscated the collection he emigrated to Paris. The National Arts Club in New York is currently showing 35 Russian avant-garde works from the collection of family member Marina and Nikolay Shchukin. Through June 14 the exhibition is sponsored by Russian American Foundation as a part of the Annual Russian Heritage Month.
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Slaves and Slaveholders of Wessyngton Plantation
Tennessee State Museum Through August 31
By: - May 12th, 2014In the past two years the films "Twelve Years a Slave" and "Django Revisited" through graphic dramas have made Americans more vividly aware of the horrific legacy of slavery. Through the well researched and documented exhibition "Slaves and Slaveholders of Wessyngton Plantation" the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville tracks the history of one of the nation's largest tobacco producers through generations from ante bellum to the present. It is based on the book of a Wessyngton slave descendant John F. Baker, Jr.
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The Frist Center for the Visual Arts
Nashville's Art Deco Kunsthalle
By: - May 08th, 2014Nashville is rightly known as The Music City. Since 2001, with the opening of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in a former art deco post office the city is also a regional destination for world class art exhibitions. Meeting with museum staff we discussed how a non collecting institution, a kunsthalle, manages to leverage major loans and traveling exhibitions. Primarily this is done by original scholarly work and publications as well as building relationships with partnering museums.
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7th Annual Berkshire Salon
Launches North Adams Gallery Season
By: - May 06th, 2014Visitors passing along Route 2 and the Mohawk Trail on their way to Mass MoCA and nearby Clark Art Institute and Williams College Museum of Art can pause and refresh with a taste of locally created work in the 7th Annual Berkshire Salon. (May 9 to June 1)
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Goya and Steve Mumford Depict War Horrors
Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts Through June 8
By: - May 04th, 2014The Frist Center for the Visual Arts has conflated visceral and gut wrenching exhibitions: Goya: The Disasters of War and Steve Mumford’s War Journals, 2003–2013. The tandem of shows updates from the iconic series of prints by Goya to the combat images of Mumford that track from the war zone, to veterans undergoing rehab, and the restricted access to terrorists incarcerated without due process of law in the Army operated prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
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British Pop Artist Richard Hamilton
Co Curated by Tate Modern and London's ICA
By: - Apr 27th, 2014Richard Hamilton is a truly influential figure in the history of British art and is considered to be the founder of the Pop Art movement. This retrospective is a collaboration between Tate Modern and the ICA, and covers the eclectic career of a very important British artist who wanted to get “all of living†into his art.
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Lázaro Saavedra's Funerary Egocentrism
Performance April 30 at Boston's MFA
By: - Apr 12th, 2014Overcoming both administrative roadblocks and censorship, Cuban artist Lázaro Saavedra performs Funerary Egocentrism at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), on Wednesday, April 30.
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Christopher Wool at the Art Institute
Chicago Celebrates a Native Son
By: - Apr 11th, 2014Thirty-one letters brought more than 26 million dollars at an art auction last fall. Visually the letters are compressed, blob-like, stacked. Musically, each of the three phrases has a sound which is considered one of the most beautiful in the English language: sell or cell. Two hard "c" sounds (actually a ‘kâ€) break up the beauty. The entire phrase startles because selling the kids is verboten. Do you have to know the title, "Apocalypse Now", to react?
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Norman Liebman's Evocative Paintings
At Art Alternative Gallery in Brookline. MA
By: - Apr 08th, 2014Trained as a physician, actually a surgeon, Norman Liebman painted throughout his college education and medical career. Liebman has spent his retirement painting in his studio five or more days a week working in a style related to the COBRA group that worked from 1948-1951 in Europe. He uses bright color and distorted representational form to create semiabstract moody images that have a Modigliani mysteriousness and an expressionist's visual articulateness to them. In his ninth decade of life, he expresses himself in an exuberant, skillful way that underscores a vitality and a youthful experimentation.
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5 UK Artists Better Than Bansky
British Street Scenes
By: - Mar 31st, 2014Think street art, and chances are you think Banksy. For some, he’s the wittiest man ever to have touched a spray can, while others consider him nothing more than an overhyped phenomenon with a technique and style that’s just a reproduction of other artists’ work from 20 years ago. Love him or hate him, his work never fails to stir up a buzz. But think Banksy’s the most exciting artist to emerge from the UK? Think again. Britain’s streets are home to some of the world’s most diverse and talented artists.
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Jumping Out of Enframement
Is Everything Mostly Post Moderm
By: - Mar 30th, 2014Painting still privileges the individual and their own notion of time. It is, as well, in an inevitable dialogue with all that painting has ever been, so that intentionally or otherwise the artist is forced to accept the history of painting. Its uniqueness lies in its ability to create time out of its own language, which forces the viewer to linger in front of it.
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The Clark's Masterpieces Home at Last
On Tour to Eleven Venues on Three Continents for Three Years
By: - Mar 21st, 2014After three years with eleven museums on three continents the treasures of the Clark Art Institute are back home safe and sound. They will be seen this summer when the museum reopens after extensive renovation and expansion on July 4. This grand tour of major museums will reap benefits as the Clark requests loans for major exhibitions. Other major museums, however, including the Museum of Fine Arts and the Guggenheim, have loaned works to their satellites and commercial exhibition promoters for cold cash.
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The Clark Art Institute Embraces Modernism
Pollock's Masterpiece Lavender Mist This Summer
By: - Mar 20th, 2014This week representatives of the Clark Art Institute, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Mass MoCA met with the media to promote plans for a spectacular Northern Berkshires season. The Clark reopens following extensive expansion and renovation. Mass MoCA offers the first full season of its Anselm Kiefer building. Jenny Gersten has planned a blockbuster program for WTF. WCMA plans special events like a Think and Drink series. In high season it may be hard to book a hotel or dine at the best restaurants.
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Arnold Trachtman Portraits, Galatea Fine Art
Visions Through a Personal Prism
By: - Mar 19th, 2014At 84, Arnold Trachtman is exhibiting a dozen pieces from the last 50 years of his artistic career. Relentlessly he is compelled to express and document history through a vey personal lens. His art never fit the current fad. Arnie never got the memo on the next big wave. Or if he did, he disregarded it. He often combined the past imperfect of the political and social agenda of Europe and the USA in his mostly strident painted images. But the works shown at Galatea Fine Art are more mellow memories yet painted in his most original voice.
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Fernando Botero Seen in Bogota
Colombia's Living Treasure
By: - Mar 17th, 2014Botero's art permeates Bogota's and Medellin's major museums and plazas with overwhelming grandeur and sensuality. Contrasting giant and dwarf figures, sometimes with underlying satire, the artist creates voluptuous exuberance that charms and captivates.
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