Fine Arts
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Joe Thompson on Mass MoCA China Projects
Xu Bing Phoenix Currently on View
By: - Jan 09th, 2013Even before Mass MoCA opened Joe Thompson was negotiating with the Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping to participate in the group exhibition Unnatural Science in 2001. That led to a retrospective organized by the Walker Art Center. Major installations followed in the vast Building Five by Cai Guo-Qiang and currently Phoenix by Xu Bing which is on view for the coming year. This is the first of two parts of a dialogue about contemporary Chinese Art.
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Matisse at the Met Through March 17
In Search of True Painting
By: - Dec 27th, 2012Matisse: In Search of True Painting is a modest exhibition of just 49 works selected by Rebecca Rabinow, a curator of modern and contemporary art for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It offers multiple views of specific themes and subjects. This provides valuable insights to the process and techniques of the artist. The Met show of Matisse is as satisfying as Picasso Black and White at the Guggenheim is a bloody awful mess. In this clash of Titans, and faceoff of Holiday blockbusters, Matisse and the Met win hands down. No contest.
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Huang Yong Ping at Mass MoCA
House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective
By: - Dec 26th, 2012This article originally appeared in Maverick Arts a site prior to Berkshire Fine Arts in 2006. Because of the continued interest in contemporary Chinese art by Mass MoCA is has been reposted. The museum is currently showing Xu Bing. This article has a link to a recent exhibition of work by Ping in New York.
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Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim
Snap, Crackle, and Pop
By: - Dec 26th, 2012The exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe originated at Mass MoCA. We reviewed the Guggenheim Museum installation for Maverick Arts in 2008. This was one of three major exhibitions featuring contemporary Chinese artists. The others were Huang Yong Ping in 2006 and the current, 2012-2013 installation by Xu Bing.
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Xu Bing Phoenix at Mass MoCA
Mythical Birds Evoke Contemporary Issues
By: - Dec 26th, 2012There were many daunting impediments in presenting Phoenix a vast sculptural installation by the leading Chinese artist, Xu Bing, at Mass MoCA. This third major project with contemporary Chinese artists remains on view in North Adams for the coming year.
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Xu Bing Language Lost
Mass College of Art 1995
By: - Dec 24th, 2012Currently two massive sculptures comprising Phoenix by the Chinese artist, Xu Bing, are installed in the vast space of Building Five at Mass MoCA. We first were introduced to the work of the artist through a 1995 exhibition Language Lost at Mass College of Art. It was our first exposure to contemporary Chinese art which has since moved to the critical mainstream. This is a portfolio of vintage images of that earlier project.
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Chelsea Galleries Stumble Through Holidays
Bubble Bursts Post Sandy
By: - Dec 22nd, 2012Hurricane Sandy flooded the Chelsea galleries resulting in the loss of entire exhibitors and millions of dollars worth of inventory in basement storage areas. During a holiday tour we found mostly business as usual with the major galleries with some still closed for renovation. We provide an in depth slide show of several of the more noteworthy exhibitions.
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Bernini: Sculpting in Clay at the Met
Stunning Exhibition on View Through January 6
By: - Dec 21st, 2012The stunning exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art "Bernini Sculpting in Clay" includes 29 of the artist’s bozetti, or sketch models in terracotta, standing between 12 and 20 inches tall — along with one or two larger and more finished models, which are as much as three feet tall. The project, which as been co organized with the Kimbell Museum, provides compelling insights to the artist's working process.
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Gutai: Splendid Playground, at the Guggenheim
Post War Japanese Art Feb.15 to May 8
By: - Dec 20th, 2012The Gutai Art Association was founded in 1954 by the influential artist, teacher, and critic Yoshihara Jiro in the town of Ashiya, near Osaka. The group spanned two generations, totaling fifty-nine artists over its eighteen-year history. The name “Gutai†literally means "concreteness†and captures the direct engagement with materials its members were experimenting with around the time it began.
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Picasso Black and White
Chiaroscuro Theme at the Guggenheim to January 23
By: - Dec 17th, 2012For the holidays two blockbuster exhibition provide the chance to compare and contrast the greatest masters of the School of Paris. The Metropolitam Museum is showing Henri Matisse while the Guggenheim features Picasso Black and White. A spin through the Guggenheim proved to be disappointing with a glut of mediocre mid period and late works and just a couple of bona fide masterpieces.
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What’s Wrong with the Whitney Museum
Enervating Mix of Holiday Shows
By: - Dec 16th, 2012With the Whitney Museum of American Art winding down its time on Madison Avenue and preparing for a move downtown near the popular High Line the curators appear to have concoted a yard sale of ho hum exhibitions. There is a deadly combination of the recycled- Richard Artschwager! and Sinister Pop- and a signifier of the alleged bright future Wade Guyton: Os which I just don’t buy into.
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Gunther Uecker at Haunch of Venison
First NY Exhibition for Group Zero Artist Since 1966
By: - Dec 16th, 2012Now 82 the German artist and member of Zero, which disbanded in 1966, is having his first New York exhibition, at Haunch of Venison, since then. Now and then we encounter one of Gunther Uecker's signature nail pieces at MoMA or in rare Zero exhibitions such as those mounted by Sperone Westwater Gallery. While we enjoyed the opportunity to experience his work in depth it provoked many unanswered questions about his intentionality.
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Ai Weiwei at Mary Boone and the Hirshorn Museum
Forge Evokes 5,200 Lost Schoolchildren
By: - Dec 15th, 2012Americans are shocked and devastated by the slaughter yesterday of schoolchildren and teachers in Connecticut. The conceptual art installation Forge on view at New York's Mary Boone Gallery by Chinese dissident Ai Weiwie evokes the memory of 5,200 schoolchildren. They were killed when the Beichuan Middle School collapsed during a 2008 earthquake through shoddy, cost cutting, "tofu" construction. The Communist regime tried to bury the incident along with the victims. With dire consequences the artist strives to keep their memory alive against all odds.
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Jed Perl Collected Essays Magicians and Charlatans
Being There
By: - Dec 11th, 2012Thinking back on more than twenty years of art criticism by Jed Perl on the occasion of the publication of his most recent collection of essays by the Eakins Press Foundation "Magicians and Charlatans." Cross-cutting the main stream contemporary art world.
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Santa Fe Artist Joyce Melander Dayton
The Craft of Turning Nature into Art
By: - Dec 10th, 2012Edward Rubin discusses with the artist Joyce Melander Dayton how she stopped being a representational painter and now works primarily in 3-dimensions using textiles, fabrics, glass beads, wool, and wood veneers.
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Museum of Fine Arts Pimps its Masterpieces
Fenway Visitors Find a Bare Cupboard of Favorite Works
By: - Nov 26th, 2012It is usual for the world's great museums to swap their masterpieces for special exhibitions. It is the quid pro quo of doing business. Currently, however, an unusually large number of its greatest treasures are missing from the walls of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Some 26 works, however, have been loaned strictly for cash by the entrepreneur Marco Goldin and his for profit organization Linea d’Ombra. In Italy Goldin is known as "The King Midas of the art world." If that's the case what should we call deal maker Malcolm Rogers of the MFA?
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Tripoli Gallery Thanksgiving Collective 2012
Southampton's Modern Salon To January 24
By: - Nov 26th, 2012Tripoli Gallery’s “Thanksgiving Collective 2012: Modern Salon,†as the title suggests, combines the new and the old, and does so on several different levels. “Modern Salon†refers, in part, to the way in which the show was installed. Salon Style evokes renderings of the floor-to-ceiling historic exhibitions of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
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Jessica Park at The Good Purpose Gallery
Visions on the Spectrum II in Lee, Mass.
By: - Nov 25th, 2012As part of its ongoing effort to support the arts for students with autism and other learning differences, the College Internship Program in Lee, Mass. is featuring Jessica Park’s paintings, and also the glass sculpture of Hoogs and Crawford, at its Good Purpose Gallery through January 2, 2013.
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The Primacy of Visual Cognition in Western Art
From Caravaggio to Cezanne
By: - Nov 13th, 2012On the surface great art seems anarchical. Take Cezanne without whom we cannot even imagine the 20thc language of abstraction. He jumps to another level of seeing that seemed crude and anarchic to those living artist surrounded by the aesthetic of the 19thc, which was a continuation of the once anarchic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio. In fact both artists pursued a deepening of the understanding of what it means to see. They didn’t jump out of the language of seeing; they jumped more deeply into it. I agree that certain holy grails never assure survivability but nor does anarchy. What at first glance seems anarchic is always the product of an exploration of the language of seeing that has found new foundations.
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The 2012 Boston Biennial
The Gallery at Spencer Lofts
By: - Nov 09th, 2012It finally had to happen. A Biennial coming to a neighborhood near you. In this case The Gallery at Spencer Lofts in Chelsea. For an entry fee of just twenty five bucks artists can put that all important entry, Biennial, on their resumes. By the way, the juror, one Branden Harrington III is a "noted Boston artist and all around cool guy." Frankly we've never heard of him or I and II. Is this a scam or spoof? You decide. Caveat Emptor. Check out the video.
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British Public Art Is For Sale
Local Governments Want to Raise Funds By Deaquisitioning
By: - Nov 09th, 2012It is a phrase that seems to have arisen with the latter half of the 20th Century: Is public art necessary? Monuments always seem to be appreciated. But they are memorials, usually homage to death or dying, heroic or victimized. The problem is that the less educated, the less aware do not understand art's utility. They look for functional value not aesthetic quality. Now the Philistine's are thick on the ground in the United Kingdom.
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2013 James and Audrey Foster Prize
ICA Announces Finalists for Biennial Award
By: - Nov 09th, 2012Sarah Bapst, Katarina Burin, Mark Cooper, and Luther Price were named finalists for the 2013 James and Audrey Foster Prize, the ICA's biennial award and exhibition program for Boston-area artists, the museum announced today. Bapst, Burin, Cooper, and Price will participate in an exhibition organized by Helen Molesworth, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, on view at the ICA from May 1 through July 21, 2013.
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Art at North Adams Regional Hospital
New Installation of Community Art Program
By: - Nov 07th, 2012For the past several years the North Adams Regional Hospital has hosted semi annual installations of the curated Community Art Program. Following a call for artists a selection of some 200 plus works are displayed in the corridors and waiting rooms. While there is an emphasis on landscapes, still life and abstractions this time the graven image has been added to the mix. While eclectic, the Hospital shows are always upbeat, fun, and even surprising. Surely these colorful images help to ease the aches and pains of visitors.
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Further Thoughts on the Artist Tim Nichols
Responding to Reader Comments
By: - Nov 05th, 2012My blog on Tim Nichols and the subsequent comments from people who knew him, opened up my eyes to the difficulty of simple descriptions of a life as long as Tim’s. As we all navigate our life, how we must appear to others is so variegated that in the end there is not one Tim but as many as there were observers of his life
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Hugo Boss Prize 2012 to Danh Vo
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Announces Winner
By: - Nov 02nd, 2012The Hugo Boss Prize 2012 has been awarded to Danh Vo, announced Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, and Claus-Dietrich Lahrs, Chairman and CEO, HUGO BOSS AG. Vo is the ninth artist to receive the biennial honor that was established in 1996 to recognize significant achievement in contemporary art.
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