Fine Arts
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Double Rhythm Writings about Painting
Jean Helion Collected with an Introduction by Deborah Rosenthal
By: - Oct 27th, 2014The notion of the hermeneutical way of thinking is evident throughout Helion’s writings. One intriguing essay tries to untangle the origins of Abstraction’s roots in Seurat and Cezanne. Who was more important in influencing Abstraction? Helion comes down on the side of Seurat. Cezanne, he feels, is still attached to the real space of objects and is more Janus-like looking backward as well as forward. Seurat’s work lends itself to further reduction, which is crucial to abstraction.
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State of the Art in Arkansas
Crystal Bridges Captures America's Heartbeat
By: - Oct 20th, 2014In Bentonville, Arkansas, a stunning museum by Moshe Safdie houses one of the great collections of American Art, and celebrates the future too in 'State of Art."
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Covert Operations: Investigating the Known Unknowns
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art to January 15
By: - Oct 18th, 2014The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art received a grant from the Tremaine Foundation in support of the ambitious and insightful special exhibition Covert Operations: Investigating the Known Unknowns. It has been installed for several months in the three galleries of a former movie theater. The provocative project plays well in a staunchly red state dealing with unchecked undocumented immigration.
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Xanti Schawinsky Eclipse
Bauhaus Artist at Broadway 1602 to Nov. 22
By: - Oct 05th, 2014Bauhaus artist Xanti Schawinsky (1904-79), of Polish-Jewish origin, immigrated in 1936 to the United States. After his years at the Bauhaus he continued an intense and ultra creative journey from his radical post-Bauhaus theater work at the Black Mountain College, the innovative designs for the New York World Fair in 1939, to his unparalleled surreal drawing and painting work throughout the 1940s influenced by war and immigration (on show at the Drawing Center in tandem with our exhibition). In the 1960s Schawinsky entered a new phase of creation with an intense and enigmatic body of work of abstract and optical paintings, the Eclipses and Spheras.
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Mark Favermann Functional Abstraction
Newbury College Exhibition
By: - Oct 01st, 2014Mark Favermann is known to readers of Berkshire Fine Arts for reviews of Boston theatre and articles on fine arts, architecture and design. From October 15 through December 5 an exhibition of his work Functional Abstraction will be on view at Newbury College in Brookline, Mass.
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Susan Erony’s Redeeming Pessimism
Trident Gallery Gloucester, Mass.
By: - Sep 12th, 2014In the heart of downtown Gloucester, a short walk from the renovated and expanded Cape Ann Museum of Art is the ambitious Trident Gallery. Unlike the tourist kitsch of the majority of Gloucester and Rockport galleries this venue speaks to the historic role of Cape Ann as a vibrant modernist art colony. Susan Erony is an example of the small but seminal community of professional artists represented by gallerist Matthew Swift. In his catalogue essay published here he offers an insightful overview of the issues and work of a concerned artist.
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Modern Art in the Berkshires
Clark Curator David Breslin Part Two
By: - Sep 12th, 2014Through October 13 the new special exhition galleries of the Clark Art Instiute feature Make It New: Abstract Painting from the National Gallery of Art 1950-1975. This is part two of a dialogue with Clark curator David Breslin who worked with Harry Cooper of the National Gallery. We discussed how this changes art history and the impact of the exhibition on showing modern art in the Berkshires.
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Clark Launches New Galleries with Make It New
Selection of Mid Century Abstraction from the National Gallery
By: - Sep 11th, 2014Clark curator, David Breslin, worked with Harry Cooper of the National Gallery for a special exhibition launching the spacious new galleries designed by Tadao Ando. For long time friends of the Clark it is a bold move into issues of 20th century art. This is the first of two parts of a dialogue with Breslin about the impact of the exhibition, a related seminar, and what this means for the future of modernism in the Berkshires.
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Brice Marden Discusses Cheap Shots
At 75 an American Master
By: - Sep 08th, 2014Brice Marden is widely admired as one of the foremost abstract artists of his generation. He spoke with the poet Vincent Katz during a recent symposium Make It New? Conversations on Mid-Century Abstraction at the Clark Art Institute During a break we spoke with him and also researched his experiences as an undergraduate at Boston Unversity and transition to graduate study at Yale.
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The Koons Phenomenon
Reacting to Jed Perl's Essay in New York Review of Books
By: - Sep 08th, 2014As Brice Marden commented in a symposium at the Clark "I haven't made up my mind about Jeff Koons. But it's not for lack of information." He's not the only one that's hanging on the fence. Here Martin Mugar responds to a review of Koons by the always fiesty Jed Perl.
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An Update with Michael Conforti
Clark Art Institute's Globe Trotting Director
By: - Sep 07th, 2014Completing a $145 million renovation and expansion the Clark Art Institute repoened this summer. The occasion was launched with a stunning range of special exhibitions. During a recent opening of Magna Carta we asked the museum's fast moving director, Michael Conforti, for an overview of the season and when we might expect to see Treasures from the Prado?
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What’s Magna About Clark’s Carta
Williamstown Display of Seminal 1215 Document
By: - Sep 06th, 2014The Barons of England forced King John to sign Magna Carta in 1215. It limited his Divine Rights and created a Constitutional Monarchy laying a foundation of British Common Law and the eventual creation of Parliament. A less than perfect document it was annuled a few months later then revived several times in later years. One of only four copies of the original document is on display as the special exhibiton Radical Words: From Magna Carta to the Constitution on view at the Clark Art Institute through November 1.
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Boston Modern by Judith Bookbinder
Definitive Study of Boston Expressionism
By: - Aug 18th, 2014Judith Bookbinder's 2005 publication Boston Modern: Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism is the definitive study of this important but neglected movement. Her study is meticulously researched and documented. This is the catalogue for the exhibition that the Museum of Fine Arts has failed to deliver. Significantly most of the Boston Expressionists were Jews struggling with Biblical constraints against the graven image.
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Cape Ann Museum Reopens
Tour with Director Ronda Faloon
By: - Aug 15th, 2014The Cape Ann Museum has raised $5 million with $3.5 for a renovation of its eclectic warren of buildings and galleries. Just prior to the recent reopening we were given a tour of the collection by the museum's director Ronda Faloon. The collection displays all aspects of life on historic Cape Ann. Its heart and soul comprises 40 paintings and 100 drawings by America's most renowned 19th century painter of seascapes Fitz Henry Lane. There are also many works by leading artists who were a part of the art colony.
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Rudd Art Museum in North Adams
Presenting Berkshire Artists
By: - Aug 06th, 2014As artists approach their senior years familiar issues arise. Unless they reach a level of broad recognition and market value for the work there is the challenge of legacy and handling of estates. North Adams based artist/ author and developer, Eric Rudd, has written a book on these concerns and by creating his own museum in North Adams is taking action to address them. Art historian and former Berkshire Eagle critic, Keith Shaw, is assisting Rudd by curating exhibitions based on artists living and working in the region. Here he discusses what that entails.
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Animating the Everyday by Robin Rhode
Winner of the Biannual Roy R. Neuberger Exhibition Prize
By: - Aug 02nd, 2014Animating The Everyday - running through August 10 – is a ten-year survey of the work of South African born, Berlin based artist Robin Rhode. Curated by Helaine Posner, the museum’s Chief Curator of Contemporary Art, along with co-curator Louise Yelin. High definition projectors, and advanced musical composed sound tracks by Arenor Anuku, feature the artist’s digital animations, as well as a selection of his still photographs, the latter elegantly hung on charcoal gray walls.
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Ann Hamilton Bangs on a Can
Paper Sounding Premieres at Mass MoCA
By: - Jul 30th, 2014With just four rehearsal sessions in less than a week installatin artist, Ann Hamilton, returned to Mass MoCA to create a piece for some thirty individuals "Paper Sounding" as a part of the annual Bang on a Can festival. The spontaneous and lively work was co directed by Mark Stewart and David Cossin. The performance was our introducton to an area of the vast Building Six which the museum hopes soon to develop. We spoke with Hamilton about the significance of paper in her practice.
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Ann Hamilton's Corpus at Mass Moca
2003 Installation in Building Five
By: - Jul 30th, 2014In 2003-2004 Ann Hamilton installed a paper based work Corpus in the vast building five of Mass MoCA. It was a relatvely early project in the space. This article is reposted from Maverick Arts Magazine.
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Native American Repatriation
National Museum of the American Indian
By: - Jul 29th, 2014When the NMAI was established in 1989 with the passage of the National Museum of the American Indian Act (NMAI Act), it included the first U.S. repatriation legislation that provided for the return of Native American human remains and certain cultural items in the collections. Since the museum's inception, one of the highest priorities has been the return of Native American human remains and their associated funerary items back to their communities of origin.
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Marjorie Minkin’s Lexan Painted Reliefs
Collaborations with Her Son Mike Gordon of Phish
By: - Jul 28th, 2014During the final days of her exhibition at the Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams, Mass. we spoke with Marjorie Minkin about her painted Lexan reliefs. We discussed the current exhibition and background of her relationship with renowned critic, Clement Greenberg, and curator/ critic, Kenworth Moffett. As well as a 2005/06 project in collaboration with her son Mike Gordon of the rock band Phish and engineer Jamie Robertson.
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Pipaluk Lake's Planned Accidents
Multi Media Works at Maria Lund Galerie in Paris
By: - Jul 28th, 2014Pipaluk Lake takes a long time to conceive her glass and metal “bundlesâ€; she cuts, hammers, attaches, knits, sews… Putting into practice a know-how acquired during a quadruple training in fields as diverse as textile, glass, metal and wood. Once her complex preparation work finished, she abandons her “bundle†to the alchemy of heat and gravity inside the kiln.
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Love Made Visible by Jean Gibran
A Complex Book on Her Husband Kahlil Gibran
By: - Jul 27th, 2014Decades ago the sculptor Kahlin Gibran and his wife Jean purchased a shell in Boston's ethnically mixed South End. A meticulous craftsman the home evolved as a museum of his work and collection. Together they wrote a definitive 1974 biography "Kahlil Gibran, His Life and World." Now Jean has published "Love Made Visible: Scenes from a Mostly Happy Marriage" about a complex relationship with her late husband.
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Re-Introducing The Rhino Horn Group
Evolved from Figurative Expressionism
By: - Jul 24th, 2014When Pop Art dominated the art world and mass-media a group of New York expressionists said no thanks. The primal, raucous, and confrontational approach to painting exhibited by the group’s members kept the emotional impact of Figurative Expressionism alive. However, aesthetic tradition was less important than the moral obligation of depicting the reality that the artists perceived. This put the Rhino Horn artists at odds with many of the mainstream artists that had turned away from expressionism and humanist art.
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Jim Hodges at the ICA
Summer in the City
By: - Jul 23rd, 2014The artist Jim Hodges came to New York in the 1980s at a time when AIDS was decimating the arts community. Like others of his generation his work responded to a sense of devastation and loss. A retrospecitve of his eclectic conceptual work is on view at Boston's ICA until September 1.
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Jamie Wyeth at the MFA
Good Genes
By: - Jul 22nd, 2014Outgoing populist and vulgarian, MFA director Malcolm Rogers, has orchestrated yet another celebrity based, crowd pleasing exhibition. The traveling restrospective of paintings by Jamie, a third generation manifestation of the famous Wyeth dynasty, is actually kind of fun. Where the work fits in the canon of the art of our time, however, is another matter.
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