Category: ARTviews
Friday, February 03, 2012
Van Gogh: An Eye for Detail
An exhibition currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, entitled “Van Gogh Up Close” offers a new way of looking at this artist’s revolutionary work. The forty-five works in this exhibition portray his ability—or more accurately his need—to focus closely on details in nature and find ways to replicate them on canvas. For him, it was a kind of centering, a way of calming some of his more explosive moods. The works on view show Van Gogh using a wide variety of styles, using long quick brush strokes in all directions, creating a feeling of fluidity, and often referencing the Japanese prints that he loved and collected. Click here for a slide show of some of the paintings in this exhibition.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Brain teasers for the eyes: the art of Jesus Soto
Jesus Soto, a Venezuelan artist who was active in Paris from 1950 on, was fascinated by the ways in which truth depends on perspective. Although he worked in an era when Abstract Expressionists were all about painting from their inner beings, Soto was more interested in heightening viewers’ awareness of the roles that eyes and bodies play in experiencing everything—not just art, but the world around us. That is, objects change radically depending on the viewer’s position, and another viewer’s perspective will be different again—producing layers upon layers of visions of reality. For example, Soto (1923-2005) created three-dimensional constructions consisting of compositions of stripes and geometric forms painted on sheets of plexiglass. These painted sheets were attached to similarly painted panels, leaving as much as ten inches of space between. The resulting visual experience changes as you shift back and forth to see the relationships from different angles.
Click here for more background information and examples of Soto’s work, which is currently on display at the Grey Art Gallery of New York University.
Friday, December 30, 2011
A year-end look at favorite objects in NY museums
In the December 30, 2011, edition of the New York Times, there’s a wonderful exploration of a selection of objects found in various New York museums. Three art critics chose their favorites and present them for our delight. Click here for the section, which also features a slide show of the objects, descriptions of what makes them attractive and interesting, and links to more information.
Enjoy—and happy new year!
Friday, November 11, 2011
Murals by Diego Rivera reunited at MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art in New York is about to open an exhibition of five murals created by Diego Rivera in 1931, reuniting these panels for the first time in 80 years. This link to the exhibition includes a very informative multimedia tour, complete with audio, of the paintings as well as background information on Rivera’s legendary mural for Rockefeller Center.
Rivera actually worked on the murals in an empty gallery at the museum; he kept the heat off because he didn’t want the paint to dry too quickly. Five of the murals he created depict events in Mexican history; three more captured scenes of Depression-era New York. In the years since their creation, the murals have scattered to private collections and other museums; only one remained at MoMA. One of the New York scenes is very relevant to today’s world: its three tiers show, from top, a skyline of skyscrapers, a pier sheltering the unemployed, and a bank vault where the wealthy count their money. Its title: “Frozen Assets.”
Friday, October 21, 2011
Exhibition of drawings provides a snapshot of Picasso’s career
The Frick Collection (look at their home page for a slide show of Picasso’s drawings) in New York is currently home to an exhibition titled “Picasso’s Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition.” Although exhibitions of Picasso’s works are not infrequent, this low-key offering takes a close look at one period—from youth to early middle age; and one medium—drawing. It begins with an awkward, cautious pencil rendering of a small statue, drawn when Picasso was 8 or 9 years old. Although he may have begun tentatively, it didn’t take long for him to begin to display his natural gifts, as the next drawings in the show illustrate.
From these early days, the show traces his development and the myriad influences that are evident in all phases of Picasso’s art. He constantly pushed the boundaries of his materials and his subjects, whether the human face and body, landscapes, or still life. In Paris in his twenties, he was exposed to drawings of all kinds, from classical to contemporary, and the exhibition is filled with examples of these influences. In one drawing, Picasso seems to be responding to the so-called primitives of the French and Italian Renaissance; in another, to Gauguin’s Tahitian subjects. There are hints of references to Iberian and African sculpture. The exhibition celebrates Picasso’s lifelong habit of looking at every kind of art available and taking from it the themes he would develop in his own unique way.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Lessons from a master: De Kooning at MoMA
A major retrospective exhibition of the works of Willem De Kooning is about to open at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. For aspiring artists, there’s a lot to be learned from a slow walk through this large show.
As a young teenager in his native Rotterdam, De Kooning worked in a commercial design firm, where he learned basic techniques of lettering, tracing, copying, and layering. This background in creating a whole from many disparate parts became the foundation of the art he would go on to produce. As a young artist, he studied and absorbed the work of many artists including Ingres, Rubens, Soutine, Picasso, and Gorky, as well as images from advertising and the Sunday comics. He strove to combine many elements to create something entirely new; every painting he made was a controlled experiment. According to an article in the New York Times, “typically, he would start with a drawing, add paint, draw on top of the paint, scrape the surface down, draw more images traced and transferred from elsewhere, add paint to them, and on and on.” This physical energy reaches out from each painting to grab the viewer’s attention.
For students of art, getting to know De Kooning feels like being given permission to try any crazy combination of elements that comes to mind. That’s what creativity is all about. De Kooning never stopped experimenting; neither should we.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
End of an era for the Barnes Foundation
The Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, was a unique treasure house of Impressionist and early modernist painting and sculpture. The eccentric collector, Albert C. Barnes, not only amassed a huge collection of works by giants such as Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, and Seurat. He also intended these masterpieces to be seen in a particular way, so that viewers would learn from them how to look at and appreciate great art. So he arranged his collection so that the pieces would “speak” to each other, echoing colors and themes and shapes.
Sadly for the many art lovers who visited the Foundation over the years, its location in the suburbs of Philadelphia is now closed, and the collection will be moved to a new building in downtown Philadelphia. Though the works themselves will always reward the visitor, something of the magic of Barnes’s vision will certainly be lost in this move.
Click here to take a virtual tour of the collection in its original and intended home.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Making art together—Surrealist painters Yves Tanguy and Kay Sage
A new exhibition at the Katonah Museum of Art in Westchester County, New York, poses an interesting question: can two artists have a balanced, equitable marriage and each produce meaningful art without stepping on each other’s toes? During their lifetimes, Yves Tanguy and Kay Sage took pains to keep their art separate, insisting on separate galleries when their work was shown together in 1954. The current show is called Double Solitaire, an apt metaphor for the companionable rivalry that seemed to describe their life together. In fact, when you look at images from the exhibition, it can sometimes be difficult to guess which artist created which painting. An article in the New York Times explores some of the background of the artists’ relationship and compares the similarities and differences between their art. Unlike other artistic couples, these two seem to have been fulfilled by working side by side.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Picasso—never still, always changing
Just when you might think there’s nothing new to learn about Picasso—or, at least, no innovative way to think about this giant of twentieth century art—along comes an exhibition that can make you think again. At the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts until May, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso, Paris offers the opportunity to get to know him all over again. He was fluid, improvisational, and way ahead of his time, and he kept up an amazing pace over eight decades of making art. Once again, a museum website provides the next best thing to being there. Catch it while it lasts!
Friday, February 18, 2011
Whirlwind London
We’re just back from a week in London where we took advantage of the free guided tours offered by our three favorite museums: the National Gallery, the Victoria & Albert, and the British Museum. Of course, we’re very fortunate to have the chance to visit in person. But the wonderful thing about this interconnected world of ours is that, with the click of a mouse, you can plan a virtual visit to whet your appetite for the real thing.
For example, take a look at this page on the National Gallery’s website. Here you can actually view the Gallery’s collection from a number of different viewpoints: by artist, by century, new acquisitions, or highlights. While you’re on the site, take a closer look at the special exhibitions, like the one on Jan Gossaert, a 16th century Flemish painter. Once you get to know his work, you’ll be looking for more.
At the British Museum, we were thrilled to discover their “Eyeopener Tours.” These 35 to 40 minute tours run throughout the day, and focus on four or five objects in one particular gallery; for example, Japan, Ancient Iraq, Romano-British gods and goddesses, and Money, among others. The tours are led by volunteer docents who are amazingly well informed. You can get a taste of this experience in regard to Egypt here. This is only one of many resources on the Museum’s site.
So, armchair art lovers, rejoice—the treasures of London’s museums are as near as your computer.
