December 2011 Archive

The late, great Twins Seven-Seven at Indigo

You can find and admire work by an internationally known and feted artist, Twins Seven-Seven, who died this past year, right inside the Crane, at Indigo Arts.

News – Joan Mitchell grants, Whitney Biennial list, Helen Frankenthaler and more…

News Joan Mitchell Foundation grants The Joan Mitchell Foundation announced its 2011 Painters and Sculptors Grant Program recipients — 25 artists who will each receive $25,000. Among the winners are Philadelphians Virgil Marti, Jackie Tileston, and former Philly artist Anabeth Rosen.  Congratulations! Here’s the full list: Diana Al-Hadid, Brooklyn, NY Nicole Awai, Brooklyn, NY Keith Benjamin, Cleves, OH William Cordova, Miami, FL Cicely Cottingham, West Orange, NJ Florine Demosthene, Brooklyn, NY Daniel Douke, Fallbrook, CA Julie Green, Corvallis, OR Tommy Hartung, Ridgewood, NY Janelle Iglesias, Provincetown, MA Gary Kachadourian, Baltimore, MD Simone Leigh, Brooklyn, NY Andrew Lenaghan, Brooklyn, NY Anne Lindberg, Kansas City, MO Virgil ... More » »

Marie Antoinette returns to Gallery Joe

Further Tales of Young Marie Antoinette at Gallery Joe continues Marilyn Holsing’s fascination with the notorious French queen. The exhibition generally avoids presenting an overly sympathetic view of the royal, who may or may not be deserving of her disgraced reputation. Instead, in the imagined scenes, young Marie’s identity serves as a jumping off point for the artist. Meticulously detailed, Holsing’s works on paper resemble tapestries from a distance, complete with toile illustrations.

Americana reimagined in PAFA’s “here.”

America is still feeding off it’s old myths–the cowboy and the limitless landscape, the road-trip escape, the huckster medicine show, the American Dream, home sweet home, the decorous South, the heroic founding fathers, the grass-roots democracy.

Nick Cassway’s vinyl portraits at J.O.G.

Nick Cassway’s show of portraits of friends at JOG gallery has the immediacy of the snapshots that people post on the internet–unselfconscious, overindulgent, light-hearted and intimate. These are images that our ancestors eschewed–not that they didn’t do these things, but they didn’t parade their behavior in public or preserve the carefree moments for posterity.

News – ONWARD 2012, The New, New Masses, and more…

NEWS The Nicola Midnight St. Claire (temporarily The New, New Masses) The gloriously quirky art publication The Nicola Midnight St. Claire held an auction in order to change the site’s name for a month. So if you go to the website looking for the St. Claire you will instead find The New, New Masses with a funny–but slippery–video message about the spirit of giving, consumerism, and internet freedom, plus some holiday “gifs” for everyone to enjoy. Macaulay Culkin, anyone?

Art movies for holiday pleasures – Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Waste Land

If you missed them on the big screen like I did, you can still see these two recent art movies on DVD — from Netflix or from your library. Cave of Forgotten Dreams I heard the interview with Werner Herzog, director of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, on Fresh Air and it sounded like a fantastic documentary. The filmmaker and his crew get special access to the Chauvet Cave in Southern France, with wall drawings made some 32,000 years ago, that were just discovered in 1994. Herzog’s movie, shot in 3D, has lots of fantastic footage of the cave paintings and ... More » »

Bridgette Mayer reopens with Karmic Abstraction

The show Karmic Abstraction marks the much anticipated reopening of Washington Square’s Bridgette Mayer Gallery. Closed for renovations throughout much of 2011, the gallery has a fresh and expanded interior set to handle all of the large-scale works in a show of this kind. Karmic Abstraction is an exhibition by sixteen nationally and internationally recognized artists. Conceptually, it seeks to tap into the multitude of ways in which standing before a work of art can affect the viewer, as well as the ideas and actions that define the individual artists and their personal histories.

Art Miami and Design Miami, 2011

On the way to Art Miami, held this year in the midst of a group of other fairs in Wynwood, across the bay from Miami Beach, I ran into Jason Mussen who was heading off to see a friend at Scope, one block south.  Jason had come to Miami to do Hennessy Youngman Presents: His History of Art at the NADA fair on December 1, and commented that the entry price to Art Basel Miami Beach was prohibitive. It was. I mentioned that those of us in Philadelphia wish him well, but also wish his descriptor, living in New York ... More » »

2011 Liberta Awards!

Looking over our shoulders, this was a year with some good shows in spite of the tough economy.  Also in spite of the economy, West Collects adds an infusion of dough into its collecting pouch — and earmarks $100,000 a year for Phily artists! Meanwhile artblog had some excitement – we won the Knight Arts Challenge for our art safaris and fundraised successfully to match that grant; we lost the maps&listings (boo hoo–we miss them!) and took on some new writers and helpers. We’re sorry to see three artists we admired pass on:  Warren Angle; Twins Seven Seven; Walter Edmonds. ... More » »