Posts By andrea kirsh

Henry Ossawa Tanner at PAFA: Faith in Blues

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts  (PAFA) is celebrating one of its most illustrious alumni with Henry Ossawa Tanner; Modern Spirit (through April 15, 2012) and it is greatly to be welcomed. While Tanner is well represented in PAFA’s collection and that of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA, which organized a Tanner exhibition in 1991), his work is widely dispersed in public and private collections in the U.S. and France, and the exhibition brings them together and into public view, many for the first time since they were acquired. A deep appreciation of Tanner will involve some work on ...

Rivane Neuenschwander in Dublin, Lygia Pape in London, and a book on Art under Conditions of Political Repression

Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other opened at the New Museum, New York in June, 2010 and I caught up with it at its final stop, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA, on through January 29, 2012). Organized by the two museums, the exhibition was also seen in in St. Louis, Scottsdale and Miami. Neuenschwander is from the first generation of Brazilian artists to come to international attention early in their careers, but she inevitably stands on the shoulders of the Frente and Neo-Concret artists of the late 1950s-1960s (Helio Oticica, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and others). Some ...

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones at the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts

Some hats are designed to protect the wearer – from rain, sun, or falling objects. Others are less utilitarian, but much more fun. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) invited the prominent British milliner, Steven Jones, to create an exhibition from their world-renowned collection and the literally, spectacular result will be on view at the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts through April 15, 2012. Jones, who’s created hats for both the British royal family and the Rolling Stones, clearly had the time of his life.

‘Resonance; Looking for Mr. McLuhan’ at Pratt Manhattan Gallery

2011 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Marshall McLuhan and to mark the occasion, Pratt held an exhibition, Resonance; Looking for Mr. McLuhan, curated by Berta Sichel, director of the department of audiovisuals and chief-curator of film and video at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and Mariano Salvador, also of the Reina Sophia; it ran Oct. 21-Dec. 21, 2011. In the 1960s McLuhan was widely derided by fellow academics for his extremely popular books that dealt with the implications of changing technology upon human relations.   Forty-five years after the publication of Understanding Media (1962) and ...

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 ...

Books for Holiday Gifts 2011 (part 2)

Suzanne Glover Lindsay, Daphne S. Barbour and Shelley G. Sturman, et al Edgar Degas Sculpture (Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalog) (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2010)   ISBN 978-0691148977 This sumptuous and scholarly book will be welcomed by everyone interested in Degas’ work or in nineteenth-century sculpture, as well as by artists interested in bronze casting.  It is highly unusual for collection catalogs to be of interest, other than to researchers; however, the National Gallery of Art owns 52 of the 69 original works in wax, clay and plaster that survived from Degas’ studio, as well ...

Art Basel Miami Beach 2011

I decided to take it easy at the fairs this year, assuming that, as with large conferences, I’d certainly discover interesting work but was unlikely to predict ahead of time just where I’d find it. One obvious new feature of Art Basel/Miami Beach this year was the prominence of furniture. Some of it was part of the work on display, such as Dan Peterman‘s Running Tables at Klosterfelde, Berlin, despite the fact that the staff were sitting on the built-in seats to eat their lunch; I assume his recycled plastics can handle the wear.

2011 Books for Holiday Gifts (part 1)

Here are three books, all associated with design, which are likely to provoke thought and wonder among visually-literate audiences. The Infamous Chair; 220̊C Virus Monobloc Arnd Friedrichs and Kerstin Finger, eds. (Berlin: Gestalten, 2010) ISBN 978-3-89955-317-8 This book is at once an homage to and critique of those ubiquitous, cheap, plastic chairs, anonymous and nameless, that litter our environment.  Designers, it turns out, have a name for them, derived from their method of manufacture: monobloc, as well as a high degree of animus towards them. The chairs are created from a single, plastic material, in a single process: forced into ...

Two Recent Books on Socially-Engaged Art

A number of books and catalogs have come out which concern art with a social and/or political focus. This post looks at two which were recently published in Berlin: Art and Agenda; Political Art and Activism, Robert Klanten et al, eds. ( Berlin: Gestalten, 2011) ISBN 978-3-89955-342-0 visible; where art leaves its own field and becomes visible as part of something else, a project by Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010) ISBN 978–1-934105-0

Typography at MoMA

The clearest possible introduction to the thinking behind new typefaces is part of a larger exhibition, Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (through January 30, 2012), but the typography section works perfectly well on its own. Featuring the recent acquisition of twenty-three digital typefaces – a first for MoMA’s design department -  this sub-section of the exhibition is the most lucid and informative introduction to design thinking I’ve seen at the museum. It’s an introduction to typography primarily for readers, rather than designers.