Posts By andrea kirsh

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.

‘Living as Form’; Creative Time’s Summit and Exhibition in the old Essex St. Market

  Creative Time has been one of the most challenging and exciting visual art presenters in the country over its 37-year history, with a record of commissioned projects that have been novel, imaginative and remarkably artistically successful. That’s saying a great deal for an organization that has asked artists to do things they likely haven’t done before, or haven’t done in the proposed circumstances. Furthermore, it has taken art out of its designated venues and presented it to unfiltered, urban audiences. The organization has ferreted out unlikely venues. Some took opportunistic advantage of real estate in transition, such as the ... More » »

Martha Wilson, Nick Cave and Pepon Osorio in New York City

Age was something that happened to Other People, so it was startling to walk into P.P.O.W. Gallery to see a huge, poster-sized photograph of Martha Wilson in her exhibition I have become my own worst fear (through Oct. 8, 2011).  I hadn’t seen Wilson in twenty-five years and, turning to her dealer, Penny Pilkington (whom I’ve seen intermittently during the more than twenty years we’ve been aquainted, so we’ve aged slowly for each other) I said, I guess we’ve all gotten older.

‘LoL; A Decade of Antic Art’ at the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore

This exhibition inaugurated Sue Spaid’s directorship at the Contemporary with a bang and a guffaw (and quite a few chuckles). LOL; A decade of antic art was a tightly-packed survey of artists or collaboratives whose work during the past decade involved satire, parody and pranks which ranged from engaged political seriousness to everyday fun. The exhibition ran from June 10-Sept. 4, 2011, and I apologize for getting there the final weekend, which makes this review retrospective. It was well worth the100-mile trip from Philadelphia.

Filming Breugel: Lech Majewski’s “The Mill and the Cross”

Films about artists tend to focus on the unruly details of their lives, which is no great surprise, since showing them painting is about as interesting as … well, you know the old saw about watching paint dry. The Mill and the Cross is a rare film about an artist that includes neither angst, intrigue, nor sexual dalliance, although the Spanish soldiers who occupied Flanders d uring Bruegel’s day provide some rather explicit violence.

Unsanctioned Art for the Public: A review of two books

Carlo McCormack in collaboration with Wooster Collective’s Marc and Sara Schiller, Trespass; A history of uncommissioned public art (Cologne: Taschen, 2010) ISBN978-3-8365-0964-0 Urban Interventions; Personal projects in public spaces, Robert Klanten and Matthias Hübner, eds. (Berlin: Gestalten Verlag, 2010) ISBN 978-3-89955-291-1 Both of these large, profusely-illustrated books address the same general phenomenon: artists’ uninvited interventions in the urban environment.

The debut of an occasional series: One Work Worth the Trip

As I was leaving the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA, or The Met) on a Sunday afternoon in July, I followed the line of people waiting to get into the Alexander McQueen exhibition. The line ran the entire length of the corridor of the 19th century galleries, took a left turn where it continued through the enfilade of Near Eastern galleries and ended somewhere on the mezzanine balcony. It was 3:45,  and I doubted everyone would get inside the exhibition, much less have time to see it properly. Now, the McQueen exhibition was spectacular – literally and figuratively – but ... More » »

Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus at the PMA

Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus brings a group of extraordinary paintings, drawings and prints by Rembrandt and his pupils to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA; organized by the PMA, the Louvre and the Detroit Institute of Arts, the exhibition is in Philadelphia through Oct. 30, 2011). It was conceived as a thematic exhibition exploring a question about Christian imagery, but the works can be viewed in many ways and will interest visitors for a wide range of reasons.  Rembrandt’s work is rarely seen in Philadelphia, so let me begin with a short list of works from the exhibition, ... More » »

The Seduction of Virtual Flesh: Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe at the MMA

If you’re not already familiar with the form, Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA, or The Met, through Aug. 14, 2011)  will introduce an under-appreciated medium at its height; and high it was. Popes and royalty chose pastels rather than painted portraits on occasion, as anyone will know who saw the wonderful exhibition of Jean-Étienne Liotard at the Frick Collection in 2006. It included the marvelous pastel portraits that Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, commissioned of her children, including the 7 year old Marie Antoinette (see below), who would marry Louis XV of ... More » »

Dublin: Mairead O’hEocha at Douglas Hyde Gallery and Sarah Browne at Project Arts Centre

Mairead O’hEocha’s paintings are a stealth project.  Her exhibition, via An Lár (An Lár is used on Irish road signs to indicate the town center), at Trinity College’s Douglas Hyde Gallery (through July 13, 2011), consists of purportedly deadpan views of contemporary Ireland. They’ve been accepted as such by critics and by the curator who wrote the introduction to the exhibition, which places O’hEocha in the tradition of Corot, Morandi, and Maureen Gallace (who does, indeed, paint deadpan Irish landscapes). These viewers have been taken in by the paintings’ craftsmanship, the subtlety of their restrained pallet, and the enduring popularity ... More » »