Posts By andrea kirsh

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 » »

London: the V&A’s Aesthetic Movement , Saatchi Gallery; and Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff

The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, through July 17 at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is perhaps most interesting for emphasizing that the Pre-Raphaelites set out to make their living space a Gesamptkunstwerk, complete with paintings, furniture, wallpaper, decorative objects and artistically-clad women, who clearly were part of the decoration; hence the exhibition includes all facets of fine and decorative arts, including  photography, printed books and rarely-seen items of jewelry and clothing.  Women’s clothing, that is. While the men established, developed and prosthelytized on behalf the style, it didn’t extend to their own dress. Even the dandy, ... More » »

Artists’ Projects in France

During a week spent visiting buildings of Le Corbusier in France, one of the happiest surprises was the number of artists who have been invited to produce work in French monuments and sites. We began at the Villa Savoye in Poissy,  just outside Paris.  As we circumnavigated the building to reach the entrance (designed for visitors who arrive by car, the ‘front’ door is 180 degrees from the façade that’s visible on entering the grounds), we saw a large, open structure on the grounds, made of rough logs and thatch, that looked to me like an extravagant version of chickees, ... More » »