Tag Archive "jasper-johns"

Dancing Around the Bride at the PMA

Dancing Around the Bride at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA)through Jan. 21, 2013 is an extraordinary, multi-dimensional exploration of a significant period in American art history. While the ideas it presents are hardly new, the sensitive installation, designed by the artist, Philippe Parreno, emphasizes the multi-disciplinary nature of the mutual personal and artistic influences among Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. This is an exhibition as Gesamkunstwerk, and it offers the best, possible understanding of the interconnected, artistic experimentation in New York City in the late 1950s-1960s. Parreno’s installation pivots around a low, platform ... More » »

News post – Recovering from Sandy, Duchamp exhibit opens, Mulhern’s Sea Dice, opportunities and more!

News In the days since Hurricane Sandy’s devastation of the East Coast, thousands of people have been confronted with unimaginable losses. Many of our friends have suffered damage to their homes, their property, and their artwork, as pictures and articles can attest. But as we’ve also seen, people have stepped up to help one another in a variety of ways. Hyperallergic has posted an instructive list of resources for artists, art organizations, museums and collectors affected by the storm, while 20×200 has issued a print benefiting the American Red Cross’s Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts. Our thoughts are with all those impacted by the storm. ... More » »

Spiritual energy: Jasper Johns and Antony Gormley at Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection

Jasper Johns and Antony Gormley have both reached a rare, almost unbelievable degree of fame for living artists, although in two different ways. After five decades of work, Johns, who was once featured as a character in The Simpsons back in the ’90s, seems to be a household name. The cartoon version of Johns was depicted stealing slices of bread, coat hangers, and a lightbulb from an art gallery. Gormley, on the other hand, is mega-famous in the art world only, renowned in the United States and his native U.K for his sculpture work, but otherwise easily reducible to “the ... More » »

‘Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture’; an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery

There are now two stories about Hide/Seek: the exhibition, and the controversy. This piece will cover the first; a second one will address the controversy. Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, at the National Portrait Gallery, (NPG) , Smithsonian Institution through Feb. 13, 2011) is a serious examination of artistic conventions, particularly those of portraiture, as they concern a subject heretofore unspoken in the polite precincts of mainstream American museums. It addresses the manner, sometimes overt but often hidden, in which sexual difference has been manifest. The artists and their sitters include straight, gay, and the fluid range of ... More » »

‘Americanana’ at the Hunter College Art Galleries, N.Y.C.

In the midst of election season, an exhibition exploring the use of American vernacular imagery and style is particularly apt. The interest in folk art, as with folk tales, is historically associated with nationalism and the search for originary stories that always involve a lot of white-washing, if not outright fictions. In the U.S. the far right is always ready to raise the flag and other symbols associated with 19th century, white, agrarian society – the real America.  Americanana, organized by Katy Siegel for the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, Hunter college (through Dec. 4, 2010) includes thirteen artists ... More » »

At the National Gallery of Art: Selections from the Meyerhoff Collection and ‘Arts of Privacy’

The only thing dull about The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection at the National Gallery of Art: Selected Works (NGA) through May 2, 2010 is the exhibition title.  I’d rather call it, with apologies to Wallace Stevens, Ten Ways of Looking at a Painting, with further apologies for the handful of drawings, prints and 3-dimensional works;  it is overwhelmingly a paintings exhibition.  The works, some already donated, the remainder promised to the NGA, are superb and the curatorial decisions intelligent, provocative and subtle.  Harry Cooper, curator of modern and contemporary art, arranged ten sections, each labeled with a subject to ... More » »

“Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture” at the National Portrait Gallery

Marcel Duchamp, joker that he was, would certainly be amused at the thought that he’s the subject of an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, of all places.  And a lively and fascinating exhibition it is! At least one federal institution is taking a liberal attitude to immigration, albeit legal, as Duchamp became a naturalized citizen in 1955.

Cézanne and Beyond at the PMA

The impact of a great master on his followers is a fascinating topic.  Rodin’s work loomed so imposingly over the next generation of sculptors that they all claimed to dis-own his influence (not entirely truthfully); many did so by returning to direct carving, since Rodin was a modeler whose carved work was executed by assistants.  Cézanne’s followers showed no such anxiety of influence, as can be seen in Cézanne and Beyond at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (through May 17). The exhibition is truly spectacular in the quality of the works and the questions they provoke.

Robert Storr defends his shows

Yale University School of Art Dean, Robert Storr. Thanks China Culture for the picture. We were interested to hear Yale Dean and curator Robert Storr on abstract art, part of a series of 3 lectures at the Met. The series seems to be about contextualizing up-and-coming artists in the canon. Here’s who was under discussion last Saturday: (in the canon already)– Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, Jasper Johns, and Gerhard Richter—and (not there yet but Storr wants to put them in) — Odili Donald Odita, Tom Nozkowski, Mary Heilmann, El Anatsui and Ron Gorchov. Many of the examples Storr used ... More » »

Sand at the Parrish Art Museum

Richard Misrach, Untitled #704-03, 2003, Chromogenic print mounted on plexiglass74 ¾ x 115 ¼, Courtesy the Artist; Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles; and Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York I stumbled on Sand, the show at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton. It sounded like just the ticket for summer vacation art. The exhibit of more than 50 works inspired by sand as a material or a metaphor meanders through time and tastes, including terrific contemporary work and some more conventional stuff from art historical biggies and smallies–from Picasso to Pollack to Fairfield Porter. But the work ... More » »

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