Tag Archive "modernism"

Irregular Edges — Modernism and Caroline Santa and Mauro Zamora’s Precis at Rebekah Templeton

—In this post Sam tells us about a show with Modernist leanings by two local artists.–the artblog editors———————->The focus of Precis, an exhibition by Philadelphia artists Caroline Santa and Mauro Zamora now up in the one-room white box gallery space at Rebekah Templeton, is an escape from the outmoded and perhaps melodramatic implications of modernist composition through an alternative, playful use of its methodologies. This comes across clearly in the playful and energetic works by the two artists, which incorporate modernist tropes such as torn paper, borrowed images, and a light, fluctuating sense of meaning. A sophisticated vocabulary to deal with space Both artists ... More » »

Impresario of Modernism — ‘Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes 1909-1929’ at the National Gallery of Art

Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929) was neither artist, musician, dancer or choreographer, yet contributed crucially to all the arts with his realization of a modernist Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art, or merging of the arts), an idea made famous in the mid 19th-century writings of Richard Wagner, which has been an influence on the visual and performing arts ever since. His company, the Ballets Russes, definitively brought modernism to the world of ballet. Ballet Russes was known extravagant, highly original performances The Ballets Russes was unlike anything its audiences had ever seen: larger-than-life, unconventional, multi-sensory, and often highly-sexualized. It was ballet on ... More » »

Outsider Art and the Mainstream – A Symposium at the PMA

Outsider Art and the Mainstream was held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) on March 1-2 in conjunction with the opening of Great and Mighty Things; Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection (on view through June 9, 2013). The large exhibition includes more than two hundred works by twenty-seven American artists, all of which have been promised to the museum, making the PMA a significant resource for art that, however uneasily, is generally termed outsider. Whenever artists have tired of the deadening effects of academic art standards, they have looked elsewhere for art that they thought ... More » »

Book Reviews: ‘Josiah McElheny; A Prism’ and ‘The Hockemeyer Collection; 20th Century Italian Ceramic Art’

People trained in clay, glass and fiber often wonder why their work is marginalized within the art world and relegated to craft. I suspect it’s because much of the work puts an emphasis on technical virtuosity (a subject that never arises in discussing contemporary art which, these days, is likely to favor the quick and dirty solution) and does not engage issues of interest to the wider art world. Here are two books, one on an artist who works in glass, the other on ceramics, which should interest readers across disciplines.

Power and politics in Africa–Libby in DC

Factory-printed cloth, Nigeria, late 20th century Here are a couple of great things I learned Sunday about traditional African art: white eyes on a mask mean communication with the spiritual world, or elongated female figures represent female beauty. I learned this from my friend Stefanie Taylor’s friend Bonnie Gottlieb. She’s a docent, and she took us–Stefanie, Paul, Murray and me–on our own private tour of both the Contemporary and traditional African art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. Stefanie sporting some of the jewelry she makes Before we got there, however, we stopped at Stefanie’s gallery in Bethesda. ... More » »