The plane to Chicago for the College Art Association (CAA) Annual Meeting left from a concourse I rarely use so I saw different art than usual as part of the airport’s Exhibition Program, which certainly provides the best distraction I’ve found at Philadelphia International Airport. Nick Kripal’s Swarm was a terra cotta landscape of an alternative, multi-culti character with forms cribbed from the kitchen cabinets; what looked like a Moorish dome turned out to have been cast from a pudding mold! I’d love to see him do animations based on them.
Winslow Homer Boy in Boat, Gloucester (1880/81) transparent watercolor, with touches of opaque watercolor and scraping, over graphite, on moderately thick, rough-textured, ivory wove paper, The Art Institute of Chicago, photo courtesy of the museum. I never knew much about watercolor as a technique other than the fact that its early association with amateur painters had prejudiced many art historians, collectors and museums not to treat it sufficiently seriously. Still I recognize major accomplishment when I see it and Winslow Homer is unquestionably at the summit of the field. Sorry to say I didn’t get to the Art Institute of ... More » »