Posted in Art, Art History, Artistic Identity, Painting, Things to Read on Mar 30th, 2011
ShareWE KNOW ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979) as a poet. An eminent woman of letters, she was poet laureate of the United States (1940-50) at a time that title carried weight. Deeply private, she avoided publicity as well as the public, steered clear of academic and literary discourse. She deflected blatant biographical interpretations of her work, refusing [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Painting on Mar 23rd, 2011
ShareWHAT WE LIKE TO CALL THE “MODERNIST GRID” is really not modern at all. It is the application to painting of a structural pattern that is so ancient it can almost be thought of, in Platonic terms, as an Ideal Form. Grid patterns determine the layout of streets in antiquity on different continents. The grid [...]
Posted in Art and Politics, Culture Cues, Painting, Photography, Things to Read on Mar 9th, 2011
SharePREVIOUS MENTION OF SHERI’S RANCH BROTHEL in Pahrump, Nevada got me wondering. Could this be where Nevada’s annual Cowboy Poetry Festival takes place? Harry Reid was on his feet bemoaning H.R. I, which seeks to defund National Public Broadcasting:
It eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. [...]
ShareTonalism developed from two European springs: the French Barbizon School, by way of its American disciples, and Aestheticism. Practiced from the mid-19th century into the early 20th, it was less a coherent movement than a shared sensibility among Europhile American artists. Chief among these were George Inness and his followers and James McNeil Whistler, American [...]
Posted in Art, Art Writing, Collage, Painting on Jan 21st, 2011
ShareTHE WEEKS BETWEEN MID-DECEMBER AND EARLY JANUARY are a slow news time in the galleries. That makes it a very good time to introduce artists whom galleries are interested in taking aboard or ones they simply like but cannot accommodate on the roster. Denise Bibro’s Winter Salon is a lively sampler of 21 artists, six [...]
ShareCATHERINE MAIZE IS A DELIGHTFUL FIND, one of the loveliest still life painters at work today. I had seen her painting in real life a few years ago at William Baczek Fine Art in Northhampton, MA. It was quite by accident. I was on the road to New Hampshire. It was lunchtime. I was hungry [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Culture Cues, Painting, Things to Read on Jan 5th, 2011
ShareDOES MICHAEL FRIED LIKE ART? Anyone who has dragged themselves through his Absorption and Theatricality has to wonder. It is tempting to push the question a bit further and ask just what it is that he sees when he looks at art. Too often, it seems as though he sees only himself and his own position [...]
Posted in Art, Artistic Identity, Painting on Nov 29th, 2010
SharePHILEMONA WILLIAMSON PAINTS PRETEEN FEMALES who float in pairs across canvas with the lightness of schoolgirls at a moon-struck tea party. There is a charm, even a sweetness, to them that sets them far afield from the surrealist frisson to which the exhibition lays claim. Figures drift and turn in gravity-free [...]
Posted in Art, Art Education, Artistic Identity, Culture Cues, Painting on Nov 27th, 2010
ShareHEDDY ABRAMOWITZ REPORTED EARLIER on an exhibition in Jerusalem that centered on the work of Francis Cunningham and several students. Her conclusion—a regretful one—was that there is no telling what road a student might take. Some embrace their training, put it to work and build upon it. Others discard it to follow their bliss.
It is [...]
Posted in Art, Art Education, Painting on Nov 18th, 2010
ShareBy Heddy Breuer Abramowitz
THE AXIOM “THOSE WHO CAN, DO; THOSE WHO CAN’T TEACH” reveals an attitude of disdain towards teaching that reduces those who shape future generations to ones that haven’t made the grade. In art, it is more true to say that if one can’t do, it is unlikely that one can teach. Even [...]