Click to enlarge Pamela Polston “Looking Away #1 & #2” by Jonathan Waters Sixteen artists and a poet are contributing to this year’s ‘Expositions’ exhibition, presented by the Helen Day Art CenterRead More →
Click to enlarge Courtesy of Helen Day Art Center Untitled, 2008 Pat SteirThe abstract paintings of seem to involve physical dexterity as much as artistic sensibility. At 76, this acclaimed scion ofRead More →
Click to enlarge Hugh Townley’s “Horizontal 8” Sometimes the exhibitions are so radiant that you want to soak up them like the sun. “Director’s Choice”, currently at the BigTown Gallery in Rochester, is one of them. Curated by director Anni Mackay, this exuberant group exhibition showcases the work of sevenRead More →
The Lees’ building at 220 West 57th Street was originally a clubhouse for the American Society of Civil Engineers, whose members no doubt enjoyed its delicate facade as they filled and filled its 400-seat auditorium – until the building becomes a Schrafft restaurant. Lee’s, which was across the street inRead More →
Click to enlarge Pamela Polston “Sweet Spill” (left) and “Fabricate” Cal channelThe art of is a matter of dichotomy – in fact, multiple dichotomies. It invites the contemplation of opposites, even of what opposing means. An exhibition of Lane’s work in plasma-cut steel and mixed media is mind-blowing, as mostRead More →
Illustration from “Subway Art” by Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper. (Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper) In 1972, New York City Mayor John Lindsay declared a “war on graffiti”, with the aim of eradicating the “plague” that afflicts subway trains. At the time, the city was on the verge of bankruptcyRead More →
Lancaster has a new public art officer who should be familiar to many in the city’s art community. Heidi Leitzke is an artist and recently served as Adjunct Professor and Gallery Director at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design. “I’m so grateful to live in a city that valuesRead More →
Workers this week began installing Brea’s newest piece of public art, “Oasis.” Worth around $2.5 million, it may be the most expensive piece of public art in the county. Artist Douglas Hollis said he liked to describe the work more as a public space than a traditional sculpture. ‘Oasis’ willRead More →
It’s easy to dismiss the two glowing balls installed at the newly opened Fault Line Park in the East Village as just another silly or simplistic public art project from the city of San Diego. But Christine Jones, the Arts and Culture Commission’s new public art program manager, argues forcefullyRead More →
PPoetry and painting were once called “the brother arts”, although this comfortable phrase ignores the sibling rivalry between them. The verbal and the visual operate in different dimensions: the language unfolds in time, but the painted imagery is static and occupies space, which is why Cézanne indignantly asks a modelRead More →
Photo: K. Ignatiadis, courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery Compared to good art, “it’s much harder to talk about great art,” said sculptor Charles Ray, of Robert Gober’s spooky work, the subject of a 40-year retrospective survey at MoMA, titled ” The Heart Is Not a Metaphor.” “IfRead More →
There’s almost always something worth seeing at the American University Museum. As director and curator Jack Rasmussen says, the school’s year-round exhibition schedule — which features four to six new shows every two months — is like a three-ring circus. Much like the marquee, it can be difficult to knowRead More →
A delicate balancing act unfolds in the streets of Foggy Bottom, where the fourth edition of a biennial sculpture exhibition has taken up residence for the next few months. Questions of taste, scale, durability and subject have all been carefully weighed, as they often are when it comes to publicRead More →
The paintings of Belgian surrealist René Magritte, famous for book covers, college dorm walls, record albums, and myriad other subtle and less subtle pop culture appropriations, are a bit like epigrams: clever, concise and not always as deep as they first seem. To see many of them together in oneRead More →
NEW YORK – Decades before John Updike wrote about flat-bellied nymphs parading in bikinis, and long before Slim Aarons focused his camera on the tanned, toned people of St. Tropez, Reginald Marsh was sketching at the beach. He was attracted, like any painter, to naked bodies, but he did notRead More →
“Ellsworth Kelly: Panel Paintings 2004-2009” includes seven examples of geometric abstractions by the 90-year-old painter. (Photo by Jerry L. Thompson) Ellsworth Kelly, who turned 90 in May, probably deserves a big sheet cake — that is, a giant retrospective — somewhere. But he will have to settle for something smaller.Read More →
Clearly visible within the neat borders of a piece of paper is the word “study”, French for study, in a detail of Georges Braque’s boiling 1929 painting, “The round table.” Most likely, given Braque’s interest in music and the bourgeois domesticity he cultivated, the study in question is a pianoRead More →
After seeing the exhibition of works by Albrecht Durer at the National Gallery of Art, I was happy to emerge into gray skies, a bit of drizzle and emptier streets than usual. This exhibition of drawings, watercolors and prints borrowed from Albertina Museum in Vienna, is so good and captivatingRead More →
Roy Lichtenstein. The painter’s name is linked to his iconic comic book images of women, their thoughts rising in text bubbles above tentacles of tousled hair, mounds of tears streaming from their eyes. In 1993, a very successful retrospective of Lichtenstein at the Guggenheim, with some 200 pieces, sealed theRead More →
In 1969 and 1970, sculptor Michael Heizer moved 240,000 tons of rock across the Nevada desert, digging two enormous trenches, each 50 feet deep and 30 feet wide and together spanning 1,500 feet, at the east end of Mormon Mesa. In 1970, artist Robert Smithson gathered heavy equipment to layRead More →
It’s usually not a good idea to censor a mural you’ve commissioned, especially when that mural is part of an uncommissioned street art show. When the director and curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeffrey Deitch, whitewashed a mural by Italian artist Blu in December, the episode perfectly illustratedRead More →
Going to the Jan Steen exhibition at the National Gallery is a bit surreal, but in a totally rewarding way. It’s like partying, Sunday school and visiting a museum all at the same time. Add to that that these paintings, created hundreds of years ago, are as up-to-date as theRead More →