Tag: painting

Frida & I

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And a lot more on display in Brooklyn Museum.

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving was ongoing, a collection of her clothing, jewelry, and other personal possessions like her corsets and prosthetics (themselves works of art), which were rediscovered and inventoried in 2004 after being locked away since Kahlo’s death, in 1954. Photography was strictly prohibited and all I managed was a couple of sneak pics. But, as is always the case in a museum, a whole world of other treasures is waiting to be discovered, photographed, and shared.

Ceremonial Wine Vessel on a Wheeled Phoenix, early 18th century
China, Qing dynasty

Head of Wesirwer, Priest of Montu
Green schist
Late Period, Dynasty XXX, ca 380-342 B.C.

Figure of a Recumbent Jackal (God Anubis)
Wood
Late Period-Ptolemaic Period, ca. 664-30 B.C.E.
From Saqqara

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Ran Hwang (South Korean, b. 1960)
East Wind, 2012
Plastic and metal buttons and beads, metal pins, wood panel

Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregation 18-JA006 (Star 1), 2018
Mixed media with Korean mulberry paper

Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregations (detail)

Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregations

Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregations

Kwang Young Chun
Born Hongchun, South Korea, 1944
Aggregation 15-AU043, 2015
Mixed media with Korean mulberry paper

Philip Pearlstein, b. 1924
Portrait of Linda Nochlin and Richard Pommer, 1968
Oil on canvas

Joan Semmel, b. 1932
Intimacy-Autonomy, 1974
Oil on canvas

Brookyn Museum

February 16th, 2019

Meditation on [New] Mexico

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Hugo Robus (American, 1885-1964)
Untitled (Men and Machines), 1919
Oil on canvas

Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887-1986)
Pink Abstraction, 1929
Oil on canvas

Emil Bisttram (American, 1895-1976)
Ranchos de Taos Church, c. 1937
Oil on canvas

Carlos Orozco Romero (Mexican, 1898-1984)
La barranca (The Ravine), c. 1943-1946
Oil on canvas

Alfredo Ramos Martínez (Mexican, 1871-1946)
La Malinche (Joven de Yalala, Oaxaca) (La Malinche [Young Girl of Yalala, Oaxaca]), c. 1940
Oil on canvas

Philip C. Curtis (American, 1907-2000)
Mountain Village, 1955
Oil on board

Philip C. Curtis (American, 1907-2000)
Mountain Village, 1955 [detail]
Oil on board

Phoenix Art Museum

January 30th, 2019

Contemporary Among Classics

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Classic art was also contemporary once.

Ragnar Kjartansson: Scandinavian Pain & Other Myths was the Southwestern US premiere of work by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976), presented by the Phoenix Art Museum.

It consisted of three major works: the 40-foot long neon installation Scandinavian Pain, along with The End-Venice, Kjartansson’s contribution to the 2009 Venice Biennale during which he secluded himself in a fourteenth-century palazzo and produced one painting per day for six months (the entire duration of Venice Biennale). Each painting depicts his friend and fellow artist Páll Haukur Björnsson, in a Speedo.

Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons
Dress and shoes from the S/S 2018 collection

Art on Dress: Giuseppe Archimboldo

Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn (Dutch, c. 1570-1657)
Portrait of an Old Woman, late  16th-mid 17th century
Oil on canvas

The third work by Ragnar Kjartansson was his superb nine-screen installation that was filmed in one take at the historic Rokeby farm in upstate New York. Named after ABBA’S final album, The Visitors, it records the performances of a group of friends, musicians and artists, playing simultaneously but in different rooms of the mansion. They all play the same song each one enriching it with their own voice, instrument and presence. Kjartansson himself performs most of the time in a bathtub. The film mesmerizes and moves audiences of all ages wherever it is shown. You can watch a recording of the recording, uploaded on YouTube by one of its many admirers.

Anish Kapoor (British, b. 1954)
Upside Down, Inside Out, 2003
Resin and paint

Phoenix Art Museum

January 30th, 2019

Wearable Art

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Taking its rightful place alongside more traditional forms of art.

Alessandro Michele (Italian, b. 1972) for Gucci
Ensemble F/W 2016

Stephen Jones (British, b. 1957)
”Show” Hat, F/W 2013 ”Art School”
Perspex Plexiglas

Deborah Williams Remington (American, 1930-2010)
Dover, 1975
Oil on canvas

Stephen Jones (British, b. 1957)
”Sewing” Hat, S/S 2018
Printed cotton with satin cord and metal bodkin

Rei  Kawakubo (Japanese, b. 1942)
Comme des Garçons, S/S 2018

Rei  Kawakubo (Japanese, b. 1942)
Comme des Garçons, S/S 2018

Rei  Kawakubo (Japanese, b. 1942)
Comme des Garçons, S/S 2018

Rei  Kawakubo (Japanese, b. 1942)
Comme des Garçons, S/S 2018

Viola Frey (American, 1933-2004)
Nude Man, 1989
Glazed ceramic

John Galliano (British, b. 1960) for Maison Margiela
Ensemble Fall 2018

Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977)
Marechal Floriano  Peixoto (from The World Stage: Brazil Series), 2009
Oil on canvas

Phoenix Art Museum

January 30th, 2019

The Spiritualist

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When Hilma af Klint began creating radically abstract paintings in 1906, they were like little that had been seen before: bold, colorful, and untethered from any recognizable references to the physical world. It was years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and others would take similar strides to rid their own artwork of representational content. Yet while many of her better-known contemporaries published manifestos and exhibited widely, af Klint kept her groundbreaking paintings largely private. She rarely exhibited them and, convinced the world was not yet ready to understand her work, stipulated that it not be shown for twenty years following her death. Ultimately, her work was all but unseen until 1986, and only over the subsequent three decades have her paintings and works on paper begun to receive serious attention. [source: The Guggenheim]

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944)

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, was the first major solo exhibition of the artist in the United States, running from October 2018 to April 2019.

December 9th, 2018

Name-calling

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Women’s Words

Betty Tompkins’ Women’s Words, 2016. Installation, acryl on paper, acryl on canvas

∼paired with∼

Sevda Chkoutova’s Untitled, 2018 (Detail). India ink, painted on wall over two floors

From WOMEN.NOW, a group exhibition showcasing contemporary female artists based in Austria and the United States. On view from September 2018 to February 2019, the show united artists from different generations, commenting on women’s role in society and the arts.

Austrian Cultural Forum

December 8th, 2018

I remember

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being a part of you

Body-Self
by Tia Forsman

Body-Self references a 1994 paper, ”How Bodies Remember: Social Memory and Bodily Experience of Criticism, Resistance and Delegitimation following China’s Cultural Revolution” by Arthur and Joan Kleinman.

Tia Forsman graduated from Brown University in May 2019.

∼.∼

Brown University – The List Art Building

Providence, RI

November 24th, 2018

Ennui

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Jacques-Luc Barbier-Walbonne (1769-1860)
Portrait of Antoine-Georges-François de Chabaud-Latour and His Family, 1806
Oil on canvas

Portraiture and history painting come together in this tribute to family devotion. Tenderly instructing his daughter and son, Antoine-Georges-François de Chabaud-Latour gestures toward a monument to his own father, a distinguished military man and engineer. The carved epitaph—he lived and died without reproach—provides a lesson in virtue for the following generations. Chabaud-Latour’s wife, Juliette, stands beside him, nursing their infant son, demonstrating the importance of maternal strength to the future of family and nation. The portrait is situated in the landscape of Nîmes in southern France, home to both the artist and the Chabaud-Latour family. – Museum label

… and a bit of eye-rolling demonstrating that kids will forever be kids (and that boredom is a privilege).

RISD Museum, Providence, RI

November 23rd, 2018

The “Drop”

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”The three members of a middle-class family – a pastor, his wife and their daughter – form a staid group in this painting of a well-decorated interior. The smooth finish of Harry Willson Watrous’ brushwork obscures the insidious reality of racism implied in the work’s title. The ”drop” refers to a pernicious American custom of treating anyone with even a drop of African-American blood as black and discriminating against them on that basis. Watrous’ carefully rendered painting of a mixed-race daughter and her parents suggests that beneath the veneer of egalitarianism and placid family togetherness (portrayed  in this scene), the treatment of African-Americans in the United States was still far from equal.” – Portland Museum of Art

And, guess what… more than a century later, it is still isn’t.

However, had I not read the description I’d never have guessed the Artist’s reference. So captivated was I by the Mother’s silent despair and the Father’s quiet resignation at the Little Girl’s insistent demand, I missed that point completely.

Harry Willson Watrous (U.S., 1857-1940)
The Drop Sinister – What Shall We Do with It?, ca. 1913
Oil on canvas

Portland, ME

November 21st, 2018