Fine Arts
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Remembering Jim Rosenquist
Billboard Painter to Pop Artist
By: - Apr 02nd, 2017For a period of time in the late 1960s I worked in the studio of Pop artist James Rosenquist. He passed away recently at 83. When Jim first arrived in New York he painted billboards high above Times Square. He later used those techniques as a key but undervalued Pop artist.
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Artists As Pinball Wizards
Exhibition at the Elmhurst Museum
By: - Mar 11th, 2017Kings & Queens: Pinball, Imagists and Chicago sets 16 working vintage pinball machines in several galleries with about 30 pieces of art by the pioneers of 1960s and ‘70s Chicago Imagists: Ed Paschke, Karl Wirsum, Suellen Rocca, Ed Flood, Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Christine Ramberg, Roger Brown and Ray Yoshida. The connection, of course, is that the artists were influenced in childhood and adolescence by the art of pinball machines and comic books.
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ICA To Lease Expanded Space
Two if by Sea in East Boston
By: - Mar 07th, 2017When the Institute of Contemporary Art opened its waterfront home there were awards for the dramatic design by Diller Scofido and Renfro. Immediately, however, it was obvious that with 65,000 square feet, and just its top floor for exhibitions, there was no plan for expansion and growth. For the next five to ten years the ICA is leasing a 15,000 square foot industrial place in East Boston. Visitors will commute by ferry to the seasonal Watershed which opens in the summer of 2018.
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Federal Support for the Arts Under Attack
Five Boston Museum Directors Express Concern
By: - Feb 24th, 2017Five Boston museum directors have signed a letter of concern over reports that the National Endowment for the Arts is under threat of being abolished, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Under the conservative agenda of the Trump adminsitration this is an attack on the arts in America. Guarding the Trumps in NY, DC and Palm Beach for a week is on a par with endowment support.
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Kerry James Marshall: Mastry
At Met Breuer
By: - Jan 08th, 2017Through January 29 there is still time to see the stunning and riveting retrospective at New York's Met Breuer. He is among the elite of African American artists of his generation. His work is fresh in its timely subject mater as well as traditional with roots in American genre and social realism.
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Francis Picabia at MoMA
The Finest Modernist You Have Never Heard Of
By: - Jan 08th, 2017The enigmatic modernist, Francis Picabia, suggested that artists change styles as frequently as their shirts. He is the subject of an eclectic and intriguing retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.
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Spectacular Modernist Shchukin Collection
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
By: - Dec 26th, 2016Between 1897 and 1914, Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (Chtchoukkin) 1854 -1936, acquired 275 masterpieces, including 41 Matisses, 50 Picassos, 8 Cézannes, 13 Monets, 16 Gauguins, as well as works by his fellow Russian artists Malevich and Rodchenko. In 1918 the collection was seized by the government under Lenin. Some 127 works are now on view at the Frank Gehry designed Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.
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Touring Chelsea Galleries
A Selection of Exhibitions
By: - Dec 19th, 2016Extracted from a recent tour io Chelsea galleries we present a selection of highlights. The artists include Benny Andrews, Alfred Leslie, Mark di Suvero and Carrie Mae Weems.
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Ai Weiwei Shown in Three NY Galleries
Lisson, Mary Boone and Jeffrey Deitch
By: - Dec 13th, 2016In three concurrent New York gallery exhibitions- Lisson, Mary Boone and Jeffrey Deitch- the dissident Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, has created poignant and roiling new works. This is a massive project by arguably our greatest living artist.
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Ai Weiwei: Laundromat
Jeffrey Deitch Gallery
By: - Dec 13th, 2016Three New York galleries- Jeffrey Deitch, Mary Boone and Lisson Gallery- have collaborated to create a massive, museum-level overview of work by the dissident Chinese artist, Ai Weiewi. This is an interview with the artist in a release from Deitch gallery.
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Grant Wood's American Gothic
Iowa's Most Famous Artist
By: - Dec 10th, 2016American Gothic, arguably the best known and most iconic painting by an American artist, was created by Grant Wood when he was on the dole from the WPA. Artists had to pass in work to get their monthly checks. This painting was part of the inventiry when the relief program was shut down. It was given to the Art Institute of Chicage where it has deliughted viewers ever since.
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Holiday Tour of NY Museums
From MoMA to the Met
By: - Dec 10th, 2016Here is a cheat sheet of ranked museum exhibitions if you plan to be in NY for the holidays
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MASS MoCA Announces Events
Ladie's Choice for Winter
By: - Dec 07th, 2016Sliding into the Holiday season followed by the dead of wintwr Mass MoCA is looking on the bright side. The North Adams based mega museum has posted a full schedule of enticing upcoming events. It's time to mark the calendar.
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Mass MoCA Free to Berkshire Folks
No Charge for Admission Dec. 1 to 21
By: - Nov 26th, 2016The holiday season comes early this year. From December 1 through 21, MASS MoCA opens its doors and waives admission to all Berkshire County residents. MASS MoCA hopes to welcome as many friends and neighbors as possible with its first-ever Free Berkshire County program.
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Legendary Art Dealer Dick Bellamy
Judith E. Stein's Biography Eye of the Sixties
By: - Nov 24th, 2016"Eye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Art" by author Judith E. Stein has fleshed out an essential and enigmatic chapter in contemporary art. While entirely absorbed with the artists he discovered and exhibited Bellamy had an oddly contrarian indifference to making sales. When the artists he championed soared in the red hot art market he was nowhere to be seen. Reflecting his Eurasian heritage Bellamy was more a monk with a begging bowl than an aggressive gallerist.
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2017 Whitney Biennial
Sixty Three Artists to be Shown from March 17 to June 1
By: - Nov 19th, 2016The Whitney Museum of American Art was founded in 1931 and opened its first of several venues in 1931. Initially American art was viewed as inferior to the School of Paris. That shifted after WWII with the ascent of the New York School. Early on the museum mounted Annuals which eventually evolved into Biennials. They have long been regarded as reflecting the latest developments in the field. With 63 participating artists the 2017 Whitney Biennial (March 17 to June 1) continues that tradition.
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Lincoln Center Presents Miwa Matreyek
Animation and Performance Flow
By: - Oct 22nd, 2016Enchantment. Provocation. Rapture by enrapping. The animator Miwa Matreyek performs as a shadow silhouette in two pieces, one that suggests that beauty of the quotidian, and the other which puts us inside human evolution through geologic time from the Big Bang. You are swept into her vision.
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Nick Cave’s Until at MASS MoCA
Bling, Bling, Sparkle, Sparkle
By: - Oct 16th, 2016Bling, bling, bling went our heartstrings during a first encounter with Nick Cave's "Until" which will be on view at MASS MoCA for a year. The installation which has a festive, crowd pleasing appeal is a not readily apparent statement about deaths of African-Americans in police custody in places like Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere.
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Boston Globe Shrinks Fine Arts Coverage
Eliminating Cate McQuaid's Weekly Gallery Column
By: - Sep 21st, 2016Bad news continues for the arts community. The Boston Globe has announced that it is elminating Cate McQuaid's weekly gallery column. Kington Gallery is circulating a petition to have the vital coverage reinstated.
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Susan Erony: Scribe as Artist
Transcribing Text Into Images
By: - Sep 13th, 2016Working in sessions of four hours, word by word, days turned into months as Susan Erony transcribed the 635 page text of The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson. The resultant work has been exhibited in Gloucester but deserves to be more widely known. She is preparing for an exhibition at Gloucster's Trident Gallery. She took a break to discuss the role of text in her practice as a visual artist.
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Carl Belz at 78
For 24 Years Director of Rose Art Museum
By: - Sep 03rd, 2016For 24 years Carl Belz was the director of the Rose Art Museum where he was a champion of regional artists with an emphasis on women. There was an annual major exhibition sponsored by Lois Foster who was later instrumental in his ouster when she and her husband Henry were the primary donors of an addition in their name designed by Graham Gund. Belz passed away recently at the age of 78.
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Mass MoCA Installation by Richard Nonas
The Man in the Empty Space
By: - Aug 22nd, 2016Now in his mid seventies Richard Nonas switched from anthroplogy to sculpture in his thirties. His work is featured in Building Five of MASS MoCA the largest space for contemporary art in North America.
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Gounod's Romeo and Juliet
Santa Fe Opera Orchestra
By: - Aug 22nd, 2016The Santa Fe Orchestra under Harry Bicket charges in the introduction to Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet with a dark gusto. On stage, the Capulets in blue sword fight with the Montagus in red. We quickly cut to the choral summation of the famous tale of ill-fated lover who pave the way to peace among naturally-born enemies.
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Provincetown Arts
31 Years of Publishing
By: - Aug 17th, 2016Mid summer, since 1985, we anticipate the annual issue of Provincetown Arts. The current magazine features whimsical works by the figurative fantasy painter Tabitha Vevers.
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Rockwelling the Boat
Norman's Ersatz Conquest of Abstraction
By: - Aug 03rd, 2016In Norman Rockwell's 1961 Saturday Evening Post illustration "The Connoisseur" a dignified gentleman gazes on a simulacrum of a Jackson Pollock painting. It provided the impetus for a mishegos attempt to locate the representational populist illustrator as responding to the avant-garde art of that formative era.
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