Fine Arts
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Mass MoCA’s Phase Three Renovations
Major Artists Chosen for Long-term Installations
By: - Nov 16th, 2014On November 17 Mass MoCA announces plans for the renovation and programming of 130,000 square feet of industrial space as the final phase of development for its North Adams campus. Planned to open in 2016 the museum must match a state grant for $25.4 million. Works from the estates of Robert Rauchenberg and Louise Bourgeoise will be on view in addition to installations by Laurie Anderson, Jenny Holzer, James Turrell and Gunnar Schoenbeck.
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Water & Earth : A Call to Protect Fragile Ecosystems
At Gallery 51 in North Adams, MA
By: - Nov 15th, 2014The exhibition's curators, Julia Morgan-Leamon and Sarah Sutro, have brought together ten national and international artists, who are committed in their work to affect the environment and preserve our ecology by producing works that are mindful and attempt to encourage the visitor to live with care. The individual works are beautifully made and thoughtfully presented. It is a cohesive exhibition, well worth seeing - at Gallery 51, North Adams, MA, until November 30th, open daily from 10 am to 6 pm.
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The Getty Center Cost $1.3 Billion
Destination for 1.3 Million Annual Visitors
By: - Nov 14th, 2014Recently we were among the 1.3 million annual visitors to the Getty Center in California. The Richard Meier designed complex opened in 1997 at a cost of some $1.3 billion. While spectacular in scale and cliff top site the museum is oddly generic displaying a thin permanent collection with a handful of very expensive acquisitions through some curatorial hanky panky.
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Abstract Expressionist Arshile Gorky
Exploring Boston/ Watertown Armenian Heritage
By: - Nov 11th, 2014Arshile Gorky painted several portraits of himself with his mother. They were based on a precious photograph. She died during the Armenian Genocide. The child emigrated to America and grew up in the Boston/ Watertown Armenian community. The artist, Martin Mugar, discusses family tradition and his Armenian heritage as it relates to the early years and art education of the seminal abstract expressionist.
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Framing the Rose
De Gustibus
By: - Nov 06th, 2014When not installing exhibitions Rose Art Museum preparator, the artist Roger Kizik, was encouraged by director Carl Belz and then Joe Ketner to design and create hand crafted frames for singular works in the collection. One of the most successful of these was for a painting from Marsden Hartley's German series. While viewing the Hartley exhibition at the LA Couunty Museum of Art we were furious to find the painting reframed generically. Kizik responds to this issue.
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Poetic Whimsy Spoken in Form and Motion
Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde To Iconic
By: - Nov 05th, 2014Alexander Calder's brilliant abstract works revolutionized modern sculpture and made him one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. This wonderful exhibition brings together 40 of the artist's mobiles (kinetic) and stabiles ( stationary) to explore how Alexander Calder introduced the visual vocabulary into American cultural vernacular. At this once in a generation show, the power of his poetic mastery of elegant form, balance and motion is underscored by his infectious personality of delight and whimsy.
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Marsden Hartley: The German Paintings 1913 to 1915
LA County Museum of Art to November 30
By: - Nov 05th, 2014Arriving in Paris in 1912, Marsden Hartley, then 35, met two German officers and joined them in Berlin. From 1913 to 1915, and his return to the States, Hartley created a brilliant series of works inspired by and on equal footing with Europe's leading modernists. These works are now on view at the LA County Museum of Art.
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James Hampton at the Smithsonian
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation's Millennium
By: - Nov 04th, 2014James Hampton is considered one of the great American folk artist. For 14 years, Hampton created the Throne using various shimmering metallic foils, old furniture, pieces of cardboard, old light bulbs, shards of mirror and old desk blotters. He had pinned it together with tacks, glue, and tape.
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LA Museums
A Week on the Run
By: - Oct 31st, 2014Enduring fits of road rage during a week in LA we made daily visits to great museums. This is an initial report which will continue.
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Hampton's the Throne of the Third Heaven.
By: - Oct 30th, 2014It's hard to uncover Hampton's intuitions or thoughts processes that went into making of the Throne.
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Shadows
Warhol at LA Moca through February 2
By: - Oct 30th, 2014Edge to edge LA MoCA is showing the 102 silk screen paintings comprising Andy Warhol's 1978-79 series Shadows. Viewing this dense installation, on view through February 2, entailed no heavy lifting. Andy called the series "Disco Decor."
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Modern Spirit: The Art of George Morrison
Heard Museum Phoenix to January 12
By: - Oct 28th, 2014The Modern Spirit: The Arts of George Morrison is a five venue traveling exhibition which is on view at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona through January 12. Morrison (1919-2000) left the Chippewa people of Lake Superior to study at the Arts Student League in 1943. He enjoyed success in New York with numerous gallery and national museum exhibitions. In 1970 he returned to teach in Minnesota where he primarily lived and worked for the remainder of his life. As an abstract artist Morrison defies narrow definitions of American Indian Art. His life and work did much to expand that.
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Double Rhythm Writings about Painting
Jean Helion Collected with an Introduction by Deborah Rosenthal
By: - Oct 27th, 2014The notion of the hermeneutical way of thinking is evident throughout Helion’s writings. One intriguing essay tries to untangle the origins of Abstraction’s roots in Seurat and Cezanne. Who was more important in influencing Abstraction? Helion comes down on the side of Seurat. Cezanne, he feels, is still attached to the real space of objects and is more Janus-like looking backward as well as forward. Seurat’s work lends itself to further reduction, which is crucial to abstraction.
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State of the Art in Arkansas
Crystal Bridges Captures America's Heartbeat
By: - Oct 20th, 2014In Bentonville, Arkansas, a stunning museum by Moshe Safdie houses one of the great collections of American Art, and celebrates the future too in 'State of Art."
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Covert Operations: Investigating the Known Unknowns
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art to January 15
By: - Oct 18th, 2014The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art received a grant from the Tremaine Foundation in support of the ambitious and insightful special exhibition Covert Operations: Investigating the Known Unknowns. It has been installed for several months in the three galleries of a former movie theater. The provocative project plays well in a staunchly red state dealing with unchecked undocumented immigration.
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Xanti Schawinsky Eclipse
Bauhaus Artist at Broadway 1602 to Nov. 22
By: - Oct 05th, 2014Bauhaus artist Xanti Schawinsky (1904-79), of Polish-Jewish origin, immigrated in 1936 to the United States. After his years at the Bauhaus he continued an intense and ultra creative journey from his radical post-Bauhaus theater work at the Black Mountain College, the innovative designs for the New York World Fair in 1939, to his unparalleled surreal drawing and painting work throughout the 1940s influenced by war and immigration (on show at the Drawing Center in tandem with our exhibition). In the 1960s Schawinsky entered a new phase of creation with an intense and enigmatic body of work of abstract and optical paintings, the Eclipses and Spheras.
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Mark Favermann Functional Abstraction
Newbury College Exhibition
By: - Oct 01st, 2014Mark Favermann is known to readers of Berkshire Fine Arts for reviews of Boston theatre and articles on fine arts, architecture and design. From October 15 through December 5 an exhibition of his work Functional Abstraction will be on view at Newbury College in Brookline, Mass.
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Susan Erony’s Redeeming Pessimism
Trident Gallery Gloucester, Mass.
By: - Sep 12th, 2014In the heart of downtown Gloucester, a short walk from the renovated and expanded Cape Ann Museum of Art is the ambitious Trident Gallery. Unlike the tourist kitsch of the majority of Gloucester and Rockport galleries this venue speaks to the historic role of Cape Ann as a vibrant modernist art colony. Susan Erony is an example of the small but seminal community of professional artists represented by gallerist Matthew Swift. In his catalogue essay published here he offers an insightful overview of the issues and work of a concerned artist.
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Modern Art in the Berkshires
Clark Curator David Breslin Part Two
By: - Sep 12th, 2014Through October 13 the new special exhition galleries of the Clark Art Instiute feature Make It New: Abstract Painting from the National Gallery of Art 1950-1975. This is part two of a dialogue with Clark curator David Breslin who worked with Harry Cooper of the National Gallery. We discussed how this changes art history and the impact of the exhibition on showing modern art in the Berkshires.
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Clark Launches New Galleries with Make It New
Selection of Mid Century Abstraction from the National Gallery
By: - Sep 11th, 2014Clark curator, David Breslin, worked with Harry Cooper of the National Gallery for a special exhibition launching the spacious new galleries designed by Tadao Ando. For long time friends of the Clark it is a bold move into issues of 20th century art. This is the first of two parts of a dialogue with Breslin about the impact of the exhibition, a related seminar, and what this means for the future of modernism in the Berkshires.
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Brice Marden Discusses Cheap Shots
At 75 an American Master
By: - Sep 08th, 2014Brice Marden is widely admired as one of the foremost abstract artists of his generation. He spoke with the poet Vincent Katz during a recent symposium Make It New? Conversations on Mid-Century Abstraction at the Clark Art Institute During a break we spoke with him and also researched his experiences as an undergraduate at Boston Unversity and transition to graduate study at Yale.
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The Koons Phenomenon
Reacting to Jed Perl's Essay in New York Review of Books
By: - Sep 08th, 2014As Brice Marden commented in a symposium at the Clark "I haven't made up my mind about Jeff Koons. But it's not for lack of information." He's not the only one that's hanging on the fence. Here Martin Mugar responds to a review of Koons by the always fiesty Jed Perl.
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An Update with Michael Conforti
Clark Art Institute's Globe Trotting Director
By: - Sep 07th, 2014Completing a $145 million renovation and expansion the Clark Art Institute repoened this summer. The occasion was launched with a stunning range of special exhibitions. During a recent opening of Magna Carta we asked the museum's fast moving director, Michael Conforti, for an overview of the season and when we might expect to see Treasures from the Prado?
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What’s Magna About Clark’s Carta
Williamstown Display of Seminal 1215 Document
By: - Sep 06th, 2014The Barons of England forced King John to sign Magna Carta in 1215. It limited his Divine Rights and created a Constitutional Monarchy laying a foundation of British Common Law and the eventual creation of Parliament. A less than perfect document it was annuled a few months later then revived several times in later years. One of only four copies of the original document is on display as the special exhibiton Radical Words: From Magna Carta to the Constitution on view at the Clark Art Institute through November 1.
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Boston Modern by Judith Bookbinder
Definitive Study of Boston Expressionism
By: - Aug 18th, 2014Judith Bookbinder's 2005 publication Boston Modern: Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism is the definitive study of this important but neglected movement. Her study is meticulously researched and documented. This is the catalogue for the exhibition that the Museum of Fine Arts has failed to deliver. Significantly most of the Boston Expressionists were Jews struggling with Biblical constraints against the graven image.
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