fine art criticism

“PRAYER & TRANSCENDENCE” now at Washington, DC’s Textile Museum

THE TEXTILE MUSEUM at the George Washington University Museum has organized a fascinating exhibition that explores the role and iconography of classic prayer carpets–a subject I knew nothing about, but which I enjoyed thoroughly under the guidance of a superb docent.

“Pictures From Home” on Broadway: from book to stage, and into your heart

PICTURES FROM HOME currently running thru April 30 is the most delightful and thought-provoking play currently gracing the Broadway stages at this very moment. Featuring the tried-and-true Danny Burstein, Nathan Lane, and Zoë Wanamaker – three stellar actors at their very best – the play is wowing audiences with loads of laughter, wisps of tears, and nostalgia to boot, for one hour and forty-five intermissionless minutes. As to be expected, with such accomplished illuminate, be prepared to add a 7-minute tsunami of an uproariously well-deserved curtain bows.

A REDISCOVERED LINCOLN PORTRAIT AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, WASHINGTON, DC

THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY is currently displaying a remarkable portrait of Abraham Lincoln.The nine-foot-tall portrait by W.F.K. Travers, done from life in 1864-1865, is one of only three known full-length paintings of Lincoln. For decades, it hung in relative obscurity in the Madison, NJ, town hall. Art collector and benefactor Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge established the Hartley Dodge Foundation in the early 20th century and filled the municipal building with her collection. She added the Travers portrait to the walls of the town hall “after Congress dithered over its purchase for the Capitol” in the 1920s.

THE FREER GALLERY’S CENTENNIAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

THE FREER GALLERY IN Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian’s first art museum on the National Mall, is celebrating its centennial this year. Opening in 1923, it was built to house the Asian and Near Eastern collections of Charles Lang Freer, one of the “titans of industry” who made vast fortunes in America’s Gilded Age.

Freer (1854-1919) was born into a family of modest means in Kingston, N.Y. He went to work in a cement factory after his mother died when he was fourteen, then gradually worked his way up the manufacturing pipeline, securing ever-higher positions at the New York, Kingston, and Syracuse Railroad. In 1880 he co-founded the Peninsular Car Works in Detroit, where he oversaw the manufacture of Peninsular’s rail cars and locomotives; in 1892, he orchestrated the merger of a dozen rail companies and became wealthy enough to retire in 1899 when he was 49.

Vincent Rosenblatt, *Bate-bola #86,* Turma do Indio, Rio de Janeiro 2017

NYC’s HIGH LINE GALLERY 4 presents an exhibition of recent works by twenty Brazilian and Iranian artists, curated by Iranian Roya Khadjavi, and Brazilian Flavia Tamoyo. In the dead of a New York winter, this engaging diverse salon style exhibition comes as a revelation, where creativity and inclusiveness are the threads that weave together the energies of cross-cultural collaboration. The curators selected works whose forms and colors combine to express a unique take on the artists’ personal lives and concerns, that speak to issues both public and private dominating their thoughts. The show includes Maritza Caneca, Afsaneh Djabbari Aslani, Sylvia Martins, Dana Nehdaran, Malekeh Nayiny, Rona Neves, Zahra Nazari, Anna Paola Protasio, Maryam Palizgir, Mana Sazegara, Atieh Sohrabi, Bruno Schmidt, Erick Vittorino, Vincent Rosenblatt, Dariush Nehdaran, Mana Sazegara, Faraaz Zabetian, Malekeh Nayiny, Atieh Sohrabi, and Farnaz Zabetian.

Broadway’s Friedman Theater, Andy Warhol & Jean-Michel Basquiat: Imagined Conversations

HAVING LIVED IN New York City’s East Village for many decades, the very neighborhood where much of the action in Anthony McCarten’s currently running Broadway play The Collaboration takes place, and where art world legends Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) – here beautifully channeled by actors Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope – could frequently be seen roaming the streets.

It has become voguish for museum curators to present works by undervalued artists, oft from third world countries or by African-Americans, especially women. The Phillips Collection has joined this leaning but diverts from this trend by presenting the first exhibition in the United States of Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-84), a white male from Italy. Although not widely known in the USA, he was a celebrated artist of his time. His paintings are in renowned collections as the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, British Museum in London, Chicago’s Art Institute, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Middlebury College’s Art Museum, Washington’s National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Federico Zeri (1921-98), the eminent art historian, called him “Italy’s greatest artist of the 19th century” and “Italy’s Sisley, Monet, and Pissarro”. While not a bedazzling exhibition, nonetheless it is one that yields new insights into Impressionist art beyond its traditional cast of historical artists. De Nittis’s brand of paintings links the styles of Salon art with an idiosyncratic interpretation of Impressionism.

Billed as “A Penetrating Portrayal of A Queer Giant,” performance artist John Kelly’s explosive gay-themed show “Underneath The Skin,” – bolstered by actor/dancers Hucklefaery, Estado Flotante, and John Williams Watkins, each playing multiple characters, a slew of videos, (one featuring Lola as Gertrude Stein), lots of song and dance, oodles of simulated male to male sex, and a cornucopia of informative lecture-like projections, all centering around the life and work of little known historical footnote Samuel Steward (1909-1993), channeled to a fare-thee-well by Kelly is currently holding court at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City at the Ellen Steward Theatre through Thursday, December 22.

NYC’s Gagosian & Nathaniel Mary Quinn: “Not Far From Home: Still Far Away”

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, “Not Far From Home; Still Far Away,” on view at Gagosian, presents an exploration of Quinn’s relationships in fourteen intense portraits, created in a range of media that includes oil paint, gouache, charcoal, oil stick and pastel. Distortion is the keynote of Quinn’s inner-based perception, expressed in a vision that transforms the artist, his friends and his female subject, apparently his mother. He disregards visually perceivable features, boldly executing truncated, layered, re-imagined, and spliced images that exude a sense of deep emotional anguish. Quinn’s impeccable inventive paintings compare with the visceral images Francis Bacon created in his portraits, and Picasso’s Synthetic Cubist women.

Broadcast Agonistes: Washington Shakespeare Theater’s “Much Ado About Nothing”

Just when you think Shakespeare might be too Old School for the 21st century, headlines pop up to remind us that WS was pretty clever about the constants of human behavior. ABC Network worked itself into a tizzy recently when the two anchors of “GMA3”, its afternoon spinoff of “Good Morning America,” were revealed to be romantically involved. GASP! The tabloids and social media had such a hot time revealing all that the president of ABC News “temporarily removed” the anchors from the air because their romance had “become a distraction.”