International art and design

NYC’s Almine Rech Gallery with Sarah Cunningham: “In Its Daybreak, Rising”

Almine Rech presents “In Its Daybreak Rising,” an exhibition of eighteen new abstract oil paintings by Sarah Cunningham. The exhibition is unusually focused and pure in its means. The semi-abstract works with representational underpinnings speak for themselves; their surprising immediacy quickly engages the viewer. One is not asked to read long texts pertaining to the show, or to contend with convoluted explanations of current trends that abound from the Metropolitan Museum to galleries in every art district in New York. Abstract painting comes in many guises; the works are often visually attractive, but ultimately fail to convey meaningful content, which would make them matter more authentically. Beauty is never wrong if it is authentic, but without an in-depth foothold, it can tilt toward the decorative, Sarah Cunningham’s works have no link to decoration. The psychologically complex works present configurations of thick worked media that create depth, movement, and inner space.

Washington, DC’s Hillwood Museum: “The Luxury of Clay- Porcelain Past and Present”

Today ceramic objects are taken for granted, including earthenware, brick or even fine porcelain because of their omnipresence. We eat from plates, drink from cups and mugs and decorate our dwellings with vases filled with flowers. The ceramic industry is one of the oldest that goes back thousands of years, perhaps because clay was plentiful, the process basic and people figured out how to make useful and decorative things with it. One of the earliest pieces ever created using fired clay dates back to the late Paleolithic period 28,000 BC. A female statue of a nude woman, known as the Venus of Dolní V?stonice, was discovered in the Paleolithic site Dolní V?stonice in the Moravian area south of Brno in the Czech Republic. Also found at this same site in a horseshoe shaped kiln were hundreds of clay figurines representing Ice Age animals ––bear, lion, fox, horse and owl along with over 2000 balls of burnt clay.

In China pot fragments dating back to 18,000-17,000 BCE have been found. Historians believe that China’s use of pottery successively spread to Japan and the Russian Far East region where archeologists have recovered shards of ceramic artifacts dating to 14,000 BCE. However, progress toward porcelain making evolved very slowly in China since its production is far more challenging than that for earthenware or stoneware. Porcelain is the most prestigious kind of pottery because of its delicacy, strength, and radiant translucent, white color and was finally produced about 2,000 to 1,200 years ago in China.

Picasso and the Guitar: Memory and Metaphor

Inspired by, ‘Picasso: Guitars (1912-14)’- At the Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Though living in France most of his life, Picasso was a Spaniard, through-and-through, remaining proud of his birthright, cultural heritage and sun-drenched memories of childhood, over his lifetime. Any retrospective of his work as a painter and sculptor reveals that he was continually informed by the iconic images of Spain, at both conscious and unconscious levels: the raven-haired, large-eyed female figures, matadors and bull-fighting motifs, the open-balcony studio settings of his imagination, replete with palm-strewn vistas of warm seas, mythic creatures from Greco-Roman legend and seductive naked sylphs, all belie his enduring visceral attachment to las cosas de españa.

New York City Opera & Museum of Jewish Heritage: ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’

Despite countless closings, postponements, cancellations, empty seats, Covid interventions, and the annoying requirement of having to wear a mask, present proof of a vaccination with a valid government issued photo ID, and go through a security check, even before you enter the theatre, New York City’s theater scene appears to be chugging along, surprisingly so, with an abundance of better than- usual fare.

A Guest Editorial: “Beauty in Things that Pass – what dogs can teach us”

It wasn’t planned. And that’s perhaps what made it all the more magical. But this past Christmas morning, Vlad and his best friend Malibu were the only dogs in the baseball field (the one we pretend is a dog park). I’m not sure why they were the only dogs there. It might have been the holiday, of course, or the hour (7am). Or it could have been the mud left from the previous day’s snow flurries. And HERE is what ensued:

NGA & A WIDER ANGLE: “THE NEW WOMAN BEHIND THE CAMERA”

The National Gallery in Washington, D.C., has recently opened a major exhibition celebrating significant 20th century women photographers. As curator Andrea Nelson explains, The New Woman Behind the Camera is intended to explore how photography became “a global symbol of female empowerment based on real women making revolutionary changes in life and art.”

New York’s Gagosian Shows 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.

Boston’s Gardner Museum with, ‘Titian: Women, Myth & Power’

Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, was a Venetian painter during the Renaissance, and is considered to be the most significant artist of the 16^th century. The Venetian school began in the 1400s under the leadership of Giovanni and Gentile Bellini who emphasized using color to create dramatic forms. The range of Titian’s oeuvre was extensive including subjects from landscapes, portraiture, spiritual and mythological stories. Throughout his career his style changed noticeably however is art always displayed his mastery of color and tone. He excelled in painting vigorous compositions filled with supreme richness and distinct psychological expression. As an artist Titian is generally viewed as only second in greatness and success to Michelangelo.

HUNG LIU: ‘A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY,’ AT NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

In August, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., opened HUNG LIU: PORTRAITS OF PROMISED LANDS. An immigrant herself, the Chinese American artist Hung Liu is best-known for creating large-scale portraits that transform refugees and other marginalized figures into “dignified, even mythic figures on the grand scale of history painting” (Hung Liu quote). Dorothy Moss, the museum’s Curator of Painting and Sculpture, worked with Liu for the past three years to develop this exhibition. “We spoke at length about her engagement of history through her use of photographic archives,” Moss told me, explaining that Liu used photographic images “to create portraiture that positions ‘history as a verb.'” The artist believed her art was a way to connect past with present — to use the constant flow of history to create a visual narrative about how “things of the spirit stay with us much longer than things of the past” (Hung Liu quote).

On My Bucket List

If it’s September, it’s réttir, or sheep round up time in Iceland. Some 800,000 of the Norwegian-Icelandic variety (short legged and densely coated) are let out to pasture in late spring to freely roam, untended and unfenced, in the pastures and hillsides of the verdant Icelandic landscape. There, they graze for months on an abundant diet of sheep’s sorel, mountain avens, blueberries and broad leaf grasses. Nurturing, fresh water mountain streams crisscross virtually every open field. Sure-footed and affable, they can be seen, clustered in small groups—almost always a ram and 3-5 ewes—beside the country’s roadways or spotted in the distance as minuscule white dots, high on the sloping mountain ranges. A motorist is more likely to encounter a sheep crossing the highway, than any other kind of wildlife. Such unwarranted encounters are rare, though, because in the vast, open landscape, highway visibility can extend for miles.