Sculpture

Ai Weiwei: ‘Trace’ at Washington’s Hirshhorn

Ai Weiwei is a riveting artistic presence who raises hackles and hell wherever he can. Born in Beijing in 1957, he studied at the Beijing Film Academy before moving to the United States in 1981. He soaked up the colorful life of New York’s East village, and when he returned to China in 1993 he became a major and disruptive figure in the contemporary art scene there. Ai relished antagonizing the repressive Chinese authorities, and the government in turn targeted his political activism, ultimately arresting him 2011. He was imprisoned for three months and forbidden to leave China until 2015.More

Yayoi Kusama: “Infinity Mirrors” at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden

Yayoi Kusama with recent works in Tokyo, 2016. Photo by Tomoaki Makino Courtesy of the artist © Yayoi Kusama. NOTE: detailed image captions can be found at end of review

Childlike simplicity and frankness along with infinite universes brim throughout the “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors” exhibition currently on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Kusama’s unique visual language of recurrent patterns of dots, vibrant colors, wondrous-mirrored rooms and pumpkins evoke an atmosphere of positive joyfulness that invite viewers to participate in her unique visual world. This display is a welcomed relief in Washington, DC’s current gloom and doom milieu!More

Editor’s Letter: March, 2017

Vanity, Thy Name Is…

“I don’t control painting, painting controls me.” ~ Hubert Roestenburg, German Expressionist

Left: Henri Matisse, Woman in a Hat (1920) Private Collection.

What can art teach us about human motivation? It is in our nature to surround ourselves with the people and things that reinforce our self-image and belief systems, as evidenced in the case of the current president? Take notice of the ‘new’ oval office and the change in art work that now hangs within sight of the chief executive, and all those who care to notice in photographs of proceedings there. To the right of the desk, from a viewer’s perspective, is a large portrait of Andrew Jackson (c. 1834), by then-Nashville colleague and White House resident artist, Ralph E.W. Earl. Jackson lost a bitterly contested election to John Quincy Adams in `24. His next campaign—characterized by his rough-hewn style and unconventional Tennessee country ways—was aimed at earning the vote of the ordinary man. This carried him to victory in 1828. In order to manage his public image, it is said that Jackson kept the artist close by in the years that followed, requiring that multiple portraits be produced to reinforce the perception of the man as a heroic and statesman-like figure.More

Contemporary Sculptor Boaz Vaadia: Figures Keep Silent Vigil in Complex World

Editor’s Note: We recently learned of the untimely death of sculptor, Boaz Vaadia, at age 65. This piece ran in ARTES in 2013, after a wonderful visit to his studio in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. Our time together on that and other occasions always felt more like a reunion of friends than a series of interviews. Boaz’s warmth and congenial style will always be remembered. His talent and devotion to his medium were remarkable, as was his love of family. His towering bluestone figures will stand for all time as a memoriam to his craft and the lasting impression he made on those lucky enough to know him during his brief time among us.

The narrow metal door is just a step up from the narrow street, one of many in the matrix that is the Williamsburg neighborhood, a quaint section of New York City’s Brooklyn borough. A small hand-lettered name appears above the mailbox beside the entrance—Vaadia—alerting me to the fact that I’ve reached my destination, the studio of well-known sculptor, Boaz Vaadia (left). artes fine arts magazinMore

New York’s Marianne Boesky Gallery with Matthias Bitzer: a different sort of gravity

Matthias Bitzer, Installation view. Foreground: phosphor notes (a different sort of gravity), mixed media (2016)

The works in Matthias Bitzer’s show, “a different sort of gravity” couldn’t be more confounding or diverse; this is the show’s aim. On my first view, I found the installation to be incoherent, even confusing. It took my breath away. On the second view I realized that the exhibit resonates with a sense of its true meaning, but this baffling heterogeneous display takes time to grasp. More

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s ‘Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change’

www.artesmagazine.com — Robert Irwin, ‘Untitled’ (1969), acrylic paint on shaped acrylic, 53″ diameter. Collection: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., has just opened a major exhibition that celebrates one of America’s most influential postwar artists. Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change is the first American museum survey of Irwin’s work outside of California, where he was a leader of the Light and Space art movement in the 1960s.

Exhibition curator Evelyn Hankins, in her catalogue essay “Experiencing the Ineffable: Robert Irwin in the 1960s,” explains that capturing the arc of Irwin’s pioneering and ever-changing artistic trajectory has been a daunting task. Irwin’s evolving artistic work doesn’t fit into convenient art theory pigeon holes. His path unfolds in its own particular way and is totally devoted to the experience of seeing. xxxxxMore

Isamu Noguchi: Spirit and Matter Written In Stone

www.artesmagazine.com Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi’s (1904-88) philosophy of life and artistic output are so intricately intertwined that it is near impossible to think of them separately. He is also one of a handful of 20th Century artists whose very ideas and explorations, perhaps even more vital today than in his own time, warrant careful study. Noguchi was no ordinary thinker. He believed that seeing stars from the bottom of a well can be a sculpture, spoke of ancient monuments and stones as being alive, light and sound as sculpture, and shapes carrying memory. He also was extremely interested in the additional space that sensory experiences and imagination supplies and experimented widely with such notions as weightlessness in weight. xxxxxMore

Baroque Rome in the Footsteps of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

A s one walks the city of Rome, its major public squares and bridges, basilicas, galleries and other holy places, the work of 17th century sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini appear to accompany the visitor. No other artist, pope or urban planner had a more enduring impact on the look of the Eternal City today. From the colonnades of St. Peter’s Square to the fountains of Piazzas di Spagna, Popolo, Navona and Barberini – Bernini sculpted Rome’s look like no other. xxxxxMore

Peabody Essex Museum’s ‘Asia in Amsterdam’: Borrowed Inspiration

Creativity cannot exist in a vacuum. Whether intentional or subliminal, ideas travel and leave their mark regardless of culture, method of transport, or purpose. Because of this, society evolves and changes. Art changes. It has to, in order to survive. Creators borrow from everything around them, infusing each work with a moment in time and space. Throughout history as the world started to get smaller, this evolution only intensified. Exposure to new cultures created new opportunities, not only in art but also commerce. Nothing comes without a price however, often at the expense of the originator. xxxxxMore

‘Palm Beach Panache,’ Luxury from the Inside, Out

panache DSCN9513 Recently published, Palm Beach Panache, by inveterate design fashionista, Carolina (pronounced, Caro-lee-na) Fernandez, plunges headlong into a world few get to see. Behind the gates and curving drives leading up to those fine homes bordering the ubiquitous Florida inter-coastal waterways, there are treasures of design and good taste meant for only the most discerning eye. But, Fernandez has managed to pierce the coveted privacy veil, inviting her readers into those hallowed realms with dozens of beautiful photographs and her probing narrative style. Inspired by her own investment in Sunshine State property, as well as shaping attractive living environments for her own family, based in New England, the author ventured into the Palm Beach community to learn about and share her observations of the unique, ‘Palm Beach style.’ xxxxxMore