Visual Arts
“Dance/Draw” at the ICA is a major exhibit about how moving bodies leave traces, what curator Helen Molesworth, not particularly originally, calls the “afterlife of dance.” To a lesser extent, it’s also about how visual artists think about motion when they’re not focused on particular bodies.
Read MoreComparing Rick Berry’s expressionist paintings with Damon Lehrer’s exquisitely rendered, classical and contemplative work made me wonder about the expressionist style in general. By this I mean that artistic terrain where the passions, vehemence, or ferocity of the artist so colors the work as to form a powerful but distorting lens through which we see the work.
Read MoreThe astonishing exhibition “Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge” has the strange beauty and density of a scientific diagram or star chart. You can’t examine it deeply all at once. It is best to take a certain reading, see what questions arise, and go off to your lair to think.
Read MoreEach of the paintings in Anne Leone’s Cenote Series shows the water’s surface, always from below. The world of air is invisible to us, off limits, mysterious. This membrane between worlds appears closed, but is easily pierced by the swimmers, resealing itself each time they rise and plunge.
Read MoreRobert LaHotan was a fine abstractionist before he fully turned his energies to landscapes and interiors in his mature works. This exhibition, which spans 25 years, shows him alternating between abstract and figurative styles with many paintings landing somewhere between the two.
Read MoreOn bad days, I tell people that as far as I’m concerned, New York museums can all go to hell until one of them gives more substantial attention to Fairfield Porter as well as to give a solo show to Jane Freilicher.
Read MoreChain Letter is an ambitious maelstrom of eclectic works, but a caution to visitors: Go with an insider, a participating artist, or someone who’s close to the show.
Read MoreNothing would please me more than to believe the announcement made last week by the Van Gogh Museum, saying that one of the paintings in the museum that has always been called a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh is in fact a portrait of his brother Theo
Read MoreCamille Pissarro lived to be 73. As he aged, he looked more and more like the prototype of a Sephardic Jew. Anti-Semitic rioting accompanied the Dreyfus Affair; the painter found it prudent to stay inside his hotel room in Paris.
Read MoreHard economic times hit artists in many different ways. One of the least remarked upon is when there is no longer enough cash for the studio. A local artist, who would prefer to remain anonymous, contemplates the end of having a space where creativity and independence can thrive.
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Arts Remembrance: In Memoriam — Tom Stoppard