Posts from the “Art” Category

Gene Davis: Hot Beat

Posted on January 14, 2017

Artwork: Gene Davis, Two Part Blue, about 1964, magna, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Florence Coulson Davis

“I became convinced that the way to make really good art was to do the outrageous, the unexpected—to be a renegade. That was my philosophy—to explore the seemingly impossible in art, to do things that were new for their own sake, whether they were good or bad,” American artist Gene Davis (1920-1985) reveals in the sumptuous monograph Gene Davis (Arts Publisher, 1982).

Indeed, throughout his life Davis left convention by the wayside. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., he began his career as a sportswriter before covering the presidencies of Roosevelt and Truman. He was welcomed into the intimate circle, playing poker with President Truman on long trips across the United State. But proximity to power was not his dream. In his heart, he yearned to make art and although he couldn’t draw, in 1949 he began to paint.

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Categories: 1960s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting

Mexique: 1910-1950 Renaissances

Posted on January 14, 2017

Artwork: Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) Le Cadre, 1938 Fixé sur verre (plaque de verre), Paris, Centre Pompidou, musée national d’art moderne, Centre de création industrielle Achat de l’État en 1939 © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Jean-Claude Planchet © [2016] Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Adagp, Paris

“Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence,” Mexican artist Frida Kahlo observed, giving voice to the deeper meaning of our purpose on earth. While we are here, we experience things that delve deep below the surface of all that is polite, pleasant, and respectable, cutting to the very marrow of our bones and exposing us to the highest highs and the lowest lows. There is no escape from this—nor should there be. This is the path through which we learn that which is universal to life itself, and thus we begin to learn empathy.

Art is a vehicle to express, expose, and communicate in a language all its own that speaks to everyone in the sighted world without uttering a single word. Through the use of color, line, shape, and form, works of art convey ideas, experiences, and feelings, though we may not fully register all the layers at first glance. The brilliance of art is that it never changes, but we do, allowing us to learn more and more about our selves and the world in which we live.

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Tina Modotti (1896-1942). Guitare, cartouchière et faucille, illustration de l’annonce pour la chanteuse communiste concha lichel, publiée dans el machete, no 168, Épreuve gélatino-argentique. Mexico, Museo Nacional de Arte, INBA Donation de la famille Maples Arce, 2015 1er juin 1929 © Francisco Kochen

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Latin America

Brassai: Graffiti

Posted on January 13, 2017

Artwork: BRASSAÏ. Maquette originale pour la réalisation de la tapisserie Nocturne 1968-1972 Collage d’épreuves gélatino-argentiques peintes, 140 × 70 cm Collection Centre Pompidou, musée national d’art moderne, Paris © Estate Brassaï – RMN-Grand Palais © Centre Pompidou/Dist. RMN-GP/ Georges Meguerditchian

When the future is bleak, denial only delays the inevitable—and can often make our fall from grace that much harder. But for those who cast illusions to try to comfort themselves, the wise advise us to read “the writing on the wall.”

It’s a telling phrase that speaks to the truth about graffiti: it has been here as long as humanity has used written language as a means to record our reality. Writing on the wall is inherently subversive in a culture that supports the creation of private property, particularly in the public realm, for it reminds us that the desire and need to communicate will trump the attempt to reign it in. To leave a written mark behind not only transgresses the law, but it is also a silent scream, cry, or whoop of laughter let loose in the world.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Yoav Horesh: Aftermath

Posted on January 12, 2017

Photo: August 9, 2011. Sbaroo Pizzeria, Jerusalem. Photographed: August 2003. © Yoav Horesy, courtesy of SPQR Editions.

Israeli photographer Yoav Horesh remembers a formative moment many years ago while walking with his father through a pedestrian mall in downtown Jerusalem on the way to buy new shoes. “A block behind us, a guy came running down the street, shooting an AK 47 and throwing hand grenades. My father pulled me into an alley, and in three or four minutes, everything was over. [The gunman] was probably shot dead; the ambulances came. Then my father said, ‘Okay, we’re going to buy shoes now.’”

“Is it right or not? I don’t have an answer,” Horesh observes, pondering the implications of an immediate return to normalcy. But the question remains. It is a question that has affected Horesh in ways he’s just beginning to actualize through his work as a photographer, which takes on the subject of trauma with thought, concern, and tremendous care.

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December 1, 2001. Ben Yehuda Street, Jerusalem. Photographed: January 2004. © Yoav Horesy, courtesy of SPQR Editions.

Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Hugo McCloud: Veiled

Posted on January 9, 2017

Artwork: Installation view of Hugo McCloud: Veiled at Sean Kelly, New York. Photography: Jason Wyche, New York. Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see,” Edgar Degas observed more than a century ago, keenly aware of people’s propensity to project themselves upon all they encounter in the world. Being conscious, it is never possible to get out of our head, but the gift of an artist is to reframe our perceptions. In doing so we grow, expanding our understanding and deepen our sensibilities, so that our very being is enhanced.

American artist Hugo McCloud (b. 1980) understands this and transforms the way we experience the act of looking itself. Trained as an industrial designer and a welder, McCloud worked alongside architects and developers on construction sites, acquiring a hands-on sensibility towards the materials used to create the world in which we live and bringing it to his art.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions

Witness at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Posted on January 6, 2017

Photo: Larry Clark, American, b. 1943 Untitled 1963 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm); image: 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm) Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Gift of Herbert and Lenore Schorr 2002.85.2 Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Although the photographer usually stands behind the camera, they are present in every shot they make, from the choice of subject matter and the framing to the moment of release and the selection of the print from hundreds, if not thousands, of others that remain unseen in the archive. Every photo taken and shown bears the eye of the photographer, just as every painting and sculpture bears the hand of the artist. We can consider the photographer many things: provocateur, mastermind, or more “objectively,” witness to scene they are recording for posterity.

The photographer as witness is a popular conceit celebrated in Western art as it embraces the impossible ideals of detachment, neutrality, and independence from the subject and the creation of the image. It carries the noble, even heroic, connotations that elevate the photographer to a status all their own. This response was most recently seen after Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici took a picture of Turkish police officer Mevlut Mert Altintas moments after he assassinated Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov. While the world lay agog at the perfectly orchestrated act of a cold-blooded killer, many in the photography and art worlds took the opportunity to disassociate, waxing rhapsodic about the aesthetics of the image and the valor of Ozbilici.

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Photo: Dawoud Bey, American, b. 1953 The Birmingham Project: Mathes Manafee and Cassandra Griffin 2012 Archival pigment prints mounted on Dibond Diptych, each sheet: 40 × 32 in. (101.6 × 81.3 cm) Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Restricted gift of Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida, and Mary and Earle Ludgin by exchange 2014.8.a-b Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Focus: Lorna Simpson

Posted on January 3, 2017

Artwork: Installation photograph of FOCUS: Lorna Simpson, courtesy of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Growing up in Brooklyn, Lorna Simpson (b. 1960) came of age at a spectacular time in the city’s history. As the flames of the 1960s turned to amber embers, in its wake a new culture was taking form and shape. The first post-Civil Rights generation came to the fore, inheriting the mantle of the past and striving for more.

Simpson began her career in art as a street photographer before hitting the studio to explore ideas of race, gender, culture, history, and memory—the very foundation of our identities. She began expanding beyond the photograph to discover new ways to communicate, integrating elements of film and video, assemblage, and painting. In doing so, she collapsed the space between artist and subject so that the sense of “otherness” was entirely erased. And in its place came complete and total being: the sheer presence that representation affords when the creator shares of themselves.

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Artwork: Detail from installation photograph of FOCUS: Lorna Simpson, courtesy of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions

Iwan Schumacher: 1972

Posted on January 3, 2017

Photo: © Iwan Schumacher, courtesy of Edition Patrick Frey.

The beauty of liberation is that it is a deeply personal affair, requiring none but ourselves to realize. In many ways, it is a test of courage more than anything else: do we have the faith and the will to choose freedom from the known? For artists, the answer is always, “Yes!” That’s what makes them who they are; they cannot be contained by preexisting ideologies. Pablo Picasso knowingly advised, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them alike an artist.” And sometimes all it takes to break the rules is to discard them hand over fist.

In early 1972, Iwan Schumacher had been living in south London, where he had been teaching photography at an art school. He bought a Canon half-frame camera that allowed him to take 72 pictures, as opposed to 36, on a regular 35mm roll of film. The camera was small enough to travel everywhere he went, quickly becoming a diary of his daily experiences. Later in the year, Schumacher returned to Switzerland to assist on a documentary movie and started to work on his first film. All the while, he continued to take photographs, amassing an archive of more than 3,000 images.

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Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Photography

Rest in Peace John Berger (1926-2017)

Posted on January 2, 2017

Photo: Jean Mohr

I can still remember reading John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” and the way it hit me. Finally someone had the nerve to call out the West for their convulsive narcissism that begins with the self-centered eye of sight. Oh but he did it with such style and grace, with an eloquent finesse that allowed him to subvert centuries of academic self-importance masquerading as truth. Take that Kenneth Clark! Your “Civilisation” has been anything but.

Berger was the first person to show me (in school, no less) that history could be rewritten to fill in the blanks, to right the wrongs, or just to tear the whole thing down and start fresh. I’d read his books with a pleasure I never found anywhere in academic life; he was smart enough to make his ideas accessible to regular folk who had a penchant for contemplating the structures and functions of the visible world. And not just the world of art, but the very nature of looking. Somewhere in the back of my head, John Berger implanted the idea: writing could be the perfect marriage of poetry and philosophy. What a glorious legacy!

Rest in Peace ~*~

Categories: Art

CONTACT at Fahey/Klein Gallery

Posted on January 2, 2017

MONTGOMERY- MARCH 25: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. seen close from rear, speaking in front of 25,000 civil rights marchers, at conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery march in front of Alabama state capital building on March 25, 1965. In Montgomery, Alabama. (Photo by Stephen Somerstein/Getty Images)

For a photography aficionado, there is nothing quite so thrilling as looking at contact sheets. It is like reading a diary, delving into private realms that were not meant for public consumption. Like the old drafts of a novel or the prior recordings before the master tape, the contact sheet tells the story of how it happened—how we got to this place. It is a narrative all its own, one that few will ever know, unless the photographer blesses us with a view.

Then, what we see is magical: that heart-stopping, breathtaking moment like in the theater when an actor breaks the fourth wall. It is an acknowledgement of the very construction of it all: the recognition that everything we see has a history and a reality that we rarely ever know. The contact sheet seduces with what it reveals—all that has been hidden from our sight now appears.

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Contact Sheet featuring MONTGOMERY- MARCH 25: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. seen close from rear, speaking in front of 25,000 civil rights marchers, at conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery march in front of Alabama state capital building on March 25, 1965. In Montgomery, Alabama. (Photo by Stephen Somerstein/Getty Images)

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb: Violet Isle

Posted on December 30, 2016

Photo: Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, 1993. Photo by Alex Webb.

Cuba, the Violet Isle—a name known to few for the rich color of its fertile soil, is an island that has captivated the imagination of the world through a tumultuous history that has played a significant role in the political machinations of the twentieth century. It is a land has emerged in the twenty-first century as a complex nation coming to terms with a fate that is yet unforeseen. As we reflect upon the country’s future, we may look to its recent past, to its people and its landscape.

Over the course of 15 years, photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb made 11 trips to the Violet Isle, each of them documenting different corners of the country. While Alex Webb focused on the country’s street life, Rebecca Norris Webb turned her attention to the displays of animal life, exploring tiny zoos, pigeon societies, and personal menageries. Together, they published Violet Isle in 2009 with Radius Books and while the book has since sold out and gone out of print, they continue to share the work in exhibitions around the world.

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Photo: Havana, 2008. Photo by Rebecca Norris Webb

Categories: 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography