by Sandy | Nov 21, 2024 | Art, Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
“The Whitney Museum of American Art … is the first large-scale museum exhibition to celebrate the life, dances, influences, and enduring legacy of visionary artist and choreographer Alvin Ailey (b. 1931, Rogers, Texas; d. 1989, New York, New York).”
The presentation, “Edges of Ailey consists of an immersive exhibition in the Museum’s 18,000 square-foot fifth-floor galleries—featuring works by more than eighty artists and revelatory archival material—and an ambitious suite of performances in the Museum’s third-floor theater, including AILEY in residence for one week each month during the exhibition.”
A few of the artists included: Jean Michel-Basquiat, Kara Walker, Elizabeth Catlett, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Edges of Ailey
Through February 9, 2025.
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street, NYC
(Carmen de Lavallade, by Geoffrey Holder 1976)
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by Sandy | Sep 3, 2024 | Art, Exhibits, Museums
The Boston Museum of Fine Art offers “Dalí: Disruption and Devotion”. The presentation of 30 painting and prints by Dali (1904–1989) and other artists like El Greco, Orazio Gentileschi, and Velázquez, enables “visitors to experience a unique take on one of the most celebrated avant-garde artists of the 20th century.”
“Dalí: Disruption and Devotion”
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Until December 1, 2024
by Sandy | Aug 26, 2024 | Artist, Blogroll
Ok! It’s that time of year again. Noticed so many Instagram posts announcing college football events. Tons of clips of HBCU marching groups, with their fancy Drum Majors, big bands and cheerful Cheer leaders. All the best to them!
Watching reminds me of the image above. Can’t you just hear his whistle, the brass section, the drums? Strut on.
I Love it!
A former football player turned artist, Mr Barnes’ work, filled with sports figures and images of everyday people, is known for his use of bright color and elongated figures.
Ernie Barnes, 1939 – 2009, “Drum Major”.
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by Sandy | Aug 8, 2024 | Art, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
“This exhibition is the first major survey of Joan Brown (American, 1938–1990) in over 20 years, and offers a compelling look at the prolific career of a painter known for her large-scale, high-key portraits of family, animals, and herself.”
Joan Brown
Carnegie Museum of Art
by Sandy | Jul 30, 2024 | Art, Artist, Blogroll, dvd, TV
(Originally posted 3/5/12)
A PBS program that I enjoyed is now on DVD – “Simon Schama’s – Power of Art”. Relaxed and informative, it even includes some personal tidbits about one of my favorite artists. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was gloriously talented, but he was also a youthful offender – violent and incorrigible. Not a cute “Denis the Menace” type, (he murdered a rival) but, as Schama labels him – a thug. I was shocked! Does his anger and madness show in his art? Maybe.
Considered part of the early Italian Baroque style of painting, his work, perhaps as a way of seeking redemption, focused on biblical themes – but, if you look at the faces, you will notice that these are no cherubs or saints, his paintings are inhabited by the people that he found in the local taverns with all their blemishes and wrinkles. I’ve found his work to be vibrant and alive regardless of its theme – whether card players or John the Baptist – full of energy, often full of violence, always very up close and in your face.
Schama narrates the hour and takes a gossipy, anecdotal look at the short life of Michelangelo Caravaggio, (1571 – 1610), and includes some re enactments to give background as to why/how certain paintings were created – like “Calling of Saint Matthew” and his “David with the Head of Goliath”.
BTW – Caravaggio was like Alfred Hitchcock, who always had a walk on or walkthrough in his movies and TV shows – the artist liked to paint himself in the middle of his scenes – with a table of card sharks, with a group of musicians and most notably, he serves himself up as the “Head of Goliath”.
The PBS series included the same 8 artists that are highlighted in Mr. Schama’s book of the same name, “Power of Art”: Caravaggio, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, Rothko and Bernini.
(Image: David with the Head of Goliath, c. 1609. Oil on panel)
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by Sandy | Jul 14, 2024 | Art, Blogroll, Culture, Exhibits, Museums
A current presentation at The MET, Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism, is the “first art museum survey of the subject in New York City since 1987, the exhibition establishes the Harlem Renaissance and its radically new development of the modern Black subject as central to the development of international modern art.”
“Featured artists include Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, William H. Johnson, Archibald Motley, Winold Reiss, Augusta Savage, James Van Der Zee, and Laura Wheeler Waring.”
The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism
*~* Until July 28, 2024 *~*
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
5th Ave and 86 Street, NYC
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by Bob Martin | Jun 2, 2024 | Art, Artist, Creativity, Culture
Artist Eugene Grigsby,1918 – 2013, taught at Arizona State for 20 years and spent two decades teaching in Phoenix public schools.
- What are the ideas or points of view that you’ve wanted to communicate in your paintings? I don’t know what I am communicating really until the painting is done. While I am working I am concentrating on design and how to cover a white canvas or paper. Using themes or patterns that I’ve found in African Sculpture or fabrics I wait until I’m done to see what’s there in terms of a social nature.
- Is there any one of your paintings that you feel epitomizes your thinking about art? The “Family” it represents design as well as a family which is an integrated family and is pulled together with design of faces and figures influenced by the art
of the Kuba people of the Congo. This is a multiracial family, White mother, Black father and bi-racial children, a situation that was seen as illegal not long ago in this country. It is not lost on me that this portrays the family of some one who may become the President of the US.
- Is there anyone, who’s work you appreciate and that you feel is communicating along the same line?
Rip Woods and Samella Lewis, who has written several books on Black/African American Artist and was the founder of International Review of African American Art, which has been taken over by Hampton University.
- You’ve spent a long time teaching and training young artists. Do you feel that your ideas/methods, what and how you taught, are being carried forward by new instructors? I feel that my major contribution is that of teaching more so then in my art. Many of my students have gone on to teaching art and have been, I believe, influenced by my teaching and method of teaching.
- Tell me about your teaching method? I’ve worked with my students on all aspects of their creativity. Each of my students was a class, meaning if I had ten students in one room I approached this as if I was teaching ten classes, because each student could be doing something different and with a different ability level. Some students would be working with jewelry, fashion design or painting etc. They would create a work book, which was a plan on what they wanted to get accomplished in my class, the materials they would use and the steps they would take to have their goal completed. Students were responsible for grading themselves and evaluating their progress based on what they said they wanted vs. what they actually did. Home work for my classes was to have students observe something in their lives, memorize what they had seen and as part next days class to compose a painting of what they observed the day before. They had a goal of completing a painting each day, and seeing the progress in their work. I also encourage students to make contact with an artist they admired. One of the students was interested in fashion design and wrote to “Coco Chanel”. Not only did she receive a response but continued for a while to receive information, advice and feedback that supported her in her studies. Something else I did was to have students study artists and their method of working. Later on they would do a self portrait in the style of the artist they studied. This way of learning I believe provided the students with a deeper understanding of the artist. Over the years many of my students were able to accomplish wonderful results, some in the arts and others in different fields. Many of them have stayed in touch and recount how what they had learned had assisted them with their careers as historian, nurses, writers and teachers. My goal was always to recognize individual ability and to see if I could help maximize their results.
- Activism, do you think that art can change the world? Some of my heroes, great artist like Picasso and Goya created work that spoke about a time in the world’s history that needed to change.
They and others painted and wrote about an unvarnished truth that I feel may have helped to motivate people and governments to do something different. Art can free people up to think.
- Over the years, you have known many great artists, would they be surprised about the diversity in art today? I don’t think they would be surprised at all, they were all so different. Many of our African American painters and writers were forerunners to some of what we see now coming from our communities. No I don’t think they would be surprised, but they would be pleased.
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by Cybel Martin | May 19, 2024 | Art, Film, Movies
BY CYBEL MARTIN for Shadow and Act/Indiwire
“It’s always good to make up for a lack of (financial) means with an increase in imagination.”
— Wim Wenders
*Originally posted – Dec. 6, 2013*
Friends who know me, know I really dislike talking about limitations. I prefer to dream big and be optimistic. I’m a “let’s put on a show! ” type optimist.
However, I will need to dip my toe into the murky pool of limitations for a second. Stay with me.
There are a lot of indie films being made with fascinating stories. Yet too many have mediocre to painful to look at visuals and poor production value. We can adjust our approach to storytelling and raise the bar of expectations regardless of budget.
I’m sure that I speak for many DPs. I’ve no delusions of shooting the next Bond film but hoped for more, given my experience, education & resources, than interviewing to shoot on a 5D in the director’s apartment. I “should” be shooting features with $3-10m budgets but US film production has lost it’s middle class. Or as DP Ryan Walters says in his post “Three Reasons Why It’s Bad Business to be a Cinematographer”, there is an “evaporation of the middle market”.
I love our Indie Film producers, even though they speak with limitations. Many are of the “we don’t have. You can’t have” variety. A film crew’s natural instinct is to problem solve & figure a way to make your film better. However, many producers hear our requests as saying they are incompetent or that crew wants to cheat them out of more money. Make too many suggestions & we can be labelled difficult and replaced. So we keep quiet. And you get what you get.
In 2012, 2% of films were shot by female DPs. When I am offered a gig, the last thing I want to do is lose it to someone who “looks more like a DP” because my inquiries and suggestions deem me “hard to work with”.
In the same way I gave advice that 1st time doc filmmakers are unlikely to hear, here are some creative suggestions I wish low budget directors would entertain and their producers be open to.
If you do nothing else, seriously consider your approach to camera movement and scene coverage.
1 Shoot High End & Rearrange the Budget. I’m prepping a low budget feature to hopefully shoot in 2014. I told my director (Don’t worry, she’s on the hunt to attach the right producer) that if we shot on 35mm or the Alexa, I guarantee we would not rent Grip/Electric equipment. The only exception would be if she wanted a dolly or car rig. I’m very comfortable with both the Alexa and Kodak stocks. I know the combination of latitude, how I can manipulate available light and decisions made with the Production Designer, will create the director’s desired look. I’d commit to not changing the total amount budgeted for cinematography, just how we allocated funds.
Shooting 35mm for a low budget feature film is nothing new. “George Washington”, “Duck Season”, “Napoleon Dynamite”, “Pariah” and “Chop Shop” were all impressively shot on 35mm for budgets under $1 million.
For inspiration on how to shoot with an Alexa and mostly available light, read about DP Yves Belanger’s work on “Dallas Buyers Club”.
2 Hire a Professional Production Designer as a Consultant. A PD’s ability to elevate a story via color, space and furnishings is it’s own form of wizardry yet frequently an afterthought in low budget films. Before putting your best friend’s unemployed roommate in charge, see if you can consult with a pro. Pay them well for three days work (instead of 2 months) to offer suggestions on the overall look of your film, advice on which resources and locations are budget friendly and to recommend crew who can do the “day to day” and operate successfully within your limitations. Ask how they’d like to be credited.
3 Color. I’ve already discussed at length the importance of color. Also see “Blue Caprice” for white wall interiors handled beautifully and “The Loneliest Planet” for subtle yet stylized use of color in nature.
4 Radical Story = Radical Visuals. Don’t play it safe visually if your film is crafting a new “reality”. Consider: “28 Days Later”, “Eraserhead”, “Pi”, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. A new reality means you and your creative team can experiment and redefine what NYC looks and feels like at 120 degrees (in December) or how someone’s vision changes when they’re “one of the infected”. Have fun, be bold and let your restrictions work in your favor.
5 Go International. Adding footage from a different country can have immense visual impact on your story and in explaining the inner lives of your protagonists. Hire a filmmaker friend in another country to shoot b-roll. In a similar vein, shoot visually captivating insert shots that don’t require actors nor much crew. I was extremely moved by the time lapse in “Boys Don’t Cry”.
6 One Hyper Realistic Scene. If your budget, resources and narrative dictate simple visuals, see if one scene can be stylized to play against that. I don’t want to spoil it but there is a perfect example in “Dallas Buyers Club”. Low budget horror films will do the same: save their money for one big scare or special FX. Budget for a lean crew and hire “day players” when needed.
7 Shoot B/W. It gives the lowest budgeted film a certain panache. Even subjects that you think “should be shot in color” can be more effective in black/white.
8 Sound Affects Cinematography. Poor location audio can ruin the most gorgeous of images. Innovative sound design can make them more powerful. I can’t imagine my beloved “There Will Be Blood” without “the work of Christopher Scarabosio and Matthew Wood. Instead of spending money on music rights, collaborate with your Sound Dept. Tap into their creativity the same way you would with your DP.
Access is key. What do you have free access to that you take for granted?
9 Access to a Vehicle (motorcycle, car, bus, boat, hoveround). I recently saw “Bellflower” ($17k budget). It benefits from a unique twisted premise, an extremely crafty DP and a road trip. It’s amazing how a change in terrain makes me feel like they’ve spent a lot of money. Think “Easy Rider”, “Y Tu Mama Tambien”, “Thelma and Louise”, “Little Miss Sunshine”.
10 Access to a Visually Unique Location. Before you set a scene in your dorm room or parents’ suburban home, ask yourself where else do you have access? Production value increases even more if you can show the “behind the scenes” of a location. Access to your aunt’s jewelry shop? Also film in the back where she does repairs.
11 Access to a Major Public Event. Protests, holiday fireworks, parades, carnivals etc. This is my favorite. Examples are “Get On the Bus”, “Medium Cool”, “La Haine”, “Blow Out”, “The Official Story”. Take advantage of someone else’s big budget or event planning. The b/w photo above (Actress Susan Heyward with my 2nd unit camera op) was taken while filming a narrative during the 2009 Inauguration in DC.
12 Access to a Niche Culture. A glimpse into another community offers immeasurable production value. It can provide not often seen locations, costumes or people. Your Capoeira club. Your Dad’s union meetings. When you have access, creatively exploit it: b-roll, using real people as extras, consider how it reflects on your protag and their journey (see the Housing Rights Committee scene in “Medicine for Melancholy”).
13 Access to Under-represented Weather. Does every exterior scene take place on a partly sunny day? That may be easiest to film but snow, during or after the rain (see “wet down“) or fog could be more dramatic. The short film, “A Story of Water”, co-directed by Truffaut & Godard wonderfully takes advantage of the flooding of Villeneuve Saint George.
14 Access to Other Arts/Artists. Are you also a visual artists? Use photography (opening scene of “My Brother the Devil” and of course “La Jetee”) or animation. Almodovar is brilliant at incorporating known performers into his films. Buika, in the “The Skin I Live In”, was more than a beautiful singer, she epitomized “enchantment”. The same could be said of his use of Caetano Veloso and Piña in “Talk to Her”. Cooking is also an art. Think of all the films with beautiful cooking sequences.
15 Access to Your Old Films. You can use footage from your previous shorts, docs, or film tests for atmosphere, for flashbacks (see “The Limey”), for dream sequences etc. Unfortunately we all have films we are extremely proud of but couldn’t finish. Can you recycle that footage?
Finishing a film of any genre, length or budget is a huge accomplishment. More people talk about it, critique it than can actually pull it off. I hope I acknowledged our limitations but left you armed with new creative tools to make a good film great.
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by Sandy | Apr 15, 2024 | Artist, Blogroll, Culture, Exhibits, Museums
“Faith Ringgold: American People” was her West Coast debut at the de Young museum in San Francisco, CA November 2022.
“Bringing together fifty years of work, this is the most comprehensive exhibition to date of Faith Ringgold’s groundbreaking vision…”
“From creating some of the most indelible artworks of the civil rights era to challenging accepted hierarchies of art versus craft through her experimental story quilts, Faith Ringgold’s body of work bears witness to the complexity of the American experience.”
Faith Ringgold: American People
de Young Museum: Golden Gate Park \ 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, SF, CA
(Image: Faith Ringgold, pictured before her 1997 painting, “The Flag Is Bleeding #2”)
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by Sandy | Mar 19, 2024 | Art, Blogroll, Exhibits
In a salute to Women’s History month, below is a repeat of one of last year’s art tributes:
A coiled Bronze Woman! in the gallery of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’ I love it! I want this in my home:
“The Seated III” Wangechi Mutu, 2019
Bronze (82 7/8 × 37 3/4 × 33 3/4 inches)
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth presented “Women Painting Women” – an “exhibition featuring 46 female artists who choose women as subject matter in their works. This presentation includes approximately 50 evocative portraits that span the late 1960s to the present. International in scope, Women Painting Women recognizes female perspectives that have been underrepresented in the history of postwar figuration.”
Women Painting Women
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
3200 Darnell Street
Fort Worth, Texas 76107
817.738.9215
*The Artists:
Rita Ackermann
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Emma Amos
María Berrío
Louise Bonnet
Lisa Brice
Joan Brown
Jordan Casteel
Somaya Critchlow
Kim Dingle
Marlene Dumas
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer
Nicole Eisenman
Tracey Emin
Natalie Frank
Hope Gangloff
Eunice Golden
Jenna Gribbon
Alex Heilbron
Ania Hobson
Luchita Hurtado
Chantal Joffe
Hayv Kahraman
Maria Lassnig
Christiane Lyons
Danielle Mckinney
Marilyn Minter
Alice Neel
Elizabeth Peyton
Paula Rego
Faith Ringgold Deborah Roberts
Susan Rothenberg
Jenny Saville
Dana Schutz
Joan Semmel
Amy Sherald
Lorna Simpson
Arpita Singh
Sylvia Sleigh
Apolonia Sokol
May Stevens
Claire Tabouret
Mickalene Thomas
Nicola Tyson
Lisa Yuskavage
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