by Bob Martin | Feb 20, 2012 | Art, Artist, Film, music
I didn’t watch much of the coverage on the death of Whitney Houston, nor did I see the services at The New Hope Baptist Church in Newark this Saturday. I grew tired of the random speculations by experts etc, on the possible causes of her death.
Young people who become stars like Whitney, Lindsay Lohan, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Natalie Cole and even Bobby Brown are painted into a corner by their fame and rumors, that they find difficult to escape from. We, the fans, don’t ever want them to grow up, grow old or to just be. We don’t realize that we wear them out with our expectations. The personal life of Whitney Houston was never any of my business and now that she has passed away I have no right to insist on an explanation of why she died. Artists are in part what they produce (their art). Ms. Houston is a unforgettable talent and her art is the gift that she left us. We should not expect more.
by Bob Martin | Jan 17, 2012 | Art, Artist
Just about everyone has had their say about the passing of Lucian Freud and a mostly imagined controversy over his life and the amount of paint he used. I don’t have anything worthwhile to add to any of that.
I appreciated Freud’s art and his life’s commitment to it. His paintings and drawings are his gift to us all, the other stuff is just background noise.
by Sandy | Jan 2, 2012 | Art, Artist, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
MoMA, New York City, offers us a retrospective of the work of Holland born artist de Kooning.
“Representing nearly every type of work de Kooning made, in both technique and subject matter, this retrospective includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints. Among these are the artist’s most famous, landmark paintings—among them Pink Angels (1945), Excavation (1950), and the celebrated third Woman series (1950–53)—plus in-depth presentations of all his most important series, ranging from his figurative paintings of the early 1940s to the breakthrough black-and-white compositions of 1948–49, and from the urban abstractions of the mid 1950s to the artist’s return to figuration in the 1960s, and the large gestural abstractions of the following decade. Also included is de Kooning’s famous yet largely unseen theatrical backdrop, the 17-foot-square Labyrinth (1946).”
de Kooning: A Retrospective * Until January 9, 2012
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
by Sandy | Dec 26, 2011 | Art, Artist, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
The busy and thriving Brooklyn Museum presents – Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties, until January 29, 2012. 
The exhibition “brings together for the first time the work of sixty-eight painters, sculptors, and photographers who explored a new mode of modern realism in the years bounded by the aftermath of the Great War and the onset of the Great Depression.”.
Some of the artists represented are:
Thomas Hart Benton, Imogen Cunningham, Charles Demuth, Aaron Douglas, Edward Hopper, Gaston Lachaise, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Luigi Lucioni, Gerald Murphy, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston.
Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties
Brooklyn Museum, 5th Flr, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York
(Images: Winold Reiss, 1886–1953, Sari Price Patton, 1925 and George Copeland Ault, 1891–1948, Brooklyn Ice House, 1926)
by Sandy | Dec 16, 2011 | Art, Artist, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
We’ve heard of Gertrude Stein and her marvelous group of artist friends, especially Picasso, but she also had siblings with the same urge to gather painters and their art. That family fascination is celebrated at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art starting with the exhibit: The Steins Collect Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde 
“American expatriates in bohemian Paris when the 20th century was young, the Steins — writer Gertrude, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife, Sarah — were among the first to recognize the talents of avant-garde painters like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Through their friendship and patronage, they helped spark an artistic revolution. This landmark exhibition draws on collections around the world to reunite the Steins’ unparalleled collections of modern art, bringing together, for the first time in a generation, dozens of works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and many others. “
“The Steins Collect Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde”
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA
(Image: Pablo Picasso,” Head in Three-Quarter View”, 1907; gouache and watercolor on paper)
by Bob Martin | Dec 2, 2011 | Art, Artist, Exhibits
Burton Silverman is an 83 year old artist whose work, for me, is still vibrant and authentic. There is a gracefulness in his work that I don’t generally find in most realistic paintings. If you have not seen his paintings before, visit the Hofstra University Museum.
This exhibit will be up until December 16, 2011 
Gallery Location and Hours
Emily Lowe Hall, South Campus
Tuesday – Friday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Saturday – Sunday, 1 p.m. – 5 p.m.
I didn’t watch much of the coverage on the death of Whitney Houston, nor did I see the services at The New Hope Baptist Church in Newark this Saturday. I grew tired of the random speculations by experts etc, on the possible causes of her death.
