“Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe” is the first solo museum show for this Brooklyn artist, whose portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
She is “best known for her elaborate, collage-inspired paintings, embellished with rhinestones, enamel, and colorful acrylics. Her depictions of African American women explore a spectrum of black female beauty and sexual identity while constructing images of femininity and power… the exhibition highlights recent bodies of work that examine interior and exterior environments in relation to the female figure. Their settings are often inspired by her 1970s childhood.”
I liked this film and didn’t know why until I left the theater. I realized that I had already been influenced by the Scientology noise that preceded the release of the movie and because of this I believe that I missed or at least misunderstood a good deal of the script. I had already decided before seeing “The Master” that I would see it at least one more time, which I always do with films that are driven by dialog.
Some hours later, after getting past my misunderstanding and the incredible interpretations done by Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams I came to realize the movie was not an attempt at depicting known people (not based on anything) and began to see in the same light of Dogville or The Tree of Life, stories that are more complex and near mythical (maybe even biblical) that never end. Archetypical and like most of our stories, it leaves us with no answer to the beginning, like which came first chicken or egg or was Jesus and/or Lucifer, and was (the) Grigori Rasputin a myth that ends without ending. At times I think P.T. Anderson is telling one story, with each of his films being a chapter. I would love to know.
Again the acting was incredible and Joaquin Phoenix performance is breathtaking. I found myself to looking for Jimmy Emmett (To Die For) and could not find him any more. Amy Adams, who usually plays younger than she is, shows up as a powerful matriarch similar to Sissy Spacek’s Ruth Fowler in “In The Bedroom”. Philip Seymour Hoffman is the complete package, a leading man who carries a movie with his intellect and not his body or looks.
“In the early 20th century, African art had a profound influence on the development of European abstract art…Artists were avid collectors of African art objects—Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso had studios packed with African statuettes and textiles—and also carefully studied these works, mimicked them, and even openly copied their forms. European artists had more than just a stylistic affinity for African art; these artists, on the cusp of abstraction, found African abstraction to be the perfect aid to their pursuit of new modes of representation.”
“This installation brings together works from the Dallas Museum of Art’s collection by Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Klee, presented alongside objects from the Museum’s internationally acclaimed collection of African art.”
Dallas Museum of Art until October 28, 2012 1717 North Harwood, Dallas, Texas
(Images: Pablo Picasso, Bust, 1907-08 and Helmet mask (kifwebe), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Songye or Luba peoples, late 19th-early 20th century)
It just doesn’t happen, especially something created by David Simon, that the drama plays backup to the music. The music is the backbone to this wonderful epic, cause New Orleans is a living document about the United States and as much some people would like to see it gone and forgotten it keeps rolling, like that river.
New Orleans is the seed to the culture of the United States and the source of modern music across the world, and it takes “Musician from Other Lands” who come to pay their respect for us to wake up to the treasure we are trying to kill.
There is a thought that recreating New Orleans and turning it into a Disney Land park, with re-enactments of funeral marches, and almost spontaneous breakout of jam sessions every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 8PM at a designated club will preserve the history and magic of this place. I don’t think so.
The Cleveland Museum of Art offers a retrospective, “Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video” thru September 2013.
“The first section of the exhibition will feature selections from the 1980s and early 1990s that were inspired by the artist’s direct experiences and observations. The next section will feature works made in response to historical situations that have impacted African American identity, as well as that of other disempowered peoples. A third grouping will contain photographs that focus on the role of place in Weems’s examination of the underlying causes and effects of racism, slavery, and imperialism… A notion of universality is present throughout: while African Americans are typically her primary subjects, Weems wants “people of color to stand for the human multitudes” and for her art to resonate with audiences of all races.”
The beautiful and extraordinary work of Lisa Call is on at exhibit at the Art Quilt Gallery in New York, a gallery committed to contemporary art quilts.
Structures #143 by Lisa Call * copyrighted by the artist
Lisa Call’s is imaginative, edgy, bold, and comforting. Comforting in that the forms she uses to construct her work are patterns that we experience in our minds, like the things we want to say and do but never do. Another way of saying this is that Lisa says in her art what we (me) wish I had said.
“Lisa Call creates bold geometric contemporary textile paintings where color is of primary importance and is combined intuitively, often in unexpected ways, employing a unique palette of cotton fabrics she hand dyes. Her work is abstract but draws elements from many places: her love of the colors and geological forms of the southwest, repetition, pattern, and an attraction to human-made structures for containment such as fences and stone walls. Extensive stitching on the surface adds rich texture to her finished work.”…The Art Quilt Gallery.
Lisa’s work is bold in that she is not looking to trick or confuse the viewer. Each piece, says what needs to be said, simply and beautiful. The Show will be up until Oct 20th.
There’s an exhibition called “Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties” that’s been traveling around the country since the end of last year. This month it ends its run at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The program “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 presented 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.
This July, the Detroit Institute of Arts presents the work of 2 legendary artists together is the presentation: Picasso and Matisse: The DIA’s Prints and Drawings
“Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Henri Matisse (1869–1954) were ground-breaking visionaries who constantly experimented with techniques and materials… The story of Picasso’s and Matisse’s stylistic progression and artistic range will be told through more than 100 prints and drawings, including exceptional works such as Matisse’s 1919 drawing The Plumed Hat and Picasso’s 1939 gouache The Bather by the Sea. Other highlights include Matisse’s famous series Jazz and Picasso’s etchings for the Dream and Lie of Franco, as well as many linoleum cuts by both artists.”
English: Ryan Gosling at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If we didn’t before, we know now that the world is full of psychopaths and psychopaths are often the main characters we cheer for in the films we love. Ryan Gosling in Drive plays a well meaning, super hero psychopath or an insane person doing insane things that we cheer for because of their warped sense of honor. Think Batman without the mask.
As an actor Gosling is consistently good (better than good) and I am impressed with the diversity of the acting roles he has taken on and just how good he is in each of these films. Some of his credits:
Film is a directors medium, I believe, and actors don’t have much input in what eventually shows up on the big screen. Being consistent is not only about hard work, it is also about a gift that some artist have in being able to deliver a creditable and powerful portraits of imaginary people.We identify with flawed characters even if when they are despicable. Actors give us the chance to understand something about ourselves and to get over it.
Director, writer Terrence Malick whose work I admire has a film in production which features both Gosling and “Christian Bale”, another actor who often plays a confused hero or psychopath, and he too is very convincing.
Artists Man Ray, (1890-1976), and Lee Miller, (1907-1977) are featured in a new presentation at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, CA.
“Man Ray |Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism consists of approximately 115 photographs, paintings, drawings and manuscripts that explore the creative interaction between Man Ray and Lee Miller, two giants of European Surrealism. This is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the pair’s artistic relationship. It also includes selected works by artists in Ray and Miller’s circle in Paris, including paintings by Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Roland Penrose, Dora Maar, and a small sculpture by Alexander Calder.”
She is “best known for her elaborate, collage-inspired paintings, embellished with rhinestones, enamel, and colorful acrylics. Her depictions of African American women explore a spectrum of black female beauty and sexual identity while constructing images of femininity and power… the exhibition highlights recent bodies of work that examine interior and exterior environments in relation to the female figure. Their settings are often inspired by her 1970s childhood.”
