Visual Art

Tag Archive - Visual Art

Wilco, Ruscha, Sondheim,Tom Phillips, Xu Bing & More: 11 Don’t-Miss Arts Events

May 17, 2013 in Events, Images with 0 Comments

Liu Bolin, Hiding in the City No.93 -Supermarket No.2, 2010 (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin. Click to Enlarge)

Liu Bolin, Hiding in the City No.93 -Supermarket No.2, 2010. Photographs by the Chinese artist are on view in Brattleboro, Vermont, through June 23rd. (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin. Click to Enlarge)

The summer art scene in New England presents a special challenge. On the one hand there is almost too much going on, particularly with outdoor events. And yet it’s not the season when we can expect the best films or museum shows, which are typically reserved for the fall. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t standout events to be found.

On Wednesday I had a chance to share a few of my own recommendations for summer arts events in New England on New Hampshire Public Radio’s Word of Mouth. (It’s always a blast to work with the show’s host Virginia Prescott and producer Taylor Quimby.)

If you missed the segment, you can listen online here.

Here’s a look at the New England arts events that I’m most looking forward to this summer, along with a few suggestions I didn’t have time to mention on the show…

Michelle in the New Hampshire Public Radio studios (Photo by Taylor Quimby)

Zach in the control booth at New Hampshire Public Radio (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Word of Mouth host Virginia Prescott and Michelle just before their live segment on NHPR (Photo by Taylor Quimby)

Ed Ruscha at the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts

The Rose had a firestorm of bad press back in 2009 when the former President Jehuda Reinharz announced plans to shut down the Rose and sell the collection in order to shore up Brandeis’ University’s plummeting endowment. The news enraged faculty, alumni and the art world. But the museum has a new president now and the Rose, luckily, has been preserved.

The museum is back with a vengeance showcasing the work of renowned pop artist Ed Ruscha, the first large-scale solo show of the artist’s work in the Boston area.

Ruscha is all about Southern California–cars, billboards, film, and Los Angeles. His best known work may be his artist books 26 Gasoline Stations and Every Building on the Sunset Strip, seminal works that inspired countless imitations.

“Standard Station” (1966), a screenprint from the exhibit “Ed Ruscha: Standard” at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.

Ruscha’s 1966 screenprint called Standard Station (shown above) is a pop art masterpiece. The artist is a genius of word play. “Standard” is not only a gas station, but also a mark of quality. Ruscha is also making reference to John D. Rockefeller’s oil company, Standard, which was dissolved by an antitrust ruling in 1911.

The Ed Ruscha show, also called Standard, contains 70 pieces and covers 60 years of the artist’s career. The exhibit ended up at Brandeis thanks to Christopher Bedford, the Rose Museum Director, who used to work at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where the Ruscha show originated.

You’ll need to act quickly though because Ruscha’s Standard is at Brandeis only through June 9th. Visit the Rose Art Museum website for more details.

Liu Bolin, Hiding in the City No. 99 – Three Goddesses, 2011 (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin)

Contemporary Chinese Art at the Brattleboro Museum and Mass MoCA

Liu Bolin at the Brattleboro Museum of Art in Vermont

This summer New Englanders have not one but two rare opportunities to see the work of two important Chinese artists, both working out of Beijing.

Photographer and performance artist Liu Bolin is sometimes called “The Invisible Man” because he creates photographs of himself blending into various settings around Beijing. Whether he is standing in front of demolished building, a piece of Chinese propaganda, or grocery store shelves lined with soft drinks, Liu (with the help of his assistant) finds creative ways to disguise his body with paint and other materials in order to make himself “invisible.”

Liu Bolin, Hiding in New York No. 7 – Made in China, 2012. (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin)

In 2005 the Chinese government destroyed Suo Jia Cun, the artist village where Liu’s studio was located. In response Liu started the Hiding in the City series as a way of protesting artists’ troubled relationship with the government and their physical surroundings. Through his elaborate photographs, he embodies the role of the conflicted citizen in a country torn between tradition and “progress,” communal interests and individual freedom.

Liu is an important Chinese artist and it’s a rare event to have his work at the Brattleboro Museum in Vermont through June 23rd.

Also, on Sunday May 26th at 3 p.m. Taliesin Thomas, director of AW Asia, will discuss the emergence and evolution of Chinese contemporary art from the end of the Cultural Revolution to the present day. More information about the talk is available on the Brattleboro Museum website.

The Sunday Poem : Christine Shan Shan Hou & Audra Wolowiec’s Concrete Sound

April 21, 2013 in Images, Sunday Poem, Words with 0 Comments

Concrete Sound (Photos courtesy Audra Wolowiec)

Last year Gwarlingo readers responded enthusiastically to Mary Ruefle and Jen Bervin’s erasure poems. Today’s Sunday Poem features another unique project that defies categorization—a collaboration between interdisciplinary artist Audra Wolowiec and poet, critic, and artist Christine Shan Shan Hou.

In conjunction with her one-person exhibition, Concrete Sound, at Norte Maar Gallery (shown below), Wolowiec worked with Hou to create a publication that is an extension of her installation. The limited-edition artist book, also called Concrete Sound, is based on a series of email exchanges of images and text between Wolowiec and Hou over the course of a month.

The result is a beautiful, handmade book that explores the idea of call and response, as well as other sound-related themes, such as deep listening and interpersonal communication. The hand-stitched volume uses collage and vellum to great effect. The transparent pages create not only layers of text, but also layers of meaning.

“Do we want concrete?” Hou writes in the unconventional introduction, printed on a single folded page, “As if uncertainty looms unconventionally like a black skirt in the corner. Sound waves its left hand amongst tremors. The women in search of an echo may unhook themselves from the mirror…Can personal history be detached from the body?”

The limited-edition artist book, Concrete Sound, is based on a series of email exchanges of images and text between Wolowiec and Hou over the course of a month and is an extension of Wolowiec’s installation by the same name. (Photo courtesy Audra Wolowiec)

Based on acoustic foam used in anechoic chambers, Audra Wolowiec’s installation, Concrete Sound, is etymologically linked to language as explored through concrete poetry and the role it played in early communication devices. On the coasts of England, large cement domes called ‘acoustic mirrors’ once used to detect sounds from oncoming troops, now lay dormant as reminders of the tactile nature of analog technology. (Photo courtesy Norte Maar Gallery)

Christine Shan Shan Hou reading from Concrete Sound at Norte Maar Gallery in 2011. (Photo courtesy the Norte Maar Gallery blog)

10 remaining copies of Concrete Sound are available for purchase from the authors. (Photo courtesy Audra Wolowiec)

The last 10 copies of Concrete Sound are available for purchase from the authors. (Photo courtesy Audra Wolowiec)

To better showcase Concrete Sound, I’ve made a special page on the Gwarlingo website with full-screen scans from the book. This will allow you to read the poems and view the pages in more detail.

Audra and Christine have also created a video that will give Gwarlingo readers a better sense of the project and it’s unusual features, like its vellum pages, photographs, and collages.

You’ll notice that certain text and poems appear lighter than others as a result of being viewed beneath the transparent vellum. Such subtleties don’t translate digitally, but 10 lucky Gwarlingo readers can purchase the last copies of this limited-edition book directly from the artists for $20 + $2 shipping and handling. (Note: The first edition of Concrete Sound has sold out, but Christine and Audra have just issued a second edition of the book, now available for purchase!)

View the video and read full screen-excerpts from Concrete Sound here.

About Christine Shan Shan Hou

Christine Hou

Christine Shan Shan Hou is a poet, critic, and artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Publications include Accumulations (Publication Studio, 2010) and Concrete Sound (2011), a collaborative artists’ book with Audra Wolowiec. Additional poems appear in Weekday, EOAGH, Critical Correspondence, Bone Bouquet, and Belladonna #148. Her awards include The Flow Chart Foundation/The Academy for American Poets and the Zora Neale Hurston Scholarship. Her criticism has been published in The Brooklyn Rail, The Performance Club, Hyperallergic Weekend, IDIOM, and Fake Pretty. For more information about Christine and her work, please visit her website.

About Audra Wolowiec

Audra Wolowiec (Photo by Katarina Hybenova)

Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York, whose work oscillates between sculpture, sound, text and performance. She received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has shown work at Norte Maar, Magnan-Metz, and Art in General. Her work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, textsound, and Thresholds (MIT Dept of Architecture). She currently teaches at Parsons in the Art, Media and Technology Department. For more information about Audra and her work, please visit her website.

View the video and read full screen-excerpts from Concrete Sound here.

The Life and Art of Horace Pippin

January 31, 2013 in Images with 0 Comments

Horace Pippin, Mr. Prejudice, 1943. Oil on canvas, 18 x 14″ (Image courtesy of The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Matthew Moore)

Last summer I was strolling through the galleries of the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, surrounded by the exquisite paintings of Matisse, Modigliani, Cézanne, when a small painting of Abraham Lincoln and his father building a log cabin caught my eye. A wrinkled woman with fiery hair and dangling diamond earrings froze beside me, also awestruck. “Look at that one,” she said to a friend, staring up at the wall. “How beautiful. Who on earth painted it?”

The Barnes has one of the finest collections of French Impressionist and modern art in the world, and because of Alfred Barnes’s eccentric wall arrangements, holding a viewer’s attention is no small matter in a museum vibrating with Matisse’s raw colors and bulging with far too many plump, Renoir nudes.

That day in Philadelphia I opened my notebook and wrote the following:

“HORACE PIPPIN!”

And just so I wouldn’t forget, I underlined Pippin’s name three times. And then I starred it for good measure.

Horace Pippin, Abraham Lincoln and His Father Building Their Cabin on Pigeon Creek, c. 1934. Oil on fabric (later mounted to composition board) 16 1/4 x 20 1/4 in. (41.3 x 51.4 cm)
(Image © 2013 The Barnes Foundation)

Horace Pippin’s final painting, Man on a Bench, 1946. Oil on canvas.

Horace Pippin, Self-Portrait, 1941. Oil on canvas board, 20 x 17 x 2 1/2 inches (50.8 x 43.18 x 6.35 cm) (Image courtesy the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York)

A descendent of slaves, Horace Pippin’s biography is a compelling one. Here is an excerpt from his Wikipedia entry:

He was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Goshen, New York. There he attended segregated schools until he was 15, when he went to work to support his ailing mother. As a boy, Horace responded to an art supply company’s advertising contest and won his first set of crayons and a box of watercolors. As a youngster, Pippin made drawings of racehorses and jockeys from Goshen’s celebrated racetrack. Prior to 1917, Pippin variously toiled in a coal yard, in an iron foundry, as a hotel porter and as a used-clothing peddler.

Pippin enlisted in the army in 1917 and fought in the famous, all-black 369th Infantry regiment in France during World War I. Less than a month before the war ended, he was shot in the right shoulder.

“When I was a boy I loved to make pictures,” he once wrote, but war “brought out all the art in me. . . . I can never forget suffering and I will never forget sunsets. So I came home with all of it in my mind and I paint from it today.”

While in the trenches, Pippin kept illustrated journals of his military service. Six drawings survive, and I was excited when I stumbled on these journals and letters online at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art…

(NOTE: Click images to enlarge)

A page from Horace Pippin’s memoir recounting his experiences in World War I, ca 1921. (From the collection of Horace Pippin notebooks and letters in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

Horace Pippin’s first painting, The End of the War: Starting Home, 1930-33 Oil on canvas, 26 x 30 1/16 in. (66 x 76.4 cm) (Image courtesy The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Robert Carlen)

One website on Pennsylvania history describes the evolution of Pippin’s brief career:

After the war, the handicapped Pippin devised a way of supporting his right hand with his left. Using a hot poker to burn in the outlines of his figures and objects onto wood (a technique called pyrography) and then filling them in, he was able to resume painting by the mid-1920s. He then began using oil paints. Local exhibitions and collectors brought him to the attention of Alain Locke, an important black philosopher and critic, the painter N.C. Wyeth,… and Dr. Albert F. Barnes, whose private museum in Merion houses one of the world’s most important collections of French impressionist and modern art.

Words like “toiled” appear frequently in Pippin’s biographies and give some hint at the reverential tone that has been used to describe the artist over the decades. His personal story is so riveting that Melissa Sweet and Jen Bryant have just written a new children’s book about the artist called A Splash of Red.

Although everyone from wealthy collectors, museums, and Hollywood stars bought his work, Pippin’s rapid rise in the art world had its downside: Pippin’s wife suffered from mental illness and he began to drink heavily. By the time of Pippin death in 1946 at the age of 58, he had completed 140-odd paintings, drawings and wood panels. In his obituary in the New York Times they called him the “most important Negro painter” to have appeared in America.

One of the illustrations from A Splash of Red, a new children’s book about Horace Pippin.

Joseph Janney Steinmetz, Untitled (Horace Pippin pointing to his painting of a log cabin), 1940. (Photo courtesy Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum)

Horace Pippin, Domino Players, 1943. Oil on composition board, 2 3/4 x 22 in. (Image courtesy the Phillips Collection)

Horace Pippin, Country Doctor (Night Call), 1935. Oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 32 1/8″ (71.44 x 81.6 cm) (Image courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. From the A. Shuman Collection)

Pippin’s legacy has been somewhat muddled by critics’ failed attempts to categorize him. His inspiring life-story has prompted some historians to portray him as an “art genius” in the best of cases, and as a sort of “noble savage” of the art world in the worst.

A Line Made By Flooding – Artist Eve Mosher: “I Never Wanted to Be Right”

November 16, 2012 in Images with 5 Comments

In 2007 artist Eve S. Mosher used beacons and chalk to mark the projected high water line in Brooklyn and Manhattan. (Battery Park photo by Hose Cedeno courtesy highwaterline.org)

Artist Eve Mosher in 2007 (Photo courtesy highwaterline.org)

“I never wanted this to be a reality,” artist Eve Mosher wrote on her website the week Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York and New Jersey. ”Five years ago I couldn’t have even imagined it.”

In 2007 Mosher created High Water Line, a public art project in Manhattan and Brooklyn that brought the topic of climate change directly to the city’s residents. Using topographic maps, satellite images, research from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, and a Heavy Hitter (a machine typically used to draw chalk lines on ball fields), Moser walked 70 miles of New York coastline, drawing a blue chalk line on the ground ten feet above sea level—the anticipated high water line due to climate change. In other areas, where she was unable to draw a line, she marked the high water boundary with illuminated beacons.

“High Water Line” in the West Village as Eve Mosher drew it in 2007 (Photo courtesy evemosher.com)

(Photo by Curtis Hamilton for The Canary Project courtesy highwaterline.org)

Installing beacons beside the Brooklyn Bridge (Photo courtesy highwaterline.org)

Sea life inside one of the beacons that Eve Mosher installed in New York (Photo courtesy highwaterline.org)

Elizabeth Kolbert describes Eve’s project in a recent issue of The New Yorker :

Ten feet above sea level was the height that waters were expected to reach in New York during a hundred-year flood. Owing to climate change, though, the whole concept of a hundred-year flood was becoming obsolete. By the twenty-twenties, according to a report that Mosher read by a scientist at Columbia University, what used to be a hundred-year flood could be happening once every forty years. By the twenty-fifties, as sea levels continued to rise, it would become a twenty-year event. And by the twenty-eighties it could be occurring as often as once every four years. Mosher couldn’t understand why a projection like this wasn’t a major topic of discussion in Washington. In fact, it wasn’t being discussed at all.

As Mosher made her way around Brooklyn and, later, Manhattan, she hoped that the High Water Line, as she called her project, would prompt people to ask her what she was doing. “I wanted to leave this visually interesting mark, to open up a space for conversation,” she said last week

The audaciousness of Mosher’s project allowed her to engage with an economically and racially diverse group of residents. As she walked through neighborhoods, she talked to people, handed out flyers, and explained her motivations for drawing a 70-mile line through their communities. Workshops, education booklets, and a website were also an integral part of the project.

Eve Mosher talking with residents during her High Water Line project (Photo courtesy evemosher.com)

Tracing the “High Water Line” along the battery (Photo by Hose Cedeno courtesy highwaterline.org)

Beacons marking the high water line in Battery Park (Photo by Hose Cedeno courtesy highwaterline.org)

Ford as Fonzie, Carter as Christ: A Look at Presidential Posters of Years Past

November 6, 2012 in Images with 0 Comments

A 1968 poster parodying the Nixon campaign’s motto, “Nixon’s the one!” (Courtesy the Library of Congress)

Election Day is finally here, and I thought it would be fun to explore some of the campaign posters from past presidential elections. All of the posters featured here are in the collection of the Library of Congress and included in their new book Presidential Campaign Posters: Two Hundred Years of Election Art.

There are some intriguing images here—Jimmy Carter being depicted as Jesus Christ, the above parody poster for the Nixon campaign, the Gerald Ford Happy Days send up, and Geraldine Ferraro shown as Lady Liberty. It’s a riveting glimpse into the American mindset (or at least into the cultural assumptions of the day and which ideas could be exploited by the artists designing these posters).

It’s interesting how propaganda is blatantly obvious from the viewpoint of hindsight, but not as easy to spot when we’re in the thick of it. Humor and parody, on the other hand, isn’t always as simple to decipher as time passes and we lose the cultural context. (The below poster of Truman by Ben Shahn is a good example. Without knowledge of the original Lauren Bacall photograph, the meaning is hard to decode).

I love this “sideways” perspective on Presidential politics. When we look back at the election of 2012 years from now, I wonder what will stand out as our most embarrassing moment as a country? Which campaign claims and advertisements will make us shiver in hindsight?

I’m heading to my local polling place now to vote. Please don’t forget to exercise your right to vote today!

Jimmy Carter depicted as Jesus Christ. During the election Carter famously confessed to Playboy that he had committed “adultery in his heart many times.” (Poster by Chelsea Marketing, c. 1976, courtesy the Library of Congress)

A 1968 poster for Eugene McCarthy, a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. The poster is by Lithuanian-born American artist Ben Shahn (Courtesy the Library of Congress)

In spite of a challenge from Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford kept his cool–and was depicted as the leather-jacketed greaser Fonzie, the arbiter of cool, from the hit television show Happy Days–even as his challenger pestered him at the Republican convention in Kansas City (1976 poster and caption courtesy the Library of Congress)

A 1908 poster from the campaign that pitted Republican William H. Taft (Republican) against. William J. Bryan (Democrat) and Eugene V. Debs (Socialist) (Courtesy the Library of Congress)

A 1968 poster for Bobby Kennedy (Courtesy the Library of Congress)

A 1988 campaign poster for Jesse Jackson (Courtesy the Library of Congress)

This poster by artist Ben Shahn titled A Good Man is Hard to Find served as a backdrop at the 1948 convention of the Progressive Party. The poster satirizes a then-famous photograph of Truman playing an upright piano as actress Lauren Bacall leans seductively on top. In his image, Shahn replaces Bacall with Republican front-runner Thomas Dewey, implying that both candidates were similarly unsuitable. (1948 poster and caption courtesy the Library of Congress)

Liquor, Perfume, Hair: Joan Wickersham Talks with Painter Julia Jacquette

October 9, 2012 in Images with 4 Comments

Julia Jacquette, Blond, Shoulder, 2011. Oil on wood panel. 10 x 7.5 inches (Photo by Jean Vong)

It’s hard not to be mesmerized by Julia Jacquette ‘s hypnotic paintings. Their luminous, rich surfaces are intoxicating, and yet there is so much more happening in Jacquette’s work than mere surface. Her images of wedding cakes, liquor, hair, vintage ads, food, and interiors capture a perfectionist ideal, and yet slyly undercut that ideal at the same time.

As a female viewer, I find Julia’s's paintings particularly powerful. What woman hasn’t found herself seduced by the mass media’s fictional depiction of the perfect wedding, the perfect family, the perfect hair, or the perfect apartment? I can’t help but be attracted, as well as repelled, by the glossy, luscious consumerism Jacquette portrays. I envy it, and yet hate the way it has warped our society’s image of what it means to be a woman.

Joan Wickersham’s insightful interview with Julia, which originally appeared in the Bergarde Galleries‘ 2012 show catalog for Julia Jacquette: Liquor, Perfume, Hair, wonderfully captures her artistic process and evolution as a painter.

I’ve admired Wickersham’s writing since I first read her critically acclaimed book The Suicide Index. My respect for her talent has only deepened with her brand-new fiction collection The News From Spain, a potent, unorthodox series of stories that has been keeping me up well past my bedtime in recent weeks.

I hope you find Julia Jacquette’s work and this special interview with Joan Wickersham as eye-opening as I have.

Painter Julia Jacquette at work in her studio (Photo © Daniel Carlson. Click to enlarge)

Cambridge-based writer Joan Wickersham’s latest book is The News From Spain, available from Knopf. (Photo by Thomas Wickersham)

Irony and Desire: A Conversation with Julia Jacquette
Interview by Joan Wickersham

A Saturday afternoon in Julia Jacquette’s studio, on the fifth floor of an old building in New York’s Lower East Side.

In one corner, large wooden racks store paintings and prints from Jacquette’s previous series: images of food, often combined with text, dating from the 1990s; depictions of men and women using 1950s imagery, a series Jacquette worked on from the late 1990s through the early 2000s; white-on-white paintings built around wedding imagery – cakes, dresses, and flowers, as well as abstract geometric color studies exploring the many different whites and shadow-tones used in the series (2000-05); and “My Houses” (2005-07).

Metal shelves hold neat stacks of some of the magazines and books – Modern Bride, Architectural Digest, old copies of Life and cookbooks from the 1950s – she collects for the lush photographic images that inspire her work.

The canvas she is currently working on, a huge oil painting of a cocktail – “big enough to swim in,” she says – is pinned up on one of the vast white walls, surrounded by other pieces from her series in progress, “Water, Liquor, Hair.”

Julia Jacquette, Cognac, 2011. Oil on linen 76 x 93 inches (Photo by Jean Vong)

Jacquette’s show Liquor, Perfume, Hair was on view at Bergarde Galleries in Amsterdam this summer (Photo courtesy the artist. Click to enlarge)

Julia Jacquette, Rum, Lime, 2010. Oil on wood panel 45.5 x 40.5 cm (Photo by Jean Vong)

Joan Wickersham: Let’s begin by talking about what you’re working on right now, this huge close-up of a cocktail.

Julia Jacquette: The starting point for this particular painting was a liquor ad in a magazine. I’ve been collecting images of liquor for quite a while, thinking about how I might want to use them. One painting is from an ad I saw in the subway, for Puerto Rican rum. They make giant ads now on sticker material and put them up anywhere. I saw these rum ads at 42nd Street, giant ads from floor to ceiling, repeated over and over – you can walk into the cocktail. And it’s hard when you get deep inside the cocktail to tell where you are.

JW: It’s at once seductive and uncomfortable, disorienting.

JJ: Absolutely.

JW: Your work contains so many paradoxes: irony and desire, sensuality and anxiety, attraction and repulsion. It’s about seduction, but it’s also about being critical of the seduction. You’re saying “Yes! Yes!” and at the same time, coolly, “No, thanks.”

JJ: Exactly. And those are actually some of the earliest memories I have. I remember ad campaigns in the 1970s. They fascinated me and made me angry. A lot were for Bloomingdales – they knew how to make things appealing. I was sensitive at a young age that I was not living up to the ideal of female beauty. All the stories that are told to young women – there is a moment, around the age of 11, when girls lose their confidence. In order to deal with my own anxiety I quote the media images that provoke anxiety in me – they provoke reverence, and a yearning to own them, and a wish to destroy them.

JW: You work in series. How do you move from one series to the next?

JJ: I know I’m going to make a lot of bodies of work over the course of my life, each lasting for many years. I wait for the next one to come while I keep expanding on the one I’m working on. When I’m planning a series, I will often see the whole story ahead of time. I’m noticing repetition in the world. The images come first – I start collecting, ads for a particular thing. I start seeing the whole package, the series, the body of work. It’s like collecting baseball cards – I’m just a cataloguer. I’m editing in my own mind what could work. I grew up in the 1970s with the example of people like Sol LeWitt – he would choose a shape and think about how many different iterations he could do. My work doesn’t look like his, but the important thing is: How many different iterations can I do?

JW: That idea of multiple iterations has been true of your work since the beginning.

JJ: The first series I worked on as an exhibiting artist combined food with text. I worked on it for eight to ten years. Then I really didn’t want to make any more of that work – I had pushed it to its limits. Now I have ideas of going back to that work – with changes, but I’m ready.

JW: How would you approach painting food differently now than you did 20 years ago?

JJ: It still has to do with desire, but now that desire comes with regret, disillusionment, nostalgia. The desire I had earlier was the desire of a young person wanting the world. Now it would be much more embittered – but I could have a sense of humor about it. And I’d admit to having regrets.

JW: There’s another paradox in your work: anxiety and control. I feel both when I look at your paintings. There’s something disturbing, and it’s perhaps more disturbing because I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

JJ: I have a compulsive nature that helps me deal with anxiety. To quell or damp it down I make the work. It gives me a sense of control. My work is always a reaction: a narrative in response to the narrative the culture is telling me. I’m always reaching toward the things I’m painting – revering them, but also trying to beat them down, wrangling with them, trying to gain some kind of ownership of them. Making a cocktail so big that I can swim in it. And I’m seduced by it – I am swimming in it, but at the same time I’m aware of the perversity of it. Liquor is seductive to many people, but it can also be repellent.

JW: And dangerous?

JJ: It’s a problematic substance. We as a culture almost never socialize without it. In New York City, many of the bookstores and movie theatres have closed. It seems like bars and restaurants are the only places left to socialize in public.

JW: It seems like a bit of a shift – food is a substance that snares women, but liquor images seem designed to snare men.

JJ: I never thought about that. In my family there are a lot of Scotch drinkers, both male and female. The refrain was always “Let’s celebrate.” But you’re right. In my last series [“My Houses”] there were paintings whose starting point was cologne ads – a man standing in a hotel suite that looked the way the rooms in the Plaza used to look, synonymous with luxury, and he was wearing this classic tuxedo shirt. That ad was probably directed toward men and toward women, too.

Julia Jacquette, Wine, White, 2009. Oil on canvas 79 x 86 inches

Julia Jacquette, Colors from Wine, White, 2010. Oil on canvas 79 x 86 inches

JW: There’s always that ambiguity, in any seductive image. Do you want to be that man, or do you want to sleep with him? Do you want to have that hair or do you want to be the person touching it? I also think it’s fascinating that there is very little copy in today’s ads. When we were younger, there were a lot of words. But now the seduction is purely visual.

JJ: Well, even as early as the cave paintings there was narrative without text. But there has definitely been a shift in our culture toward these very complex yet wordless visual narratives. The Tiffany ads are just brilliant at this, using pictures to get across this combination of romance and jewelry and marriage.

Continue Reading…

An Exclusive Peek Inside Keith Haring’s New York City Studio

September 5, 2012 in Creative Spaces, Images with 0 Comments

The front door of the late Keith Haring’s New York City studio. These fish stickers were given to the artist by a friend. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Keith Haring in front of his mural at the Walker Art Center (Keith Haring artwork © Keith Haring Foundation)

On a recent trip to New York City, I had a chance to visit the studio of the late Keith Haring. The fifth-floor space, located on Broadway between Bleeker and Great Jones Street, is now home to the Keith Haring Foundation. Haring first rented the studio in May of 1985, and it was his workspace until his untimely death in 1990 at the age of 31. He also owned an apartment on LaGuardia Place, only three blocks from the studio.

Haring was born in 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the nearby town of Kutztown. Inspired by Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss, he learned to draw cartoons from his father at a young age.

The artist is best know for his graphic drawings and paintings of dogs, children, and dancing figures. “He was one of the most astonishingly unique talents of recent times,” gallery owner Tony Shafrazi told The New York Times. ”In a short time after he arrived in New York at age 20, he practically took over Manhattan with his subway drawings, which were an instant series of signs and pictograms that everybody became familiar with.”

Between 1980 and 1985, Haring produced hundreds of public chalk drawings in the New York City subways. According to the Foundation, he could create as many as forty subway drawings in a single day. Commuters would often stop and talk to Haring while he was working. The subway became, as Haring said, a “laboratory” for creative experimentation.

Keith Haring creating one of his famous subway drawings (Photo by JUST SHOOT IT! Photography via Flickr Commons. Keith Haring artwork © Keith Haring Foundation)

Keith Haring, Untitled, 1980. Sumi ink on Bristol board, 20 x 26 inches. (Collection Keith Haring Foundation © Keith Haring Foundation)

In 1986, when the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in West Berlin asked Haring to paint a 350-foot mural on the Berlin Wall, the artist became the focus of major media coverage. (Photo by Tseng Kwong Chi, 1986 © Muna Tseng Dance Projects courtesy Keith Haring Foundation)

Haring wrote this letter of encouragement to an aspiring artist and fan.

(Collection Keith Haring Foundation © Keith Haring Foundation)

Haring believed that art should remain accessible to people of all ages and income brackets, and he was always looking for new ways to make his work available outside a gallery setting. He conducted art workshops with children, created logos and posters for public service agencies, and produced murals, sculptures, and paintings to benefit health centers and disadvantaged communities.

Haring’s 1986 Crack is Wack mural has become a famous New York City landmark on FDR Drive. He also collaborated with 900 children on a mural for the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, and he painted a mural on the western side of the Berlin Wall three years before its fall.

In 1986 Haring opened the infamous Pop Shop in SoHo, a retail store that sold T-shirts, toys, posters, buttons and magnets bearing his images. As the Foundation explains, “Haring considered the shop to be an extension of his work and painted the entire interior of the store in an abstract black on white mural, creating a striking and unique retail environment. The shop was intended to allow people greater access to his work, which was now readily available on products at a low cost.” Many people in the art world criticized him for becoming too commercial. “I could earn more money if I just painted a few things and jacked up the price,” Haring said in response. “My shop is an extension of what I was doing in the subway stations, breaking down the barriers between high and low art.”

A view of Keith Haring’s studio, which now serves as the office for the Keith Haring Foundation. The Foundation has preserved the paint on the floor and walls. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge. Artwork © Keith Haring Foundation)

Keith Haring, Crack is Wack, 1986. This mural on a handball court at 128th Street and 2nd Avenue, was inspired by the crack epidemic and its effect on New York City and was initially executed without City permission. The mural was immediately put under the protection and jurisdiction of the City Department of Parks and still exists. In 2007 the Keith Haring Foundation funded the mural’s restoration. (Artwork © Keith Haring Foundation)

A polaroid photo of Madonna and Keith Haring (Collection Keith Haring Foundation © Keith Haring Foundation)

Obsession & Empathy: Nan Goldin, Michael Chabon, & A Home for Indigent Bohemians

August 31, 2012 in Events, Images, News, Spaces with 3 Comments

Two weeks ago, artists and art lovers converged on the quiet town of Peterborough, New Hampshire, for a chance to meet some of the most talented contemporary artists working today. Each August the famed MacDowell Colony opens its doors to the public and gives visitors from around the country an opportunity to tour its 32 studios, historic sites, 450 acres of forest, vegetable gardens, streams, orchards, and fields.

When composer Edward MacDowell and his wife Marian established an artist retreat in the New Hampshire woods in 1907, the idea seemed nothing less than ridiculous. Skeptics were quick to pounce, accusing Mrs. MacDowell of creating “a home for indigent bohemians.” But remarkably, the idea worked. The MacDowell Colony, the oldest artist retreat in the United States, has supported over 6000 writers, filmmakers, composers, visual artists, architects, and performers, and spawned hundreds of other programs based on its model. For two to eight weeks at a time, artists are given a private studio, three meals a day (lunch is delivered in the now-legendary picnic baskets), and quiet time to work on a creative project within a community of artistic peers.

What makes MacDowell’s Medal Day unique is the diverse range of artists, art lovers and supporters who are thrown together for a weekend of socializing, open studios, and conversations about the value and meaning of art—art on a personal level, but also a national one. Medal Day is like a family reunion of sorts, with the usual cast of crazy cousins and wise matriarchs mingling with all of those black sheep (and there are plenty of black sheep).

But regardless of your role in the MacDowell family—whether you’re a colony fellow, a local resident, an out-of-town visitor, a volunteer, a staff member, a friend, a supporter, or in my case, a former staff member turned press—there is always a sense of homecoming when you step onto the Colony property. From the moment that MacDowell fellow and board member Michael Chabon steps up to the microphone, you become hyperaware that in this oasis the value of art is not only assumed, but considered as essential as food, water, or air.

Marian MacDowell on the porch of the log cabin she had built for her husband, composer Edward MacDowell. (Photo courtesy The MacDowell Colony)

Medal Day visitors explore Edward MacDowell’s log cabin, which was the first studio on the property. Marian MacDowell would drop a lunch basket at her husband’s studio door each afternoon, which is how the tradition of MacDowell picnic baskets began. (Photo © Joanna Eldredge Morrissey 2012. All rights reserved)

“If I look a bit frazzled–,” Michael Chabon explained, “Ted Kosinski beard, suit worn with sneakers, thousand-yard stare alternating with homicidal glint–let’s just say that I have finally found the answer to one of the questions I am most frequently asked, namely, ‘Mr. Chairman, how do you manage to take care of four children, among them two teenagers, all by yourself, when your wife goes away to Africa for two weeks, without losing your admittedly already somewhat tenuous grip on sanity?’ The answer, I am sorry to report, is: ‘You don’t.’” (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

During this year’s ceremony, I appreciated Executive Director Cheryl Young’s thoughts on “bohemianism” and the financial struggles of working artists:

Luc [Sante] devotes a chapter to bohemia in New York in Low Life noting it was a state of mind more than a place. Therein he quotes a definition of the term by the author Ada Clare: “The Bohemian is by nature, if not by habit, a cosmopolite, with a general sympathy for the fine arts and for all things above and beyond convention. The Bohemian is not, like the creature of society, a victim of rules and customs… Above all others, the Bohemian must not be narrow-minded.”

She goes on to say that Bohemians do not strive to be poor. They are poor because they have eschewed more stable ways of earning a living to pursue life more freely. Bohemians like Walt Whitman and Stephen Crane were good examples of artists who embraced the idea of creative freedom, who eschewed the mainstream and remained on the fringe even after success.

Not all artists are bohemian, but they all-too-often share the common trait of being poor. For Edward MacDowell, who was employed as a professor and struggled to carve out time to make new work, creating a colony was a brilliant scheme to temporarily free artists from their everyday commitments to work and commerce. The Colony is a kind of sanctioned bohemia, one that works particularly well within a capitalist economy where the state only slimly supports artists. MacDowell provides opportunity for research and development for ideas that may or may not register in the commercial marketplace. And residency programs have proven their worth many times over and are today one of our country’s most copied ideas. In the past twenty years there has been an explosion of these sorts of programs internationally.

“Luc [Sante] devotes a chapter to bohemia in New York in Low Life noting it was a state of mind more than a place.” (Photo: Luc Sante at The MacDowell Colony © Joanna Eldredge Morrissey 2012. All rights reserved)

The Colony has been awarding the Edward MacDowell Medal, a prestigious lifetime achievement award, for 53 years. Past recipients include visual artists Robert Frank, Edward Hopper, Louise Bourgeois, and Georgia O’Keeffe; composers Leonard Bernstein and Sonny Rollins; architect I.M. Pei; filmmakers Chuck Jones and Stan Brakhage; interdisciplinary artist Merce Cunningham; writers Robert Frost, William Styron, Eudora Welty, and Joan Didion; and playwrights Thornton Wilder and Edward Albee.

Photographer Nan Goldin was the 2012 medal recipient. Goldin is known for her highly personal photographs of friends and lovers coping with AIDS, physical abuse, and addiction. Luc Sante, chairman of this year’s Medalist selection committee, said,“Nan Goldin’s photographs of her life, her friends, and her family—unflinchingly honest, nakedly emotional, sometimes brutal, but most often tender —redefined the autobiographical use of photography and influenced everyone who has come after her.” Sante, who introduced Goldin during the event, described the artist as a “visual diarist” who tries “to freeze time” by capturing her friends at the beach, at parties, in bed. “The moment is the subject,” Sante said. They are “emphatically not snapshots.”

Nan Goldin, Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City, 1983. (Image © Nan Goldin courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery)

Nan Goldin, Picnic at the Esplanade, Boston, 1973. (Image © Nan Goldin courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery)

Samein Priester on Fatherhood, Film, & Loss of His Wife, Artist Denyse Thomasos

August 17, 2012 in Images, News, Sounds, Words with 3 Comments

Filmmaker Samein Priester with his daughter Syann (Photo courtesy Samein Priester)

How do you learn to be a father, particularly when there are no fathers around to be an example?

This is the question at the heart of Samein Priester’s personal documentary 1st&4ever. The dilemma of fatherhood has taken on new significance for Samein since the tragic loss of his partner, artist Denyse Thomasos, last month.

Denyse’s visit to the hospital on July 19th was supposed to be routine. She was there for an MRI, but during the procedure she suffered a fatal allergic reaction. Her sudden death has left her husband, friends, family, students, colleagues, and the New York art community in shock. Denyse was only 47 years old.

Since 1995, Denyse taught in the Arts, Culture and Media Department at Rutgers University, Newark. When she met Samein, he was preparing to complete his undergraduate degree at Hunter. It was Denyse who pushed Samein to apply to graduate school at the City College of New York. “When I first got into grad school,” Samein explains in 1st&4ever, “my mother didn’t even know what that was, but she knew it was something big.” In December 2009, during his first semester, Samein’s mother passed away. She was the glue that held the family together, and her loss was a terrible blow to the family. In June of 2011 Samein graduated from City College.

Denyse and Samein were not only best friends, but also partners in life, work, and parenthood. In June of 2010 the couple adopted their first child, Syann, a joyful event that Samein chronicles at the end of his documentary 1st&4ever. (Photo courtesy Samein Priester)

Denyse and Samein were not only best friends and spouses, but also partners in life, work, and parenthood. In June of 2010 the couple adopted their first child, Syann, a joyful event that Samein chronicles at the end of 1st&4ever. “I’m going to be the best father that Syann can possibly ever have,” he says in his film. Samein repeated the same sentiment when we spoke at length on the phone last week. He is clearly stunned and grieving the sudden loss of his partner, but he is also focused on his daughter and creating a healthy, stable life for her in spite of Denyse’s absence.

“From the moment I met Denyse my life turned around,” Samein told me today via email. “She really made all of my dreams come true, down to my baby girl Syann. That was a name I had since I was 15. I always knew I’d have a daughter and her name would be Syann.”

Denyse Thomasos’s visit to the hospital on July 19th was supposed to be routine. She was there for an MRI, but during the procedure she suffered a fatal allergic reaction. Her sudden death has left her husband, friends, family, students, colleagues, and the New York art community in shock. (Photo courtesy Samein Priester)

The final version of Denyse Thomasos’s Arc, 2009, also shown above (Photo courtesy Olga Korper Gallery)

Samein and Denyse were both fellows at The MacDowell Colony. I met Samein at the Colony in the spring, just as I was leaving my job after 13 years to work on Gwarlingo full time. “Denyse told me I should apply,” Samein told me. “She knew I needed time to work, but she also thought the experience would be good for me as an artist.” Denyse clearly was supportive of her husband’s film career, just as he was supportive of her residencies, teaching job, and career as a painter. Tending to work and parenting was clearly a juggling act, but he said that he and Denyse were up to the challenge.

While in Peterborough, Samein talked a lot about his daughter, Syann, and how hard it was to be away from her, even for a short time. Each day when I ran into Samein returning his lunch basket in the main building, he smiled and expressed gratitude for the time, space, food, and community that MacDowell was providing him. He was well-liked by residents and staff alike, and we were all sorry when family obligations required him to return to New York after only a brief stay in New Hampshire.

But none of us forgot Samein or his powerful, short film 1st&4ever, which he screened during his residency. Half of the audience was in tears by the time it ended, but 1st&4ever is far from a sentimental tearjerker. It’s an honest, intimate portrait of a family doing their best to overcome the absent fathers who have left gaping holes in their lives. The minute the film was finished I knew that I wanted to share 1st&4ever with Gwarlingo readers.

Priester’s film won “Best Documentary” in the Newark Museum Black Film Festival 2012, as well as “Best Documentary” and “Best Cinematography in a Documentary” in the 2011 Citivision thesis show.

“Donte’s father was never around. My father wasn’t ever around. Really nobody’s father was around. They were in jail, dead, or missing in action. It was like no-man’s land. I thought it was normal, but it’s really not.”

The central focus of the film is Samein’s nephew, Donte Clark, a football player whose mother was only 18 years old when he was born. Donte has had contact with his father only twice in his life — once by phone and once through a letter his father sent him from jail. Samein was 13 when Donte was born, but he stepped up to the plate to help his sister Vanessa by mixing baby formula, changing diapers, and babysitting. “When you’re in the hood,” Sameine says in his film, “you don’t have a choice. It’s like all hands on deck. You don’t set out to be a father figure. You just start to multitask…There’s no daycare or nannies. There’s just family.”

These intimate glimpses of Samein, his mother, and Donte are interspersed with memorable images of Harlem, subway trains, and the distant skyscrapers of New York City. But these views are mostly seen through mesh screens or chain-link fences. In Priester’s film, there is always something standing in the way.

Football is a lifeline for Donte. While other kids are “getting beat-up or shot,” he spends time in the park playing football. New York Venom head football coach Booker T. McJunkins says that his job is to be a foster father by helping each individual ball player. He explains that being a father figure is more important than accolades or the team’s success as a whole:

“A lot of these kids don’t know how to be men, they don’t know how to raise a family. They don’t know how to show compassion. That’s why we have the problems we have in the city, because a lot of these kids don’t have male figures in their lives…People look at these 18, 19-year-olds, 2o-year-olds, 21-year olds, even 22-year-olds as grown up men, but those are still little boys wrapped in a grown man’s package.”

Samein lost his own father when he was three. “He wasn’t there to teach me how to be a man or to teach me how to be a father,” Samein says in 1st&4ever. “None of us have role models for that. Helping raise Donte made me want to be a father, but how do you learn to be a father without examples?”

“From the moment I met Denyse my life turned around,” Samein told me via email. “She really made all of my dreams come true, down to my baby girl Syann. That was a name I had since I was 15. I always knew I’d have a daughter and her name would be Syann.” (Photo courtesy Cityvisions)

Denyse, Syann, and Samein (Photo courtesy Samein Priester)

The intimate images of Syann, Denise, and Samein that conclude 1st&4ever are supposed to be a hopeful ending to this story of a close-knit, fatherless family. Seeing the three of them together during and after the adoption, we’re confident that some old patterns have been broken at last.

But as I watched the film again today, it was impossible not to feel the sting of Denyse’s loss. Being “a good father” is challenging under the best of circumstances. Now Samein must tackle the job without the support of his wife and partner. I can only admire Samein’s dedication to Syann and his nephew Donte. The path to fatherhood has been, and will be, hard-won for Samein, but he has a strong support network, including the help of Denyse’s family in Canada.

When I asked Samein to share some of the directors who inspire him most, he mentioned John Cassavetes, Spike Lee, and Francis Ford Coppola. Favorite movies include Fight Club, The Conversation, True Romance, Reds, The Piano, and She’s Gotta Have It.

Priester has two new projects in the works. The first is a film called Harlem Sons about three men from Harlem who are released from prison after serving nearly 30 years. Like 1st&4ever, Harlem Sons focuses on family and redemption.

While continuing the search for a full-time film teaching job, Samein has also been piecing together a film about Denyse for Syann. “I have received cards and calls from around the world with people wanting Syann and I to know how sorry they are,” Samein told me by email. “Every card or call is a message of love. Every person has a personal story to tell about Denyse. I plan to take the road trip and capture each story, no matter how short the story or how far away the person lives. When the time comes, I’ll be able to show Syann who her mother was.”

Sorting out the intricacies of Denyse’s estate is going to take some time, Samein told me on the phone. Friends have set up two different funds in Denyse’s honor to help Syann. One is a college fund for Syann, which she can use for her education in 2034; the other fund will help with her immediate needs. (Photo courtesy Samein Priester)

Denyse “was the kind of person you were very attracted to — fun to be with, smart, talented, outspoken, generous. She had a real creative sense about how to make her life rich and bring that to whatever she did. She was really an admirable creative woman.” (Photo courtesy Samein Priester)

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Gwarlingo highlights some of the most inventive work being made today in visual art, music, writing, film, performance, design, and more. It's also a place where creative people can connect, explore, and share ideas. Gwarlingo has been featured on Andrew Sullivan's The Dish, NHPR, and more. And the name? Gwarlingo is a Welsh word for the rushing sound a grandfather clock makes before it strikes.

“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.”

― Theodore Roethke

About Michelle

My name is Michelle Aldredge. I’m a writer, photographer, and the creator of Gwarlingo. At Gwarlingo, I share in-depth conversations with artists, as well as some of my own exciting finds in contemporary art. I've done radio appearances on NHPR and consulted on arts projects big and small. From 1999-2012 I worked at The MacDowell Colony, the nation's oldest artist retreat, but I've also done time at an arts magazine, a library, an art museum, and a raptor rehabilitation center. You can read more about me and my work here. Thanks for visiting. Come back. Come often.

Greatest Hits

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The Debut of Mary Ruefle's Erasure Melody: Mary Ruefle is one of today’s most admired practitioners of erasure poetry. A new erasure by Ruefle is a rare event, and the publication of one online or in print even rarer. Gwarlingo is the only place where you can see this one-of-a-kind piece. Read Melody in its entirety and learn more about erasure poetry here.

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Tour the Tate Modern: The Tate Modern in London, a former power plant, is the most visited modern art gallery in the world. I share some of the highlights from my own visit in this special tour.

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Before and After Dinner: Most people know André Gregory through his critically acclaimed film My Dinner with André, but Cindy Kleine's new documentary reveals so much more about the respected theatre director and raconteur. Read my full review of the film here.

A Good Man is Hard to Find: Click here to explore the artwork and propaganda posters from past presidential elections.

Ambient Cowboy by Ivy Baldwin Dance: It is fitting that a dance piece inspired by Philip Johnson’s famous Glass House should have a set design made of light. And not just any light—but a ribbon of light that glides over wall, floor, and dancers, then suddenly vanishes. Read my full review of Ivy Baldwin's Ambient Cowboy at New York Live Arts here.

Film & Fatherhood: How do you learn to be a father, particularly when there are no fathers around to be an example? This is the question at the heart of Samein Priester’s documentary 1st&4ever. The dilemma of fatherhood has taken on new significance for Samein since the tragic loss of his partner, artist Denyse Thomasos. Read more and watch the film in its entirety here.

The Utopia Minus Project: Gwarlingo readers loved Susan Briante's gritty, visceral poems about America's highways, suburbs, and abandoned urban landscapes paired with Margaret Lanzetta's rich, patterned canvases (many also inspired by American highways). See Briante's and Lanzetta's exclusive collaboration only on Gwarlingo.

Transforming New York City's Water Towers: Artists like Tom Fruin and Rachel Whiteread are creating memorable public sculptures out of the humble New York City water tower. In the Spring of 2013, 300 rooftop tanks will be transformed into works of art by established and emerging figures in art, music, science as well as public school students. Read more about water-tower art here.

Lessons from the Writing Life: Poet Matthew Zapruder and fiction writer Amy Hempel read and discuss new work at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts.Read more here.

My Review of Christian Marclay's The Clock: The Clock is artist Christian Marclay’s magnum opus, a mesmerizing 24-hour montage of thousands of time-related movie clips that have been masterfully edited and synchronized to show the actual time. Does it live up to the hype? Find out here.

Tales of Captivity and Freedom: In I Am an Executioner, Rajesh Parameswaran introduces us to a cast of heroes—and antiheroes: from the lovesick tiger who narrates the unforgettable opener, to the ex-CompUSA employee who masquerades as a doctor; from a railroad manager in a turn-of-the-century Indian village, to an elephant writing her autobiography; from a woman whose Thanksgiving preparations put her husband to eternal rest, to the newlywed executioner of the title, these characters inhabit a marvelous region between desire and death, playfulness and violence. Read an interview with Rajesh Parameswaran here.

Lewis Hyde on Art and Ownership: Lawsuits over image appropriation, music remixes, file sharing, and copyright infringement are on the rise and emerging as the central debate of the digital era. The Grey Album, a 2004 mash-up by Danger Mouse, is a prime example of the type of copyright dispute Lewis Hyde discusses in his most recent book, Common as Air. You can read a full interview with Hyde here.

Whistler, Fireworks, and a New Way of Seeing: James McNeill Whistler’s loose, impressionistic depiction of fireworks at night was not to everyone’s liking when the painting made its public debut in 1877. Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket sparked an infamous feud between the artist and the Victorian critic John Ruskin. During the libel trial that followed, Ruskin's lawyer asked Whistler, "The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?" The artist replied, “No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.” Read more here.

Peter Hutton’s films of rivers, oceans, cargo ships, and landscapes are everything commercial movies are not—subtle, completely silent, thoughtful, and devoid of narrative. "Cinema tends to be this additive thing, it gets more complicated technologically," says Hutton. "I wanted to do it alone, keep it personal and private...It’s not about the pyrotechnics, it’s about something else---being inventive with limitations." Read an interview with Hutton and watch a video of his recent exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum here.

The Lines Between the Arts are Insignificant: Hiroshi Teshigahara's Antonio Gaudi is like no other film I can think of. This 72-minute visual poem on the Spanish Art-Nouveau architect avoids conventional narrative and instead, lets Gaudi’s buildings do the talking. "Gaudi worked beyond the borders of various arts,” Teshigahara once said, “and made me feel that the world in which I was living still left a great many possibilities.” Read more about Gaudi and Teshigahara here.

Re-Branding the Barnes: Has a 25-Billion-Dollar Art Collection Been Disneyfied? The controversial new Barnes Museum in Philadelphia has finally opened its doors to much acclaim and protest. Read the full story of how a spiteful, visionary genius created the greatest collection of Post-Impressionist art in the world, as well as a bureaucratic nightmare for his predecessors. My own review of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's new building is also included here.

Doris Salcedo on the Perspective of the Defeated: This photograph of 1,550 wooden chairs piled between two buildings in Istanbul stopped me in my virtual tracks when I first saw it. Born in Colombia, Salcedo’s installations are meditations on the silenced lives of the marginalized--the gap between the powerful and the powerless. Read more about Salcedo's installations here.

The DIY Punk Philosophy of Jem Cohen: Artist Jem Cohen uses film as a solo medium to create cinematic collages and haunting meditations on memory and place. Cohen’s films are works of art–soulful, provocative, anti-commercial, mysterious, unconventional, and beautifully imperfect. The filmmaker has worked with an array of musicians through the years–Patti Smith, R.E.M., The Ex, Gil Shaham, Elliott Smith, Cat Power, and the late Vic Chesnutt. Read more about Jem's work here.

Roger King Explores Love & Fatigue in America: “What does it mean to live in between?” writes novelist Andrea Barrett of Roger King’s latest book. “Not only between geographical locations, but between health and illness, commitment and freedom, love and loss?” In this in-depth interview with British novelist Roger King, we discuss writing, King's fight with chronic fatigue syndrome, his aid work in Africa and Asia, American healthcare, and more.

Artist Matthew Northridge: Matthew Northridge uses paper like no other artist I know. Matt gave me a tour of his solo show at Kansas Gallery during a recent visit to New York City. Explore more of his work here.

The Most Memorable Experiences in the Arts: I asked an array of artists to tell me about their most memorable experiences in the arts during 2011. Singer Rosanne Cash (pictured above), Moosewood cookbook author Mollie Katzen, journalists William Powers and Jeff Sharlet, British composer Tarik O'Regan and others share their surprising picks here.

Exhuming the Forgotten: Filmmaker Errol Morris said that Bill Morrison's Decasia might be ”the greatest movie ever made.” Assembled entirely from decaying, highly flammable, early nitrate footage, this masterpiece belongs in the tradition of Stan Brakhage’s films and Michael Lessy’s memorable book Wisconsin Death Trip; it is simultaneously poetic, haunting, and compelling. The entire piece is a meditation on ruin and the temporal nature not only of film, but of life itself. Learn more about Decasia and Bill Morrison's other films here.

New England Artists Finally Get Their Due: Read my review of the de Cordoova Biennial, featuring work by Mary Lum, Anna Von Mertens, Chris Taylor, Ann Pibal, Steve Lambert (shown above), Cullen Bryant Washington, Jr., and More.

The World of E.B. White: In 1951 the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals accused writer E.B. White of not paying his dog tax and “harboring” an unlicensed dog. White wrote this hilarious letter in response to the ASPCA. Read the letter and an overview of White's work here.

A Retreat in the Sky: Explore the art, architecture, gardens, and history of New York's High Line Park, built on an old, elevated railway. (Above photo © Joel Sternfeld courtesy Friends of the High Line)

Composer Steve Reich with reel to reel tape recorders

The Sound of Four Hands Clapping: In 1971 composer Steve Reich embarked on a five-week trip to study music and drumming in Ghana. Shortly after his return, he wrote “Clapping Music.” In this 1972 video Reich performs this classic piece with percussionist Russell Hartenberger.

The Evolution of Photographer Bill Jacobson: “There has always been a poetic stance in my work,” says photographer Bill Jacobson. “Whether in focus or out, it’s never been about a single narrative, but rather something beneath the surface of what’s being photographed." Explore Jacobson's work here.

An Accidental Classic: Sibylle Baier’s critically-acclaimed Colour Green was published 30 years after it was first recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Baier starred in Wim Wender's films and wrote her own songs, but abandoned her career to move to America and raise her family. Read more about how this classic finally found an audience here.

Errol Morris on Photography: What makes an “honest” photograph? Is the medium of photography more factual and authentic than other art forms? Can a photo be objective or does it always have a point of view? When does a photograph document reality? When is it propaganda? When is it art? Filmmaker Errol Morris addresses all of these questions and more in his new book Believing is Seeing.

Ira Glass on the Creative Process: Ira Glass, the host of NPR’s This American Life, gives some useful advice about the art of story telling. Remember the method you learned in college–opening paragraph, thesis sentence, supporting material? Glass says to throw that tired technique out the window!

Essay: On Crows Openness is a state of mind that the nature lover and the artist share. Art, like bird watching, is about seeing, hearing, and understanding. It requires stillness. It demands that we remain open to the unexpected. Read the entire essay here.

Nairobi-London Sound Clash: I discovered the Owiny Sigoma Band during a 2011 trip to London. This highly original, Nairobi-London sound clash, which blends traditional Kenyan Luo styles with contemporary western influences, is like nothing else I’ve heard before. Their debut album, which pulses with mellow grooves, lyre riffs, and hypnotic drums, is organic, quirky and rough around the edges, but in a good way. Listen to the record here.

This Revolution is for Display Purposes Only: Click here to explore the world of street art, the first article in an ongoing series.

The Urban Frenzy of Olive Ayhens: Olive Ayhens' neo-expressionist pen and ink and watercolor drawings are a knock-out: textured, original, and deliberately unruly. Working on location, Ayhens draws the lively center of New York City, personifying its skyscrapers in a style that is vigorous and playful, as well as idiosyncratic.

Occupy Writers: Who could have guessed that one of the sanest pieces of writing about the Occupy movement would come from children's book author Lemony Snicket? Read “13 Observations Made by Lemony Snicket while Watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance" here.

P.J. Harvey's "Let England Shake": "I only sing the songs that I can still believe," says singer P.J. Harvey. The emotionally charged "Let England Shake" is one of the strongest records of her career. Listen to samples and watch videos of Harvey's collaboration with filmmaker Seamus Murphy here.

A Secret Garden in the City: These gardens on the roof of Rockefeller Center are one of the best-kept secrets in New York City.

The Discomfort Zone: V.S. Naipaul believes that female writers are inferior and sentimental. Jonathan Franzen observes that "you can't deconstruct and undress at the same time." Has writing about love without hipster irony become a radical act for male novelists today? Read the full story here.

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction: Writers like Zadie Smith, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, and Richard Ford offer guidance on the art of fiction writing. A sampling of their advice: "Have children." "Don't have children." "Get an accountant." "No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write." Damn. What am I going to do with all of those black turtlenecks?

Music by Goldfish: How aware are we of sound as we move through the course of our day? Which sounds do we register and which do we ignore? Do we even give the subject much thought? “Quintetto” by the Italian artist collective Quiet Ensemble is an intriguing blend of music, sound and installation art.

Doubt is Your Revelation: Jeff Sharlet's most recent book, Sweet Heaven When I Die, is a collection of 13 essays about belief, skepticism, and spirituality. Sharlet writes about Brad Will, an anarchist journalist who filmed his own murder by police; BattleCry, an evangelical youth movement devoted to spreading its particular brand of the Christian message; a new-age healer named Sondra Shaye; and renowned intellectual Cornel West.

Watch an Animation Classic: Yuriy Norshteyn’s Hedgehog in the Fog is one of the most stunning animated films ever made. Nick Park is a fan of Norshteyn's work and so is Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Click here to watch the 10-minute short film and to learn more about the Russian animator.

Composer & Cellist Paul Brantley: Brantley makes a case that Bach's cantatas are theologically subversive and gives Gwarlingo listeners a preview of his own Gnostic Cantata.

Animal Architecture: What if architects designed shelters not only to accommodate humans, but also to accommodate the animals? A five-star hotel for bugs? A towering home for bats? Why not?

More Than a Voice: A writer. A performer. A pianist. A cabaret act. A storyteller. An opera singer with a 3-4 octave range. Is there anything Joseph Keckler doesn't do?

Poetry Bombing: Explore two very different poetry bombing projects--one from the Chilean art collective Casagrande and the other by artist Agustina Woodgate.

George Bernard Shaw Exposed: Not many people realize that George Bernard Shaw was a passionate amateur photographer, as well as a prolific writer. When Shaw died at the age of 94, he left behind over 10,000 photographic prints and over 10,000 negatives in his home in Ayot St Lawrence.

Olafur Eliasson, the Danish artist who brought the sun to Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and created man-made waterfalls in New York City, has a new project--Din blinde passager (Your blind passenger), a 295-foot-long tunnel filled with dense fog.

Movie Barcodes: A movie barcode for The Wizard of Oz. Click here to read more about movie barcodes and the use of color in cinema.

Breathbox by Antti Paalanen: Watch a mesmerizing piece of music by Finnish accordion master Antti Paalanen. "Mesmerizing accordion music?" you ask. Yes. Really.

The Fear of Failure: Even if you don't know his name, you know his work. Legendary designer Milton Glaser discusses the myth of creative genius and gives advice on how artists can move past the fear of failure. “Find out what you’re capable of doing or not capable of doing,” says Glaser. “Admit what is.” “Embrace the failure.” Watch Glaser's talk here.

Documenting a Revolution: Two filmmakers, who risked their lives to document the looting of archeological sites during the Iraq war, now find themselves in the heart of the Egyptian Revolution.

Wilco, Ruscha, Sondheim,Tom Phillips, Xu Bing & More: 11 Don’t-Miss Arts Events

Ed Ruscha at the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts

Contemporary Chinese Art at the Brattleboro Museum and Mass MoCA

The Sunday Poem : Christine Shan Shan Hou & Audra Wolowiec’s Concrete Sound

About Christine Shan Shan Hou

About Audra Wolowiec

The Life and Art of Horace Pippin

A Line Made By Flooding – Artist Eve Mosher: “I Never Wanted to Be Right”

Ford as Fonzie, Carter as Christ: A Look at Presidential Posters of Years Past

Liquor, Perfume, Hair: Joan Wickersham Talks with Painter Julia Jacquette

Irony and Desire: A Conversation with Julia Jacquette
Interview by Joan Wickersham

An Exclusive Peek Inside Keith Haring’s New York City Studio

Obsession & Empathy: Nan Goldin, Michael Chabon, & A Home for Indigent Bohemians