Amy Bennett, “Nothing New Under The Sun” (2016)
The Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art is pleased to announce American Genre: Contemporary Painting curated by artist, writer, and curator Michelle Grabner. Grabner is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
American Genre: Contemporary Painting is an exhibition built on a triad of traditional painting genres: still life, landscape, and portraiture. Fifty-two paintings by fifty-two American artists offer a critical balance to the conditions of atemporality, affected responses, and the material turn shaping much of contemporary painting discourse. Alternatively, this exhibition employs historically recognized groupings of subject and forms. Genres incorporate and invoke structures of knowledge by performing classification. Deeply embedded in everyday life, genre is conspicuous and powerful in its ability to chart historical continuity and differences through its organizing forces.
The exhibition will close with a one-day symposium hosted by Maine College of Art and featuring a panel discussion moderated by Barry Schwabsky on September 15. The daylong symposium consists of series of conversations about the power of painting and the idea of genre as a cultural structure — one that guides interpretation, anticipation, and imagination.
Due to limited seating, RSVP to the September 15 symposium by emailing ica@meca.edu.
The Latest
Governors Island Gets Its First Ever Ice Sculpture Competition, and You Can Enter
As New York braces for a powerful storm, local artists can share their designs for ice sculptures to be constructed and displayed in the island’s new Winter Village.
Beholding Black Lives and Curating With Care
Join Hyperallergic for an online conversation with cultural organizer and curator La Tanya S. Autry on February 1 at 7pm (EST).
Art of the Abstract Mark: Libbie Mark’s Collage Paintings and Other Works
A new exhibition at the National Arts Club in NYC spotlights work from the 1950s and ’60s by the late Abstract Expressionist painter Libbie Mark. Admission is free.
Required Reading
This week, the Tonga eruption as captured from space, Boston gets a big gift of Dutch and Flemish painting, 30 years of New Queer Cinema, an important Marcel Breuer house is demolished, and much more.
Hannah Lee’s Dreamlike Realism
Being bowled over by an unknown artist’s first one-person show does not happen often but when it does, it renews your faith that the art world is not just about buzz and hype.
The World Around and the Guggenheim Present a Day of Groundbreaking Architecture and Design
At this free online summit, hear from architects Tadao Ando and Lesley Lokko; artist Himali Singh Soin; author Amitav Ghosh; design studio Formafantasma; and more.
Brandon Lattu’s Post-Camera Photography Employs Scanners, Photoshop, and Computer Programs
Surrealist images of a Rice Krispies box or Yukon Gold potato explore how data is transformed into the visual language called art.
A Remarkable Online Show of Young Photography
What is wonderful about the online photography exhibition What Have We Stopped Hiding? is that one is given entrée to the internal monologue of the artists featured in the show.
BRIC Presents Suné Woods: Aragonite Stars, a Five-channel Video Installation
This immersive video installation utilizes waterscape scenes to speak about concepts such as existence, intimacy, healing, and aquatic ecology.
New Folk Art Museum Celebrates the Rise of Craft During the Pandemic
Self-taught artists were invited to exhibit, and sell, their fuzzy stacks of pancakes and tasseled tapestries.
When We Confuse the Artist’s Muse with the Artist’s Model
Our culture seems obsessed with the artist/model relationship, portrayed in countless movies and narratives as a relationship that is lustful and scandalous.
Tennessee School Board Bans Maus, Famous Graphic Novel About the Holocaust
Creator Art Spiegelman said he was “baffled” by the decision and called the school board’s behavior “Orwellian.”