DENVER — Flown in from Dubai, an enormous collodion camera dominates a corner of Denver’s Robischon Gallery. The apparatus belongs to artist Halim Al Karim, whose show of ghostly portrait photographs is an unlikely meeting of 19th-century photo processing techniques and a personal reflection on his artistic exile from Iraq.
Matthew Farina
Matthew Farina is a painter and arts writer in New York City.
matthewfarina.com.
Posted inArt
Social Media at the Helm of Performance on Governors Island
On a muggy Saturday afternoon, a crowd of modern dancers in tie-dye shirts, clown-glam costume wearers, bemused children, art-aware observers, and curious members of the general public gathered on the parade ground of Governors Island. As the assembled mob grew, a tweet was read aloud, a command: “Prancercise meets Pina Bausch then fast forward yoga alternating with slo-mo dog panting.”
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Venturing Beyond the White Box in Bushwick
Stocked with Havarti cubes and iced kegs, Bushwick artists swept up and opened their doors to the public this weekend for the 2013 Bushwick Open Studios (BOS). Air-conditioned workspaces became premium real estate as the festival’s seventh incarnation, hosted by nonprofit Arts in Bushwick, welcomed large crowds along with hot weather.
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Did Vermeer’s Daughter Paint 20% of His Works?
Imagine for a moment that in the days after Johannes Vermeer’s death in 1675, that his widow Catharina and eldest daughter Maria, sitting in a darkened room of the Vermeer home, conspired to settle their numerous family debts in a secretive way. Owing their baker the largest sum of money, the widow and her daughter would give up two of the Master’s last paintings to settle their debt. In a theory developed by Cooper Union art history professor Benjamin Binstock, the two debt-settling paintings were actually the work of the daughter, Maria Vermeer.
