Can and should a government sell art to help pay off its debts? That’s been the question driving ongoing discussions about Detroit, but it’s also being raised across the Atlantic, where 85 works by Joan Miró were withdrawn from a Christie’s auction this week.
Joan Miro
Posted inArt
10 Painters’ Lives Chronicled as Infographics
At about the same time Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock was losing himself to depression, Matisse’s longterm relationship with his wife was unwinding, and when Mondrian was discovering Cubism, Miró was delving into Surrealism. All these little landmarks of 10 abstract painters’ lives have been charted into infographic form, so you can contrast the timelines of what it takes to be an artist.
Posted inArt
Slithering Toward Us: “Drawing Surrealism” at the Morgan
How much more powerful to say “drawing surrealism” than something like “surrealist drawings.” It gets the action into the art, which is, often, exactly where it is. Unweighted by color, untrammeled by, oh you know, something like the history of painting and how the surrealists (in whatever grouping you choose to deal or not deal with them) dealt with that history. Very often, not at all.
Posted inArt
Postage Due: Joan Miró’s Alternative History
For a call for help, it packs a punch: an outsized yellow fist, raised in salute, all but leaps out of the blue background of Joan Miró’s color stencil “Aidez l’Espagne” (“Help Spain,” 1937). Open-mouthed, the stylized Catalan peasant who dominates the image is an emblem of strength and energy — a rooster crowing, a poet singing. In his paintings of the 1920s and 1930s, Miró achieved an unsettling power by delving into the unconscious, creating yawning expanses suggestive of colorful abysses and symbol-laden dreamscapes strewn with biomorphic forms. But in “Aidez l’Espagne,” he opted for the direct simplicity of graphic propaganda.
Posted inOpinion
“Art Cage!”
CHICAGO — Hat tip to Paul Klein in Chicago for alerting me via Facebook to artist Leon van den Eijkel, who has posted a gigantic number of photos of artists’ studios (predominantly historical) on his Facebook Wall.
Posted inArt
The Best Show At MoMA Is Not What You Think
With the hype surrounding the Cindy Sherman blockbuster retrospective on the 6th floor, which critics have almost unanimously praised, I was surprised to find that the most invigorating, exciting and generally mind-blowing exhibition at MoMA right now is Exquisite Corpses.
Posted inArt
Is The Art Show a Senior Citizen’s Swinger’s Club Past its Prime?
The Art Show has been hosted by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) for the last 23 years, reigning supreme as the longest running national art fair. The ADAA consists of 175 galleries but only seventy exhibitors enrolled this year, excluding stunners like Andrea Rosen, Betty Cunningham, PPOW and Gavin Brown. A large majority of the participants are located uptown between 50th Street and 90th Street. The generalized content (“cutting-edge, 21st century works” and “museum quality pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries”) and my fears of dated academia prepped me for the deflated viewing that was The Art Show. The ADAA’s Executive Director spoke to the “calm and intimate atmosphere” of The Art Show. Although the Park Avenue Armory’s soaring “balloon shed” construction is partially responsible, the cavalcade of elderly patrons weren’t exactly rambunctious. The air-kisses exchanged between crotchety senior citizens summoned a swinger’s club way past its prime.