The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Monday, August 22, 2022

 
One visionary artist's desert dream

The artist Michael Heizer looks out over “City,” his land art megascuplture, in Garden Valley, Nev., on May 1, 2022. Even though he has been working on “City” for 50 years, Heizer says it isn’t finished. Todd Heisler/The New York Times.

by Michael Kimmelman


GARDEN VALLEY, NEV.- Nearly everything about Michael Heizer’s land art megasculpture called “City” can seem hard to fathom. That it’s a mile and a half long and nearly half a mile wide, smack in the middle of a remote stretch of the high Nevada desert, where what passes for a neighbor is Area 51. That the nearest blacktop is an hour’s drive away, on a dusty, bumpy, former livestock trail, across a couple of mountain ranges. That it cost $40 million to build. Even that it’s called “City.” It’s a city in name only. Exquisitely groomed dirt mounds, roads, buttes and depressions like dry lake beds spread out in no immediately obvious order and in different directions. At both ends of the site, monumental structures riff on ancient ruins. Now, half a century after Heizer stuck his first shovel in the ground, “City” is finally opening to visitors, which may be the most unbelievable thing of all. It had become the art-world version of ancient Atlantis, a chim ... More



The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Public Art Fund debuted Travels Pretty, an exhibition based on 12 new paintings by artist Wendy Red Star created for JCDecaux bus shelters in New York City, Chicago, and Boston.






An exhibition of new works by Donald Roy Thompson set to open at Peyton Wright Gallery   Gagosian presents exhibition of new works by Urs Fischer at the Marciano Art Foundation   New-York Historical Society showcases Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite


Donald Roy Thompson, Relish, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 49 x 35 inches.

SANTA FE, NM.- Peyton Wright Gallery will present “Transitions”, an exhibition of new works by Donald Roy Thompson. The exhibition runs Friday September 2 to Tuesday October 4. There is an opening reception on Friday, September 2 from 5-7pm. Donald Roy Thompson was born in 1936, in Fowler, California. He received his B.A. degree from Sacramento State University in 1960. He received his M.A also from Sacramento State University in 1962. His most notable art instructor was Wayne Thiebaud. Among his classmates were Fritz Scholder and Merrill Mahaffey, both successful artists in Santa Fe. From 1964-2000 Donald was an art instructor at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. Before he settled down to teach, Donald traveled and lived in Mexico City, where he was able to observe closely the murals of Diego Rivera. Like so many color field painters ... More
 

© Urs Fischer. Courtesy the Artist and Gagosian.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Gagosian returns to the Marciano Art Foundation from August 20 to October 29, 2022, with an exhibition of unique digital sculptures by Urs Fischer from the series CHAOƧ #1–#501 which have been compiled into a set of short-form videos. This is the first time that works from the series—in which MakersPlace is the technical partner—have been exhibited offline. Additionally, a program of “swap meets” and indoor musical performances will be presented throughout the duration of the exhibition. Across a wildly protean oeuvre, Fischer mines the potential of materials—from clay, steel, and paint to dirt, bread, and vegetables—to generate an uncanny, unsettling “collision of things.” Through distortions of scale and the reimagining of common objects and images using technological intervention, his sculptures, paintings, photographs, and installations explore themes of perception ... More
 

The exhibition is accompanied by the first monograph dedicated to Kwame Brathwaite.

NEW YORK, NY.- The New-York Historical Society is the exclusive New York City venue for the traveling exhibition Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite, the first major show dedicated to this pivotal figure who helped launch and popularize the “Black Is Beautiful” movement of the 1960s. On view through January 15, 2023, the exhibition features 40 large-scale color and black-and-white photographs that document how Brathwaite helped change America’s political and cultural landscape during the so-called Second Harlem Renaissance, using his art to affirm Black physical beauty, celebrate African American community and identity, and reflect the vibrancy of Harlem’s jazz scene, local businesses, and events. “We are thrilled to bring this exhibition to New York City, Kwame Brathwaite’s hometown and the location of many of his most powerful ... More


Bill Viola's first presentation in an Austrian museum on view at Museum der Moderne Salzburg   Hauser & Wirth opens an exhibition of works by Larry Bell and John Chamberlain   Berlin, back in full swing


Sharon, 2013, color high-definition video on flat panel display; stereo sound, © Bill Viola Studio, photo: Kira Perov.

SALZBURG.- Bill Viola (1951, New York, NY, US) is one of the most renowned video artists of our time. His visual worlds, realized with state-of-the-art technology, are impressive for their contemplative balance and overwhelming with their direct emotionality and pictorial intensity. They push the boundaries of conventional viewing habits shaped by the everyday floods of images in film, television, and social media. The focus of his visually stunning works is on the human condition; they create immersive worlds of experience that confront the viewer with the basic conditions and potentials of human existence and address essential themes such as life and death, dream and rebirth, memory and oblivion, transformation and transfiguration. Produced in close collaboration with the Bill Viola Studio, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg’s solo exhibition is the first presentation of Viola’s imposing oeuvre at an Austrian ... More
 

Great friends as well as pioneering artists of the American postwar period, Larry Bell (b. 1939) and John Chamberlain (1927-2011) each forged history-making careers by harnessing the new technologies of their time to transform everyday industrial materials into works of art that expanded the definition of what sculpture can be.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Great friends as well as pioneering artists of the American postwar period, Larry Bell (b. 1939) and John Chamberlain (1927-2011) each forged history-making careers by harnessing the new technologies of their time to transform everyday industrial materials into works of art that expanded the definition of what sculpture can be. Yet the formative dialogue between these two titans – an intensive artistic and intellectual exchange that helped shape their respective practices and the wider language of 20th-century art – has yet to be fully explored. Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles is presenting the first ever exhibition to focus upon Bell and Chamberlain’s defining dialogue as revealed through a series of iridescent ... More
 

Æeden, an open-air club in Berlin, Aug. 12, 2022. Andreas Meichsner/The New York Times.

by Charly Wilder


BERLIN.- No city was fun in the darkest days of the pandemic, but there may be nowhere that could compete with Berlin for sheer gloom during that first COVID winter. Even in good times, the city’s funereal grayness, its scant daylight and collective penchant for gallows humor and blunt negativity, known as the Berliner Schnauze (literally: Berlin snout), is only barely compensated for in the colder months by its abundant cultural offerings, thriving cafe and restaurant scene, and what is arguably the best nightlife in the world. Berlin in lockdown was not pretty. But this summer, the city is back in full swing. Berlin’s 178 museums, seven symphony orchestras and three opera houses are once again up and running. Bars, clubs and restaurants are operating at full capacity, and, with the exception of a mask mandate on public transportation and in medical facilities, virtually all ... More



Tornabuoni Art presents an exhibition of works by Mario Ceroli   Upper Belvedere features the works of Georg Eisler   John Brooks opens his first solo exhibition with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles


Installation view.

PARIS.- Twelve years after the last retrospective devoted to the work of Mario Ceroli, Tornabuoni Art Paris is presenting, starting in June 2022, an exhibition dedicated to this major artist of the Roman art scene. The exhibition explores two central themes in the artist’s work: nature and Greco-Roman antiquity. Mario Ceroli is a sculptor who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome where he was trained by Leoncillo Leonardi, Pericle Fazzini and Ettore Colla. After launching his artistic career as a ceramist, Ceroli discovered Giotto’s work during a trip to Assisi in 1957. This encounter inspired him to create his first wooden silhouettes. He quickly gained recognition and was awarded the 1958 prize for young sculpture by the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. In 1964, Mario Ceroli made a name for himself with works made of untreated wood, particularly Russian pine, which he assembled with different materials – burnt wood, straw, ... More
 

Georg Eisler, Straßenbahn, 1972. Private property. Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Wien © Bildrecht, Vienna, 2022.

VIENNA.- For Georg Eisler, being an artist meant being an eye-witness to the times. He tenaciously traced and engaged with life, capturing both carefree and dramatic moments in his images. We encounter passengers in a tram and dancers in a club on the one hand, politically motivated violence in Belfast or Soweto on the other. Although his subjects were contemporary, stylistically he never moved toward the avant-garde, and over the decades he remained true to a figurative, realistic style of painting. This IN-SIGHT exhibition at the Upper Belvedere showcases a critical mind and an astute observer, an artist whose pictures remain as topical as ever today. CEO Stella Rollig: “Georg Eisler’s subjects connect with current issues: from the Me Too and the Black Lives Matter movements, to conflicts at demonstrations, such as the Covid-19 protests, or political ... More
 

John Brooks, Hello, Friend From the Road, 2022. Oil on canvas, 66 x 80 in.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is presenting John Brooks: Thinking About Danger, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from July 23 through September 3, 2022. The paintings in Thinking About Danger combine images and inspiration from art history, cinema, literature, music, and the artist's personal life to explore longing and remote desire, empathy and connection. The richness of experiences as well as a kind of "existential openness" is alluded to in the exhibition’s title which is taken from a painting of the same name and borrows lyrics from the Marianne Faithful song “Times Square.” Their subjects are our lives: what is and what can be, the known and the unknown. These are not ordinary paintings—they are meant for all of us—and the reading and understanding of them need not be ordinary. In truth, they invite us to lose ourselves in their openness and, as the Sufi poet Rumi enj ... More


Public Art Program brings 10 new temporary art projects to Palo Alto   RISD Museum presents "Inherent Vice: Hidden Narratives"   Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza presents an exhibition of works by Alex Katz


Image of the Factronauts performance in Hunington Beach, CA. Image courtesy of Peter Foucault.

PALO ALTO, CA.- The City of Palo Alto’s ArtLift Microgrant Program is animating the City’s commercial corridors, parks, and residential neighborhoods with a series of 10 new art projects by local artists and creatives to encourage play, belonging, and community participation in and around Palo Alto. Funded by the City’s Public Art Program, ArtLift Microgrants foster safe and creative ways for Palo Alto residents, workers, and commuters to remain engaged in the arts, reconnect with each other, and come together as a resilient community. Microgrants 2022 features a robust calendar of creative programming and free community events now through November 2022. Taking advantage of unique locations across Palo Alto, Bay Area artists and creatives will perform, offer community engagements, and display temporary artworks. These programs are part of the City’s ongoing Uplift Local Initiative which supports business corridors as we continue ... More
 

Photograph by Lisa Morgan.

PROVIDENCE, RI.- Inherent vice, also known as inherent fault, is the tendency in an object or material to deteriorate or self-destruct because of its intrinsic internal characteristics, including weak construction, poor quality or unstable materials, and incompatibility of different materials within an object. –American Institute for Conservation (2021) This project was born of conversations about how we as conservators and curators can make behind-the-scenes work more accessible. Though museums typically present meticulously mounted garments in clean, well-lit galleries, their storage closets are full of shattered silk, degraded net, and corroded beads—all examples of inherent vice. In the summer of 2021, we started a discussion about what to do with 31 extremely degraded garments. We could leave them in storage, too fragile to teach from or exhibit; pour resources into stabilizing them; or look at them as openings for new understandings. With the board’s approval, we began the process ... More
 

Alex Katz, Big Red Smile, 1993. Óleo sobre lienzo. 244,5 x 305,5 cm. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

MADRID.- For the first time in Spain the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting a retrospective on the American painter Alex Katz (born New York, 1927), one of the most important figures in 20th-century American art who remains active today, aged ninety-four. The exhibition is curated by the museum’s artistic director Guillermo Solana and has benefited from the participation of the artist himself, who has closely followed the project’s development. Brought together for this event are 35 large-format oil paintings accompanied by various studies, allowing for a complete survey of Alex Katz’s habitual themes: individual, multiple and group portraits shown alongside his distinctive floral compositions and all-enveloping landscapes painted in bright colours with flat backgrounds. The exhibition, which is supported by the Comunidad de Madrid, and by Las Rozas Village for the virtual tour, presents the works chronologic ... More




At the Easel with Artist Cynthia Tom



More News

Galerie Forsblom presents "Toni R. Toivonen: Death is a Painting"
HELSINKI.- The chemical process brought about by the decomposition of animals in the artworks of Toni R. Toivonen (b. 1987) creates forms with the discernible features of a horse. The creation of the form is influenced by happenstance as well as by the physique of animals placed on brass. The process is based on the decomposition of matter but it records traces of the disintegration process, thereby creating a continuum for life. Art has taken Toivonen to the edge of moments in which birth and death literally co-exist. Such as when the artist immortalized fate in an artwork with a mare and foal still connected by the umbilical cord. Thus, Toivonen not only takes the history of art to the extreme of its iconic thematic but also poses the question: can death be beautiful? Through his latest works, Toivonen has delved even deeper into examining ... More

SuperRare debuts exhibition featuring works in top performing spaces
NEW YORK, NY.- SuperRare, the largest decentralized platform dedicated to original cryptoart, today announced a new exhibition Spaces: a Decentralized Future featuring the five top performing Spaces from the past month. Spaces are independent galleries on SuperRare that curate, promote, and sell artworks. Each Space is voted into the network by SuperRare’s community of $RARE token holders. Spaces: a Decentralized Future will feature 15 NFT artworks, on view August 22-25, 2022. “SuperRare Spaces empowers our community of artists and collectors who are the core of the SuperRare ecosystem,” states John Crain, Co-founder and CEO of SuperRare Labs, the company behind SuperRare. “This exhibition is intended to not only highlight the Spaces that have performed the best, but also shed light on the incredible artists who have ... More

Kerber Verlag publishes 'Jason Langer: Berlin'
NEW YORK, NY.- For part of his childhood, photographer Jason Langer lived with his mother and two brothers on a kibbutz in Israel following his parent’s divorce in the United States. This experience, along with childhood visits to the kibbutz’s Holocaust memorial every Yom Hashoah, and hearing frightful stories from his mother and grandmother about German people, shaped and informed his impressions and understanding of Germany. This included considerations and beliefs of Germany as a country, culture, its past Nazi ideology, and how that related to his own Jewish identity. It was a complicated understanding, and one that haunted him in several respects throughout his life. Years later, having established himself as a respected photographer, a friend suggested he photograph Berlin, an idea that was unsettling to him. "I harbored ... More

Exhibition of recent sculptures and works on paper by Linda Ridgway on view at Berggruen Gallery
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Berggruen Gallery is presenting Linda Ridgway: A Story and the Poet, an exhibition of recent sculptures and works on paper by Texas based artist, Linda Ridgway. Berggruen Gallery has worked with Ridgway for over twenty-five years and this show marks her fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. A Story and the Poet and will be on view through August 27, 2022. Linda Ridgway is influenced by the weight of prose and how literature and nature intertwine to uncover new ideas of selfhood and material expression. Since 1987, Ridgway has been working with bronze and stretching the medium in new directions. She is well known for her intricate bronze sculptures that ascribe the enduring medium to ephemeral themes. In her 2013 Berggruen Gallery exhibition, The Grand Anonymous, she juxtaposed the material with lighter ... More

New paintings by the UK-based artist Henry Jabbour on view at Pontone Gallery
LONDON.- Pontone Gallery is exhibiting a new sequence of paintings by UK-based artist, Henry Jabbour. He paints figures, flowers and abstract studies in an expressively gestural style with an eye for rich and sumptuous colour. The surfaces of the paintings are a riot of. heavy impasto and glutinous agglomerations of thick, creamy oil paint. The slick and sticky medium, receptive to mark and trace, records the subtle imprint of his confrontation with the subject. His figures are schematic and cursive studies of human interaction and tenderness. Although recognisable, they are fragile and hard to pin down. Located in vestigial landscapes, their images hover on the edge of disintegration. Lost and then revealed in the turbulent surface, they are on the verge of being assimilated into the matter of the painting. We see a fleeting impression of presence, ... More

She made Glimmerglass a true festival. Now she's moving on.
COOPERSTOWN, NY.- Before every opera performance at the Glimmerglass Festival, Francesca Zambello, its artistic and general director, cruises around its bucolic campus in a golf cart that she calls “Grane” after Brünnhilde’s trusty steed. Zambello greets audience members, gives welcome lifts to some older patrons and gets out regularly to mingle. That a leader should be the festival’s public face is something Zambello takes seriously. On a recent steamy Friday afternoon, she was an especially enthusiastic greeter. A performance of “The Jungle Book,” a youth opera she had commissioned, was about to begin at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, and lots of children, including very young ones, were in the crowd. “Hi,” she said to two little girls holding hands. “Is this your first opera?” When the girls nodded yes, Zambello, ... More

New online exhibition highlights the best of contemporary craft from artists in New England
BOSTON, MASS.- To kick off its 125th anniversary year the Society of Arts + Crafts announces “CraftBoston: Jubilee,” a new online exhibition highlighting the best of contemporary craft from artists in New England and across the country. “Jubilee” artists (including those well-known to craft watchers and collectors, and some new to the industry) capture the celebratory nature of the show with high-quality, exuberant works in all mediums from jewelry, wearables, home decor, sculpture, functional pottery, glassware and more. “Jubilee” debuted August 19, 2022 on the Society’s CraftBoston website* and runs through October 16, 2022. “Commitment to excellence in fine craft has been the bedrock of our organization for a century and a quarter,” says Society of Arts + Crafts Executive Director Brigitte Martin. “We’re paying homage to our roots in this exhibition that features fantastic exp ... More

Live performance is back. But audiences have been slow to return.
NEW YORK, NY.- Patti LuPone, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig came back to Broadway. Norwegian diva-in-the-making Lise Davidsen brought her penetrating voice to the Metropolitan Opera. Dancers filled stages, symphonies reverberated in concert halls and international theater companies returned to American stages. The resumption of live performance after the long pandemic shutdown brought plenty to cheer about over the past year. But far fewer people are showing up to join those cheers than presenters had hoped. Around New York, and across the country, audiences remain well below pre-pandemic levels. From regional theaters to Broadway, and from local orchestras to grand opera houses, performing arts organizations are reporting persistent — and worrisome — drops in attendance. Less than half as many people saw a Broadway ... More

AR.Trail: Discover 'invisible' AR art at the National Gallery of Victoria
MELBOURNE.- From a floating human skull to a neon pink warrior, visitors to the National Gallery of Victoria can experience eye-popping digital artworks by leading Australian and international contemporary artists as part of AR.Trail, one of Australia’s largest ever and free augmented reality (AR) exhibitions. Viewable through the camera of a smart device, AR artworks by Reko Rennie, Ron Mueck, Alicia Kwade, KAWS and more appear in surprising and unexpected locations at NGV International and The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, as well as other key sites at Fed Square, ACMI and the Koorie Heritage Trust. Presenting works that explore connections to the environment, the human condition and how people inhabit modern cities, AR.Trail will be live across 22 locations from 22 August to 30 September 2022. Funded through the Victorian Government’s Melbourne ... More

Abdulrazak Gurnah refuses to be boxed in: 'I represent me'
STURRY.- From the first time he was ever interviewed, around the publication of his debut novel in 1988, author Abdulrazak Gurnah has been facing attempts to categorize him and his work: Does he think of himself as an African writer? Or a British one? Who does he speak for: this group or that one? Even after winning the Nobel Prize in literature last year — an award given to only four other African-born writers before him, including Wole Soyinka and Naguib Mahfouz — he was asked at a news conference about “the controversy over your identity.” People were apparently confused about how to define him. “What controversy?” he recalled replying. “I know who I am!” Gurnah, 73, moved to Britain from Zanzibar, where he was born, in 1968. During the decades that followed, he honed his craft and eventually found quiet recognition as a novelist. ... More


PhotoGalleries

Indigo Waves and Other Stories

Carolina Caycedo

Embodied Knowledge

MAGELLAN


Flashback
On a day like today, French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was born
August 22, 1908. Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 - August 3, 2004) was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography. He helped develop the "street photography" or "life reportage" style that has influenced generations of photographers who followed. In this image: A man looks at images at the opening of a photo exhibit Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2004, at The Museum of The City of New York, which features the work of photographers from the Magnum photo agency. At right is Harlem,1947 (Easter Sunday) by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

  
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