All Art Friday

All Art Friday

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ New York City's Gerald Peters Gallery is presenting "J Henry Fair: Abstraction of Destruction" through February 11. The photographic exhibition ranges from Fair's astonishingly beautiful pictures of the 2010 BP oil spill and waste created at electricity generation stations to compelling and thought-provoking images of chemical plant run-off, fertilizer waste, coal washing, the insides of holding tanks, and the cooling towers of an abandoned nuclear power plant. Fair took his photographs not only in the United States but also in Canada, Spain, and Germany. A gallery of three pages of Fair's photographs begins here.

J Henry Fair, Nightmare, Carville, Louisiana, 2010

Waste from Refrigerant Manufacture

50" x 70"

© J Henry Fair

J Henry Fair's Environmental Artwork, Industrial Scars

J Henry Fair's The Day After Tomorrow: Images of Our Earth in Crisis (Powerhouse Books, 2011) Additional information from the publisher is here; the book is available as a pre-order at Powerhouse and Amazon. Also see the day after tomorrow blog.

✭ If you think blue jeans are an invention from the last century, you might want to take in "The Master of the Blue Jeans" at Didier Aaron Gallery in New York. On view until February 4, the exhibition introduces a 17th Century painter, neither name nor nationality known, who depicts poor people dressed in denim (see image above left, "Woman Sewing With Two Children").

✭ At Target Gallery, in the Alexandria, Virginia, Torpedo Factory Art Center, immigration and diversity are the subjects of "Mixing Bowl: Immigration & Diversity in America". On view through February 27, the curated show includes large-scale video installations, drawings, collage, photography, and assemblage by 16 artists: So Yoon Lym, Claire Feng, Kitty Sweet Winslow, Stephanie Williams, Jennifer Nuttal, B.B. McIntyre, Joseph Ostraff, Nathan Bond, Carolina Rubio MacWright, Hugh Jones, Mara Zaslov, Indrani Nayar-Gall, Corey Excoto, Anne Dushanko, and Amy Williams & Chris Dutch.

A screening of the documentary film Beyond Borders, which includes a panel discussion with executive producer Simon Burrow, is scheduled for February 4, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.; and an exhibition-inspired spoken-word event, "SPARK", is planed for February 10, beginning at 7:00 p.m.

Images of artwork in the show may be viewed here. 

Target Gallery on FaceBook and Twitter

Radical Immigration

✭ In Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts is presenting "Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition", through February 13. The exhibition presents newly created work by 10 contemporary artists from China who were invited to respond to the MFA's permanent collection of Chinese art. 

A catalogue accompanies the show and is available to purchase online.

The Exhibition Behind-the-Scenes (Article in Orientations Magazine)

MFA on FaceBook

A related show, "Brush and Ink Reconsidered: Contemporary Chinese Landscapes", at Harvard Art Museums, highlights selections from a collection of Chinese ink paintings that draw on Western and Chinese sources. The exhibition remains on view until May 14.

Screening of Joan Mitchell Film

Next Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m., January 27, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is screening the  58-minute documentary Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an Abstract Painter, directed by the late Marion Cajori. (Go here  for ticket information.) The film includes interviews with the painter herself, art critics, and artists such as Brice Marden and Elizabeth Murray, and prominently features her artwork.

Mitchell, who was born in 1926 and died in 1992 of cancer, age 66, moved in the same New York City circle of Abstract Expressionists as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline before moving in 1968 to Paris, where she became friends with Pierre Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, and many other visual artists and poets. Never so fully acknowledged in her lifetime as her male peers nor as the great artist she was, Mitchell left behind decades of work — huge, exuberant canvases with an arresting sense of color,  as well as etchings and other works on paper. Last fall, Gagosian Gallery in New York City mounted a 14-painting show, "Joan Mitchell: The Last Decade" (go here to view the images, and here for an installation video), for which a catalogue is available.

Images of 1972 Sunflower Etchings

Joan Mitchell Foundation

Oral History Interview with Mitchell (April 16, 1986) at Archives of American Art

Profile at The Art Story

Dave Hickey, Joan Mitchell: Sunflowers (Steidl & Partners, 2009; available through resellers)

Klaus Kertess, Joan Mitchell (Harry N. Abrams, 1997; available through resellers)

Jane Livingston, Linda Nochlin, and Yvette Lee, The Paintings of Joan Mitchell (University of California Press, 2002) (Go here to read a seven-page excerpt from the book, which draws on Mitchell's personal papers and includes an exhibition history, artist bibliography, reviews, and color plates.)

Enjoy this brief Philip Hartigan video about a single Mitchell painting, "Salut Tom":

'Salut Tom' by Joan Mitchell from Philip Hartigan on Vimeo.

This seven-minute video shows installation shots of Mitchell's paintings in the exhibition "La pittura dei Due Mondi" at Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia, Italy, in 2009 (the presentation is in Italian but if you do not know Italian, turn off the sound and simply enjoy the marvelous paintings):

Interview with Artist Deborah Barlow

Just a moment. . . for a shout-out: My friend, painter Deborah Barlow, is the subject of an interview here. It's a quick but informative read and the images of some of her paintings look terrific there. If you haven't visited Deborah's blog, Slow Muse, take a moment to check it out. Deborah's musings on art and artists, theatre, poetry, and the stuff of life are always engaging reads.

Polish Sound Postcards

Last week, PBS Newshour Art Beat included in one of its daily compilations of arts-related links a brief feature about sound "postcards" that were created specifically to enable residents of Communist Poland to hear otherwise banned American pop music of the 1960s and 1970s. The video below, narrated by sound postcard collector Mat Schulz, gives a brief introduction to what these postcards looked and sounded like. 

NewsHour ArtBeat on FaceBook

Schulz's collection was on view last year at New York City's Devotion Gallery. (Go here and scroll down to "Unsound Festival Presents Sound Postcards".)