All Art Friday

All Art Friday

Save the Date

Saturday, March 26, 2011, is the official date of the Fourth International Support Women Artists Now Day (SWAN Day). Activities in support of SWAN Day will take place throughout March and April. For information and to register your own events celebrating women artists, visit WomenArts.

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ New York City's Knoedler Gallery is showing "Helen Frankenthaler: East and Beyond" through March 11. Organized with the artist's cooperation, the show of 12 paintings and 20 woodcuts, dating from 1973 to 2009 and including the extraordinary six-part suite Tales of Genji (1998), examines Asian sensibilities in Frankenthaler's work and the artist's affinity for painterly effects and Asian brushwork. 

Poet and critic John Yau, who teaches in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, contributed the essay "On Her Own" for the exhibition. ". . . Always one to set the bar high for herself," Yau writes, "the artist is calling attention to her frank desire to go beyond what she knows about Asian art and philosophy, and enter a territory all her own. For Frankenthaler, art is very much an unknown landscape she is compelled to enter and possess."

A selection of images of Frankenthaler's work may be viewed here; installation views are here.

Helen Frankenthaler, For Hiroshige, 1981

Acrylic on Canvas, 62-1/2" x 92"

The gallery offers for purchase a number of catalogues of Frankenthaler's work, including Frankenthaler at Eighty: Six Decades, Frankenthaler: Sculpture, and Frankenthaler: New Paintings.

Those unfamiliar with the artist might want to watch this video portrait of Frankenthaler, which was commissioned from John Feldman by the School of the Arts at Purchase College.

This profile of Helen Frankenthaler at The Art Story also is an excellent introduction to this great Abstract Expressionist and major printmaker.

Also see: "Against the Grain: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts"

Judith Goldman et al., Frankenthaler: The Woodcuts (Naples Museum of Art, 2002)

✭ Some 40 prints, drawings, and sculptures by African-American artist Elizabeth Catlett (b. 1915, Washington, D.C.) and works of 21 contemporary artists, including Lalla Essaydi and Carrie Mae Weems, are part of the Bronx Museum's "Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation with 21 Contemporary Artists", on view through May 29. A fully illustrated catalogue that includes an interview with Catlett by Emma Amos accompanies the exhibition. 

Elizabeth Catlett: Sculpting the Truth  (Excerpt from DVD) 

Elizabeth Catlett Oral History (Video Clips) at Visionary Project

Elizabeth Catlett Profile on PBS Arts & Culture

Bronx Museum of the Arts on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Kemper Art Museum, within the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, has mounted five shows, all on view through April 18. Of particular interest are "Ghost: Elizabeth Peyton", presenting Peyton's works on paper; "Island Press: Three Decades of Printmaking", a survey of artwork produced by the university's Island Press; and "Luis Camnitzer: Forewords and Last Words", a selection of prints, multiples, and artist's books by the conceptual artist. Camnitzer, who is also a critic, educator, and art theorist, is slated to receive in March a Printmaker Emeritus Award from the Southern Graphics Council International during the annual conference hosted this year by the university.

Profile at MoMA of Elizabeth Peyton

Island Press Website

Interview with Luis Camnitzer

✭ Three rarely exhibited works from the permanent collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond — Robert Longo's Kill Your Darlings, Robert Morris' The Astronomer (Burning Planet Series), and Julian Schnabel's Understanding Self-Hate — are included in "Apocalypse: Monumental Paintings of the 1980s".  The exhibit is on view until May 1.

✭ In Miami, the Miami Art Museum is showing "Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place", through March 6. The exhibition, which was organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Texas) and marks the first time Rothenberg's work has been shown in south Florida,  brings together 25 paintings, dating from the mid-1970s to the present. Included are several early horse paintings for which Rothenberg is well-known, figurative work from the 1980s and early 1990s, including "Folded Buddha" (see image below), and examples from a more recent series of disembodied hands and arms. 

Susan Rothenberg, Folded Buddha, 1987-88

Oil on Canvas, 91-1/4" x 111-1/4"

© Susan Rothenberg Courtesy Miami Art Museum

Susan Rothenberg: Emotions (Video) at art:21 Blog

Susan Rothenberg Horses

Tom Austin, "Painter Susan Rothenberg Makes Miami Debut with 'Moving in Place'", Miami Herald, November 14, 2010

Miami Art Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

Robert Burns Birthplace Museum

The Robert Burns Birthplace Museum has opened in Alloway, Scotland. Go here for a brief virtual tour, inside and out. In addition to Burns Cottage, where the poet was born, sculpture, such as Kenny Hunter's "Monument to a Mouse", can be found on the museum's grounds. The museum's highly accessible Website features a timeline, poems, and a downloadable illustrated map (pdf) and one-page destination guides for Alloway Auld Kirk, Burns Cottage, Brig O'Doon, Poet's Path, The Museum, and Burns Monument (all pdfs). Its collections, comprising more than 5,500 Burns-related manuscripts, books, personal artifacts, and artworks, will be made available online and in interactive format this spring. 

Robert Burns Birthplace Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

Installation of Hunter's "Mouse" (Video)

"Robert Burns Statue: STV Commissions Tribute to 'Greatest Scot'" (Article on Hunter Sculpture)

"To a Mouse", Robert Burns Poetry Reading (Video)