All Art Friday
All Art Friday Spotlights
✦ The Scot Martin Boyce is the recipient of the 2011 Turner Prize. You needn't travel to the United Kingdom, however, to see some of his work. Thanks to the Percent-for-Art program, you'll find Boyce's wonderful Through Layers and Leaves (Closer and Closer) in Boston at MIT's List Visual Arts Center. The sculpture, completed last year, was commissioned for the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Learn more about the artwork here.
Installation View
Martin Boyce, Through Layers and Leaves (Closer and Closer), 2011
Galvanized Mild Steel, Epoxy Paint, Acid-Etched Brass
117.6" x 1186.2"
Commissioner with MIT Percent-for Art Funds
and Gift of Robert D. Sanders and Sara-Ann Sanders Family
✦ Interviews with artists James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Vito Acconci, Yvonne Rainer, and Vija Celmins are planned or already have been conducted with the Museum of Modern Art as part of its Artist Oral History Initiative, a project "to increase our understanding of artists' ideas, intentions, working methods, and specifically the materials and any sort of history or context that goes along with these products," MoMA senior archivist Michelle Elligott explained to Art Newspaper. For more on the project, see this Art Newspaper brief.
✦ There's still time to apply, if you're eligible, to the 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists. The deadline is January 31. Details and an application are found here.
✦ I first learned about artist Zena Assi (b. 1974) of Lebanon via Art of the Mideast. Here's a short video (animation) that will introduce you to some of her marvelous work. In addition to paintings and mixed media/collage on canvas (beautiful still lifes/nature, portraits (I love these), stunning cities), Assi is a sculptor who works with metal, wood, steel, and paper mache. She collaborated with architect Issam Barhouch on Bullet Points - Dresscode, an installation comprising heads of bullets.
Assi most recently enjoyed a solo exhibition, "Still Nature", at ArtSawa Gallery in Dubai. She is part of a group show ongoing until March 3 at Alwane Gallery in Beirut.
Exhibitions Here and There
✭ Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art is exhibiting through August 15 in the East Building Concourse "Mark Rothko: Seagram Murals". The murals, which Rothko painted in 1958-1959 in a palette of red, maroon, brown, and black, were commissioned for the dining room of New York City's Four Seasons restaurant on Park Avenue in the Seagram Building. Rothko produced 30 paintings; the dining room had space for seven. As it turned out, Rothko decided a restaurant was not, after all, an appropriate venue for his work and never allowed any of the murals to grace the restaurant's walls. Several paintings derived from the project are in the NGA's Rothko collection and it is three of these that hang now in the Concourse galleries.
Mark Rothko, Untitled (Seagram Mural), 1959
Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation
© 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel
1985.38.5
A side note: John Logan's play Red, which is a marvelous dramatization of Rothko's angst over the commission, begins playing at Washington's Arena Stage January 20; it will run to March 4 (details here). I saw the play on Broadway and highly recommend it.
✭ The Smithsonian's Freer Gallery is showing through March 18 Minouk Lim's 13.51-minute video The Weight of Hands (2010), which captures in thermal imaging the Seoul-based artist's performance of the perceived environmental effects of South Korea's controversial Rivers Restoration Project, one of the country's largest construction projects.
Freer | Sackler Gallery on FaceBook, Twitter, and Flickr
✭ Showing through March 4 at Portland (Oregon) Museum of Art is "Izquierdo: Seven Decades: Paperworks", comprising large pastel drawings and monochromatic prints, some never-before exhibited, part of a collection given to the museum by the artist's estate. Born in Madrid in 1925, Manuel Izquierdo, who died in 2009, made Portland his home beginning in the 1940s and became one of Oregon's most important sculptors and printmakers.
D.K. Row, "Manuel Izquierdo, 1925-2009: An Appreciation", The Oregonian, July 25, 2009
Profile (Exhibition History, Collections, Etc.) of Manuel Izquierdo at Laura Russo Gallery
✭ Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid (b. 1950) is the subject of "Zaha Hadid: From in Motion" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition, which continues through March 25, is the first in the United States to feature her product designs, which include furniture, decorative art, Swarovski crystal-encrusted jewelry, and footwear made for Lacoste and Melissa. A highlight is Hadid's three-wheeled Z-Car I, a prototype she created with high-density foam. The exhibition page online includes two videos, a time-lapse showing installation of the exhibition and a glimpse of the custom fabrication required (both videos also are available at iTunes), in addition to a podcast offering an overview of the show.
Zaha Hadid, Z-Car I, 2005-2008
CNC Milled PU-High Density Foam With Pearlescent Finish
Phil Patton, "In Philadelphia, Zaha Hadid's Z-Car I Gets an Encore", The New York Times, November 23, 2011
Zaha Hadid Profile at Great Buildings Online
Zaha Hadid Resources at The New York Times
Zaha Hadid on FaceBook
Notable Exhibitions Abroad
✭ Modern Art Oxford, United Kingdom, is continuing through March 18, "Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World", a collection of more than 80 works on paper — primarily of Welsh landscapes from the 1930s, arts created while an official WWII artist, and pieces from the 1970s following Sutherland's return to Pembrokeshire — and curated by 2011 Turner Prize nominee George Shaw. The show marks the first time that so many rarely seen Sutherland works on paper have been offered together; the art comes from both public and private collections across the UK. An exhibition catalogue is available.
Graham Sutherland, Dark Hill - Landscape with Hedges and Fields, 1940
Swindon Museum and Art Gallery
© Estate of Graham Sutherland
Sutherland Work at the Tate
Sutherland Tapestry at Coventry Cathedral
✭ At South London Gallery, Dara Birnbaum's Arabesque (2011), a multi-channel video installation, is on view through February 12. The work is described as a reflection on the legacy of two compositions, one by Robert Schumann for his wife Clara and the other by Clara Schumann for her husband. Also included in the exhibition is Birnbaum's Attack Piece (1975) and other 1970s single-channel video works.
Dara Birnbaum (b. 1946) at Marian Goodman Gallery (The New York City gallery presented in the summer of 2011 one of the first solo exhibitions of Birnbaum's work since 2001. That showcased Arabesque, additional details of which are here.)
"Data Birnbaum: Arabesque", Art in Review, The New York Times, August 11, 2011
Dara Birnbaum - Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (Video; 1978-79)
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3 comments:
Happy weekend, Maureen! Great finds as usual...thanks!
Yes, definitely great finds! Thanks for sharing.
TK
i like the story on rothko and i may look into him further... the play does sound good.
i saw the paperworks of izquierdo.
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