Today, Monday Muse marks Halloween with a new poem, an acrostic.
Bloodlust
Hasten, headless horsemen three; Alight the bridge, you omens be! Look to graves beyond gnarled tree; Lie low there hanged men guilty-free. Owl's but a portent, all ghosts can see When witches whelp, ghouls gruesome flee. Entreaties end, swords fall, and he Exclaims he's dead — alas, like me! No better bite might I give thee.
Today's short is the trailer for Chronic(Monument Releasing), a film by Michel Franco that premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and was released September 23, 2016, in theaters in the United States. Critically appraised, it has won awards and has been screened at numerous film festivals.
The 92-minute movie stars Tim Roth as a dedicated home-care nurse who cares for terminally ill patients and who suffers from chronic depression and guilt about his past. The film explores the deep relationships that develop between the patients and their caregiver, who is as dependent on them as they are on him.
✦ Find an hour in your day for this talk by Charles Froelick about the late Rick Bartow's life, artistic career, and legacy. The discussion took place at theFroelick Galleryin Portland, Oregon. The Native American (Wiyot, Northern California) was a sculptor, painter, and printmaker whose work can be found in museum collections throughout the United States. Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts, Pendleton, Oregon, has established The Rick Bartow Memorial Endowment Fund in Bartow's honor.
✦ Jewelry collector Lois Boardman donated 300 pieces of her wearable contemporary studio jewelry to Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A selection of 50 pieces from the collection—distinguished by the wide range of materials and methods it represents—is now on view at LACMA in "Beyond Bling: Jewelry from the Lois Boardman Collection". The exhibition continues through February 5, 2017. A scholarly catalogue, offering a comprehensive look at the collection and essays by co-curators Rose Chambers Mills and Bobbye Tigerman, as well as Helen W. Drutt English, Blake Gopnik, and Benjamin Lignel, is available.
✦ The Artists & Makers Studios regularly features artists and their work in its "Beyond Our Doors" series. The articles are a great introduction to artists whose work you might not know.
✦ There's no excuse for missing an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Now, you can see a show virtually; the museum has digitized every exhibition from 1929 to today. The offerings are updated constantly. See Exhibition History.
✦ West Australia's Marianne Penberthy describes herself as "a textile artist who searches for an organic expression for my natural surroundings. This quest includes ideas about place, time, memory, isolation, feelings and belonging." In the video below, "Flour on the Ground: Temporary Textile Installations", a 2014 project, Penberthy talks about her beautiful work and the materials she uses.
★ The marvelous paper-cutting artist Beatrice Coron is showcased in "Worldwide Wanderings: Beatrice Coron" at the museum at Mesa Arts Center, Mesa, Arizona. Included in the exhibition are Coron's works inspired by literature, including a 9-yard-long scroll based on Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities. Also being shown is the 3-D video Daily Battles. A selection of images is available at the exhibition link. The exhibition continues through November 27.
★ Visit Old London by visiting Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, and see "London at Large: A Wall Sized Map", on view through November 6. The highly detailed map, which is 7 feet x 13 feet, illustrates the 18th Century city of painters Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, and others whose works are in Taft's collection.
★ The Springville Museum of Art, Springville, Utah, is celebrating the art of Georgia in "Lost + Found: In Search of Georgian Art". The work on view is drawn from the collections of Ellie Sonntag, Roy and Anne Jespersen, and Jeff and Helen Cardon.
Today, Thursday's Three brings you a trio of short films about artists Ed Ruscha, Wifredo Lam, and Eleanor Antin, respectively.
✭ Ed Ruscha: Buildings and Words ~ Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, this film about Ed Ruscha's work was written and directed by Felipe Lima. It is narrated by Owen Wilson.
✭ Wifredo Lam ~ In this TateShorts film about Wifredo Lam (1902-1982), a Cuban-born artist closely associated with Pablo Picasso and members of the surrealist movement, Lam's son shares memories of his father and artistic achievements.
✭ Eleanor Antin: Politics & Paper Dolls ~ For this Art21 short, prolific multidisciplinary artist Eleanor Antin talks about her use of paper dolls to create politically imbued sculpture and videos. Anin's work encompasses film and video, photography, installation, and performance art.
According to its creator, Joshua Pablo Rosenstock, the Fermentophone "is a multi-sensory installation in which an algorithmically generated music composition is performed by living cultures of bacteria and yeast." It's made up of various vessels containing actively fermenting foodstuffs and beverages that have been wired with electronic sensors. The particular electronic "music" each ferment produces depends on the activity of the microbes in the vessel.
Rosentock presented his installation in 2013 at MIT Media Lab's inaugural "Hacking Arts Festival", now an annual event celebrating innovations in the creative arts. In September 2016, Rosenstock operated the Fermentophone — he was joined by Eric Rosenbaum on an Echolaliator, an interactive computer improvision tool — at the Lilypad Inman, a performance space and art gallery in Inman Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Audience members who brought their own instruments were invited to join in. ("Alec Spiegelman Presents. . . Music& ~ September 14/ 10 pm")
(My thanks to Bill Marx for the introduction to this wonder.)
Below is the recently released trailer for the American Masters Pictures documentary Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, directed by Rita Coburn Whack and Bob Hercules. Including interviews with those who knew Angelou, the first feature-length documentary about the poet and writer of 36 books opened in theaters on October 14.
To date, the film, which took four years to make and premiered at Sundance Film Festival, has been screened at Chicago's Black Harvest Film Festival, Authors Film Series at Maine Writers & Publishers, Sarasota Film Festival, RiverRun, and MV Film Festival, among many others. It will be shown on the American Masters series on PBS this winter.
The documentary is titled after Angelou's poem "And Still I Rise".
An international program to celebrate in 2016 the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, Living Shakespeare produces cultural and educational events and activities, including seminars, exhibitions, and stage and film shows, centered on Shakespeare. Activities are designed for a wide range of age groups, including teens and young learners. The program's organizing partners are the British Council and the GREAT Britain campaign (an international marketing initiative), which work with artists, theatres, museums, and educators to introduce the work of Shakespeare to as wide an audience as possible. (See the animation explaining the program).
In partnership with Open University and the BBC World Service, Living Shakespeare created a collection of Shakespeare-related essays, some of which have been reimagined in video format for broadcast.
Today, Saturday Short shares the trailer for Kandahar Journals (Summit Road Films, 2015), a 76-minute documentary, in English, that relates first-hand how photojournalist Louie Palu underwent a psychological transformation while covering the frontlines of combat in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from 2006 to 2010. The co-directors are Palu and Deven Gallaher; the writer is Murray Brewster.
Palu, a 2016 Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, is also the 2016-2017 Research Fellow in the Humanities at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He has received numerous awards for his extraordinary work.
✦ The 17th Annual Chestertown RiverArts Studio Tour, featuring 50 artists on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is two weekends: October 22-23 and October 29-30. I've made the tour in the past and recommend it. Go online for a map, brochure, and list of participating artists.
✦ Yuki Hayama is a Japanese ceramist who decorates his thrown pots by painting on them (etsuke), continuing a tradition that is 5,000 years old. The film immediately below shows Hayama at work (he works from memory some 128 patterns). His painted porcelains, whose glazes are fired a dozen times, are exquisite.
My thanks to Ceramics Monthly and Ippodo Gallery in New York for the video. "Beauty of Life", the debut exhibition of Hayama's ceramics, took place September 9-29 at the gallery, which also offers for sale a range of Hayama's work, including bowls and vases. A catalogue is available.
Exhibition Catalogue Cover Art
✦ London's Serpentine Galleries hosted this summer the first solo exhibition in a public institution in the United Kingdom of the work of Lebanese multidisciplinary artist, poet, and essayist Etal Adnan. The show, which concluded on September 11, featured Adnan's paintings, drawings, poetry, film, and tapestry and was accompanied by a catalogue (see image below), Etel Adnan: The Weight of the World (Serpentine and Koenig Books, 20166), available in three covers, each depicting a different painting from Adnan's most recent series The Weight of the World, which she painted for the exhibition.
Trade Edition Cover
The catalogue may be ordered through the Serpentine Shop, ArtBook (a Koenig distribuor), Amazon, and other booksellers. The three covers may be seen at the Serpentine Shop link.
Adnan and curator Rebecca Lewin talk about the exhibition:
✦ The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University kicked off its 2016-2017 lecture series, "Artists at the Institute", with Leslie Hewitt of New York City on September 20. Earlier this year, Hewitt had a solo exhibition, "Leslie Hewitt: Collective Stance", at the Sculpture Center, Long Island City; the exhibition premiered in Toronto.
✦ Following is a video portrait of Moscow-born painter, printmaker, and portrait artist Andrey Remnev. For his paintings, he uses natural pigments bound with egg yolk. The film was directed by Almira Safi and produced by SyncUp. See the Gallery on Remnev's Website.
(My thanks to The Academy of Art, Creativity & Consciousness for the link.)
Exhibitions Here and There
★ Irish painter Brian Whelan's Holy City, a series of nine paintings representing Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, are on view at the Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., through January 2017. Displayed together, the paintings comprise a 9-foot by 12-foot artwork. Of his work, Whelan says, "[T]hese paintings do not depict any holy city that exists in today's world. This is my aspirational vision of what a holy city looks like. Each of the canvases contains churches, mosques and synagogues painted in bright, playful and colorful forms. An abstracted, disarming vision of cultural unity; living together in peace, acceptance and in harmony; a haven for the soul." (Press Release) The exhibition is Whelan's second at the Cathedral.
View a short video with Whelan produced by the Cathedral.
★ The Holter Museum, Helena, Montana, has mounted work by the late Idaho painter and sculptor Sara Joyce (1923-2011), a visionary artist. The traveling exhibition, "Sara Joyce: Myth, Dream, and Dramatic Episodes", continues through December 30. On view are small drawings and paintings, large oil paintings, and sculptures of fabric and clay. Also on exhibit is the work of Jennifer Combe, who explores identities and motherhood in "Shift, Shift: Jennifer Combe", continuing through the end of the year.
★ In New Hampshire, Dartmouth University's Hood Museum of Art has opened its Hood Downtown space in Hanover with the inaugural solo exhibition "Laetitia Soulier: The Fractal Architectures". Soulier, a contemporary French photographer, sculptor, and installation artist, employs the concept of fractal geometry (i.e., each area has a direct scale relationship to the other) to denote through her images and sculpture the idea that understanding a fraction of a narrative she creates implies comprehension of the whole. (See the exhibition link and the video below for information about her artistic process.)
The exhibition, which includes selections from Soulier's series of photographs, sculpture, and installations, among them The Matryoshka Dolls and The Fractal Architectures, concludes December 11. Images are available at the exhibition link.
★ On view at Washington, D.C.'s Kreeger Museum is "Smith | Paley", the first exhibition featuring a collaboration between Clarice Smith and Albert Paley. The show's inspiration was Triptych (2016) (see image below). Included are a selection of Smith's paintings, including the five-panel screen Gallop, and a selection of Paley's sculptures, including maquettes for the project documented in Albert Paley on Park Avenue. Curated by Lenore D. Miller, chief curator and director, University Art Galleries, The George Washington University, the show runs through December 30.
A discussion at the museum with Smith and Paley, moderated by Susan Stamberg, is scheduled for Wednesday, November 9, 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. The event is ticketed.
Clarice Smith & Albert Paley, Triptych, 2016
Oil on Canvas, Forged Steel, 38" x 48"
Image Courtesy Kreeger Museum and Artist
★ A selection of late 19th Century to 21st Century kimono and obi are on display for the first time at Maryland's Baltimore Museum of Art. Featured in the Textile Gallery are seven kimono and an array of obi, including an early 20th Century long-sleeved kimono (furisode) that is hand-embellished with gold and silver leaf, metallic pigments, and embroidery, and lined in red silk decorated with gold and silver leaf. (A curator's post about this garment is noted below.) The exhibition, "Kimono & Obi: Romantic Echoes from Japan's Golden Age", continues through January 15, 2017. Stunning and lavish!
Kimono Furisode (1912-1989), Taisho (1912-1926), or Showa (1926-1989).
20th Century Japanese Textile
Gift of Mrs. D.M. Cheston, Baltimore 1990.113
Image Courtesy BMA
Today's new Artist Watch column at the online arts magazine Escape Into Life takes you into the world of Kit Kittle, an award-winning photographer and film director who constantly pushes the boundaries of image-making and meaning.
Kit's work has been featured in numerous national and international publications and has been exhibited in both solo and group shows in Connecticut, Florida, and New York. He also has published three books. A resident of Greenwich, Connecticut, Kit has traveled the world for his clients.
My Artist Watch feature includes five images of Kit's most recent photographic work, his Artist Statement, and a brief biography.
The film below, part of the British Council on Arts' New British Inventors program, introduces pioneers in British design who are exploring how to use design principles and techniques imaginatively to shape the future globally. Staff of the firm Hugh Broughton Architects are interviewed.
★ "Real American Places: Edward Weston and Leaves of Grass", October 22, 2016 - March 20, 2017, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino California. In addition to 25 photographs that the renowned photographer made for a 1942 Limited Editions Book Club edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the exhibition includes a number of original Whitman items from The Huntington's holdings, including a sampling of Whitman's draft pages and handwritten corrections on printed proofs. (Read the press release for more information about the exhibition.)
✭ "Three-Mile Radius", through October 22, 2016, Springville Museum of Art ~ The inspirations for this exhibition, which features the art of Jacqui Larsen and the poetry of her husband, Utah Poet Laureate Lance Larsen, are the people, places, and things of Springville, all found within a three-mile radius of Jacqui Larsen's studio.
Today's short is the trailer for SEED: The Untold Story (Collective Eye Films, 2016). Directed and produced by Taggart Siegel and Jon Betz, the film examines how and why we have lost in the last century 94 percent of our seed varieties, and what is being done by scientists, farmers, and indigenous seed-keepers to revive a culture connected to seeds.
The feature-length documentary, which has won awards at numerous film festivals where it has been screened, features primatologist and anthropologist Dr. Jane Goodall, Andrew Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety, and American activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer Winona LaDuke, who is the program director of Honor the Earth.
See the screening schedule at the film's Website ("See the Film") for upcoming showings. The documentary is in theaters throughout the United States and Canada. Its world premiere was at the Environmental Film Festival in Washington, D.C., this past March.
✦ Tomorrow, from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., the nonprofit Baltimore Clayworks hosts its "Autumn Blaze Fire Festival" in and around its studio/classroom building in Mt. Washington. In addition to food and live music, the festival will mark the first firing of a newly rebuilt wood kiln and include demonstrations of Raku firing and a Clay Olympics.
✦ Take a tour of Marilyn Henrion's new Patchwork City series of collages created with paper or fabric images from her digitally manipulated photographs.
✦ If you're an artist interested in placing your work in healthcare organizations, see Renee Phillips's comprehensive 58-page Art in Healthcare for Artists: A Comprehensive e-Guide. For details, see Phillips's post, "Art in Healthcare for Artists e-Guide".
Cover Art
✦ Architect Frank Gehry talks about his life and career in Los Angeles for the four-part Art + Ideas podcast series at The Getty. Listen to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 at the Getty blog the iris.
✦ The Art21 Deep Focus feature offers interviews with composer Joel Pickard andd designer Matt Eller, both of whom are the subject of an Art21 Season 8 film.
✦ Below is a short about the knitted textiles of artist Janie Withers of Welbeck, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom. In addition to fabrics, Withers and her partner Michael create a range of products, including lamp shades and other decor for the home, as well as fashion items such a purses.
Exhibitions Here and There
★ A new series of large-scale works on paper by Kara Walker debuted last month at The Cleveland Museum of Art. Influenced by Walker's time in Rome, the drawings in "The Ecstasy of St. Kara: Kara Walker, New Work" explore the concepts of permanence and impermanence, as well as racial injustice and historical fact and fiction. Comprising two dozen drawings as well as two unique works created from collagraphic printmaking, the exhibition, which is part of the museum's Centennial celebration, runs through December 31.
An exhibition catalogue is available. A collaboration between Walker and her partner Ari Marcopoulos, an artist and filmmaker, the catalogue includes images of Walker at work, text by Walker, an introduction by CMA co-curators Reto Thuring and Beau Rutland, and contributions from medieval scholar John Lansdowne and poet Tracy K. Smith.
★ New York City's Asia Society is featuring an exhibition of postwar abstract work by Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki (19201-2013) in "No Limits: Zao Wou-Ki", on view through January 8, 2017. The exhibiion is the first museum retrospective of Zao's work in the United States. Twenty images are available for viewing at the exhibition link above.
A catalogue with essays by co-curators Melissa Waalt, Ankeney Weitz, and Michelle Yun and 141 color illustrations accompanies the show.
★ A huge selection of photographic work from the estate of Lester and Betty Guttman is on view in "There Was a Whole Collection Made: Photography From Lester and Betty Guttman" at the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago. The Guttmans donated in 2014 some 830 images by 414 artists. Several hundred of those works, including rare vintage prints and contemporary photographs, are presented in the show, which continues through December 30. The exhibition is organized thematically: Natural and Built World, Photographic Experimentation, Documentary, Living with Art, Portraiture, and Fifteen Minutes of Fame. Among the artists featured are Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Chuck Close, Hannah Hoch, Man Ray, and Carrie Mae Weems.
A 240-page fully illustrated, multi-author catalogue accompanies the exhibition.
★ On view through November 13 at RISD Museum, Providence Rhode Island, are two videos by French artist Julien Previeux: What Shall We Do Next (Sequence #2) from 2014 and Patterns of Lifefrom 2015. Both video installations address movement in technology and innovation. The former is a single-channel video with color and sound and features the artist and dancers. The latter also is a single-channel video with color and sound and features the artist and dancers. Galerie Jousse Entreprise produced the videos.
Today's Thursday's Three spotlights a trio of recently published of forthcoming art-related books.
✭ Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures (Columbia University Press, August 30, 2016) ~ Neuroscientist and author Eric R. Kandel, who earlier published the fascinating study The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present (Random House, 2012), examines in his new book how artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko used a reductionist approach, analogous to that used by scientists to resolve complex problems, to "[explore] the nature of visual representation by reducing images to their essential elements of form, line, color, or light", thereby impelling a shift in perspective from modern art to abstract expressionism. Kandel is known for his elegant, absorbable prose.
✭ The Artist's Estate: a Handboook for Artists, Executors and Heirs (Hatje Cantz, September 2016; U.S. Edition, Octoer 25, 2016) ~ Edited by Loretta Wurtenberger, who advises artists and artists' estates through her business Fine Art Partners, The Artist's Estate covers legal estate concepts, alternatives for maintaining an artist's estate, appropriate financing models, recommendations for handling work, archives, and ephemera after an artist's death, and other topics related to structuring, managing, and preserving an artist's estate.
✭ Barns and Portrait Paintings (University of Arkansas Press/Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, September 1, 2016) ~ Featured in his most recent book are Fayetteville-based George Dombek's paintings of rustic barns from each of Arkansas's 75 counties. The watercolorist, who trained as an architect and is also a sculptor, includes as well his "portraits" of found objects. Henry Adams, art professor, Case Western Reserve University; Laura M. Terry, architecture professor, Fay Jones School of Architecture, University of Arkansas; and Louis A. Zona, art writer and lecturer, contribute commentary. The 200-page book includes 122 images.
The film below, from Disability Arts International and the British Council on Arts, relates the stories of three artists with disabilities who have found innovative ways to make music using Accessible Music Technology.
The artists are Clarence Adoo, Kris Halpin, and John Kelly.
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