NYT Exhibition Review: 'Charles Addams's New York', The Perverse Pleasures Underneath the Ordinary

Charles Addams

Who could resist such an invitation? The city street is dark and deserted. The buildings are empty. There are no witnesses. A lone man carrying a briefcase, after a long day at the office perhaps, approaches a subway staircase. Out of the subterranean gloom, a giant human hand protrudes, its index finger beckoning the office worker, inviting him into the depths. His eyes are wide with astonishment, his face showing the hint of a grin, as if the bizarre, illicit invitation were not entirely unwelcome... Edward Rothstein, NY Times, March 4, 2010

Link Full Text, Edward Rothstein, NY Times, March 4, 2010

“Charles Addams’s New York” is on view through May 16 at the Museum of the City of New York, Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street; (212) 534-1672, mcny.org.

Back to the Land - a visual essay by Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman, NY Times

Maira Kalman is an illustrator, author and designer whose last column for Op-Extra (NY Times), "The Principles of Uncertainty," ran from May of 2006 to April of 2007 and has been published as a book. She has written and illustrated 12 children's books, and her artwork is featured in a recent edition of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style." She recently created a panel story for The Rosenbach Museum and Library's 21st-Century Abe Web project. Her work is shown at the Julie Saul Gallery in Manhattan. Ms. Kalman lives in New York City and teaches graduate courses in design at the School of Visual Arts. "And the Pursuit of Happiness," about American democracy, will appear on the last Friday of each month. - NY Times

Link Full Illustrated Article, Back to the Land, NY Times, Maira Kalman

Gorky, Modern Painter - " From Mimic to Master of Invention"

Water of the Flowery Mill, A.Gorky, Oil, 1944

PHILADELPHIA — Two stories are well known about the Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky. One is that he came to a terrible end, a suicide in his mid-40s, after a hammering series of catastrophes. The other is that he took a very long time — around 20 years, until he was in his late 30s — to become the artist who painted some of the most magnetic and heart-rending pictures of the 20th century.

Before that he was many other artists. He was Cézanne, Picasso, Léger, Miró, André Masson and Roberto Matta, more or less in that order, as he assiduously and almost selflessly emulated a succession of existing personal styles to teach himself how to be a painter.

This unusually long learning curve in his relatively short life can give a chronological survey of his art, like the magisterial “Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an unbalanced shape. Gorky’s protracted apprenticeship was followed by distinctive wonders: the rustling and throbbing landscape in “Water of the Flowery Mill”; the penumbral, narcotized mood piece called “Soft Night”; the meat-colored “Agony,” which suggests a slab of burned flesh and dates from 1947, the year before Gorky died...- source, NY Times, article by Holland Carter

Link Full Text, NY Times, Holland Carter

Link Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Link Google Images

“Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective” runs through Jan. 10 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. It then travels to the Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Venice Biennale: Little Artists

Venetian Schoolchildren, Todd Heisler/New York Times

ArtsBeat Blog, NY Times

June 4, 2009

"VENICE – The Biennale is typically an over-serious, very adult affair, but today the main pavilion inside the Giardini, the public gardens here, was packed with howling, rambunctious, sticky-fingered Venetian schoolchildren. Many of them wore bright Batman-like masks, courtesy of the Italian artist Massimo Bartolini."

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Link Children's Sounds

The Venice Biennale - 2009

Photo, Venice Biennale Web Site

La Biennale di Venezia

Since 1895

"The Venice Biennale has for over a century been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Ever since its foundation in 1895, it has been in the avant-garde, promoting new artistic trends and organising international events in contemporary arts. It is world-beating for the International Film Festival, for the International Art Exhibition and for the International Architecture Exhibition, and continues the great tradition of the Festival of Contemporary Music, the Theatre Festival, now flanked by the Festival of Contemporary Dance." - Source, Venice Biennale Web Site

Link Venice Biennale Web Site

Link ArtsBeat, NYTimes Commentary

Matisse - Color and Meaning

Henri Matisse

Michael Brenson reviews the monograph, Matisse, by Pierre Schneider, for the NY Times.

"...Mr. Schneider emphasizes Matisse's lifelong commitment both to the duality of human experience and to the need for synthesis. Like most other great modernists, Matisse wanted ''to do two things at once,'' ''to reconcile the irreconcilable.'' Almost from the beginning, he went in artistic search of a Golden Age - a time and place of joy and pleasure that would not be susceptible to the vicissitudes of history. At the same time, he always remained firmly rooted in the most immediate world around him...

...The textures of the everyday world were both his protection and the medium through which the fire (Color as a forceful pictorial presence of energy and expression.) entered his hands. Mr. Schneider believes that Matisse's work marks the decisive shift from art as mimesis (imitation) to art as methexis (participation). Matisse was convinced that by identifying himself with the objects he would touch ''the deep gravity which persists in every human being'' and arrive at the threshold of what was infinite and unknown..."

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