Neglected visionary Agnes Denes altered our landscape with her art. At 88, she’s finally getting her due.The signature image of the artist Agnes Denes shows her standing in a field of golden grain, with skyscrapers in the background. It’s not just a snapshot; it’s a record of a work of art. “Wheatfield — A Confrontation” involved planting and tending… Oct 24 19October 24, 2019Article at Washington Post
Ragnar Kjartansson’s exuberant work at Hirshhorn is a party celebrating mediocrityThe second floor of the Hirshhorn Museum is awash in pink and gold lamé. In one gallery, swathed in shiny pink satin, a video plays of a dapper man standing in front of an 11-piece orchestra, big-band style and surrounded by the same satin, singing… Oct 17 16October 17, 2016Article at Washington Post
Oh, the humanity: Jacob Lawrence’s ‘Migration Series,’ reunitedJacob Lawrence’s “Migration Series,” unfolding across 60 painted panels each less than a foot square, is often compared to a film. It’s more like a musical score. It takes several clear themes — recurring subject matter; a unified color palette, and… Oct 13 16October 13, 2016Article at Washington Post
An artist refashions the past: Whitfield Lovell’s ‘Kin’Whitfield Lovell’s work is not about the African American experience; it is about his own. This, at least, is what the artist, 57, says in the exhibition catalogue for “Kin,” a series of 60 works on paper, 18 of which form the centerpiece of a… Oct 08 16October 08, 2016Article at Washington Post
A pair of critics on Karel Appel: Two ways of saying ‘meh’The following exchange, between Washington Post art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott and classical music critic Anne Midgette, is part of a series of conversations about local musical and art events, seen from the perspective of two different… Jun 22 16June 22, 2016Article at Washington Post
Art: Two Lichtenstein retrospectivesStill Life with Reclining Nude (Study), 1997, by Roy Lichtenstein. Seeing the work the artist did after his major Guggenheim retrospective in 1993 helped me see the oeuvre in a different light; this is one of the last things he ever did. The Roy… Oct 12 12October 12, 2012Article at Washington Post
Art review: ‘Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective’ at the National GalleryRoy Lichtenstein. The painter’s name is linked with his signature comic-book images of women, their thoughts rising in text bubbles above tentacles of tousled hair, mounds of tears leaking from their eyes. In 1993, a blockbuster Lichtenstein… Oct 12 12October 12, 2012Article at Washington Post
Separating the dissident from the artistThe Chinese authorities have done a terrible job of stifling artist Ai Weiwei. Since 2009 they’ve shut down his blog, detained him, kept him under house arrest, beaten him, confiscated his passport and torn down his just-built studio in Shanghai. All… Oct 05 12October 05, 2012Article at Washington Post
Degas defies limits in “Dancers at the Barre”It’s the fall of Degas. On Saturday, the Phillips Collection will open a show called “Degas’s Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint,” the first exhibition in Washington to focus on the artist’s dancers in 25 years. Last week, London’s Royal… Sep 29 11September 29, 2011Article at Washington Post
You Can’t Hold It, but You Can Own ItART can be defined, provocatively, as an intangible quantity that transforms an ordinary object — a urinal, a soup can, an unmade bed — into something worth many times more than its material value. Tino Sehgal seeks to isolate precisely that… Nov 25 07November 25, 2007Article at New York Times
Francesco Clemente: '80s Star Surfaces at the GuggenheimNew York I f he were designing a space for a show of his work, Italian painter Francesco Clemente might come up with something very like the Guggenheim: a spiral toward the Infinite, swelling over Fifth Avenue in voluptuous, pregnant curves. Or he… Oct 22 99October 22, 1999Article at WSJ
Surfing the MetNew York T he august Metropolitan Museum of Art is not exactly at the cutting edge of cyberspace. Indeed, its curatorial staff have no e-mail or direct access to the World-Wide Web. But Michael Bloomberg, whose eponymous Bloomberg News is a… Jun 18 99June 18, 1999Article at WSJ
The Met's New Greek And Roman GalleriesNew York F or years, it seemed that Greek and Roman antiquities were second-class citizens in the Metropolitan Museum's aesthetic hierarchy, displayed in cases that gave the impression of being as dusty as the archaeological sites from whence they… Apr 20 99April 20, 1999Article at WSJ
At P.S.1, MoMA Finds New Space Across the RiverNew York C ontemporary art is generally about testing limits. And few things could test the limits of most New York museumgoers better than a subway ride into the borough of Queens. But this is precisely the fantastic voyage undersea (actually under… Mar 04 99March 04, 1999Article at WSJ
. . . to the Literal World Of Ben ShahnNew York I n 1947, Ben Shahn, then 49, became the youngest artist yet to have his own retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art; 1951 saw the publication of a Shahn biography; in 1954, he and Willem de Kooning were chosen to represent the United… Dec 01 98December 01, 1998Article at WSJ
WHO Reports Exhibition Is Good for Your HealthNEW YORK -- "Originally I was a little surprised to know that the World Health Organization was involved in the presentation of a contemporary art exhibition," writes Jamaican artist Nari Ward in her catalog entry for the show "The Edge of… Oct 09 98October 09, 1998Article at WSJ
A Lust for Expressionism: What One Man BoughtMunich "A rt collectors are either dentists or lawyers with big bankrolls, and they should go to the devil," says Lothar-Günther Buchheim. As Mr. Buchheim sees it, he isn't himself a collector, but rather an author (he wrote the book "Das Boot,"… Aug 21 98August 21, 1998Article at WSJ
For Viennese Artists, A Tale of Two CitiesVienna Isa Rosenberger thinks Los Angeles is a dose of reality after the sheltered climate of her native Vienna -- and yet there's also a sense of fiction about it. "You drive down the street and get a new understanding of films, a new frame of… Jun 23 98June 23, 1998Article at WSJ
The Body Beautiful And Not So BeautifulLos Angeles It is the fate of art to be exhibited. Sure, artists in the past decades have tried to escape this fact. Like the man in the folk tale who leaves town to avoid his predicted rendezvous with Death, they've created one-time "happenings,"… Apr 15 98April 15, 1998Article at WSJ
British Drawings at the MorganNew York "If ever this Nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of the Art," Sir Joshua Reynolds told students… Feb 10 98February 10, 1998Article at WSJ
