Title of article: Is Painting Small the Next Big Thing?
Author: Roberta Smith
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 19, 2008
In this article, abstract paintings are the subject at hand. Roberta Smith, the writer of this article, clearly states her opinion of not being in favor of abstract paintings. In fact she goes as far as stating, “Small may be beautiful, but where abstract paintings is concerned it is rarely fashionable. Big has held center stage…” It is further said that the reason that abstract paintings are a way of hiding the artist’s mistakes. Small paintings are “having a moment,” right now and may be found in the New York Museum of Contemporary Art. Various artists such as Scott Olson wanting to make paintings whose “smallness” do not rule finding new additions every time you look at it. Even though abstract paintings may be small, it forces us to truly view a picture and enjoy the canvas. As this article says, “…by shrinking the style to a manageable size. It exemplifies one of the many joys of small.”
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Review of Primal Instincts
Title of article: Offering a Painter for History's Reconsideration
Author: Roberta Smith
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 07, 2008
Philip Guston said it best when he said that he wanted, “to paint things as if one had never seen them before, as if one had come from another planet.” He wanted to “paint as a cave man would.” Philip Guston (1913-1980) was an abstract expressionist, later on becoming a painter of dark, comic images. He revered to Italian Renaissance paintings and collaborated in the ‘70’s on drawings with novelist’s and composers, in order to combine words and images. Now, there are exhibitions presenting 100 drawings dating from 1946 to 1980. In this show, the first episode of Guston’s life is skipped in order to, as the author states, “giving a clearer picture of the continual struggle with abstraction and representation that defined his mature art. Once he got over his “dry spell,” he started making cartoonish images of three people in Ku Klux Klan hoods and robes. He also transformed studio photographs showing scores of drawings sequentially pinned to the walls. At the end of Philip Guston’s life he turned is K.K.K. workers as symbols of political protest. He even went on to draw a “monstrous” caricature of Richard M. Nixon. Back then, his work has harshly criticized. Today, we have been desensitized and his work doesn’t look that shockingly crude. Critics have even said that his work is brilliant, comparing it to “Mutt and Jeff,” and “Krazy Kat.”
Author: Roberta Smith
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 07, 2008
Philip Guston said it best when he said that he wanted, “to paint things as if one had never seen them before, as if one had come from another planet.” He wanted to “paint as a cave man would.” Philip Guston (1913-1980) was an abstract expressionist, later on becoming a painter of dark, comic images. He revered to Italian Renaissance paintings and collaborated in the ‘70’s on drawings with novelist’s and composers, in order to combine words and images. Now, there are exhibitions presenting 100 drawings dating from 1946 to 1980. In this show, the first episode of Guston’s life is skipped in order to, as the author states, “giving a clearer picture of the continual struggle with abstraction and representation that defined his mature art. Once he got over his “dry spell,” he started making cartoonish images of three people in Ku Klux Klan hoods and robes. He also transformed studio photographs showing scores of drawings sequentially pinned to the walls. At the end of Philip Guston’s life he turned is K.K.K. workers as symbols of political protest. He even went on to draw a “monstrous” caricature of Richard M. Nixon. Back then, his work has harshly criticized. Today, we have been desensitized and his work doesn’t look that shockingly crude. Critics have even said that his work is brilliant, comparing it to “Mutt and Jeff,” and “Krazy Kat.”
Review of "History's Reconsideration"
Title of article: Offering a Painter for History's Reconsideration
Author: Roberta Smith
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 07, 2008
Drawings by Doris Lee (1905- 1983) have been looked over. Her artwork is in the show of Charles Green Shaw, at the D. Wigmore Fine Art Gallery. Ms. Doris Lee’s work is very versatile. Ms. Lee did not conform to any one style of painting. Her artwork can be easily categorized as art and illustration, fine and commercial, easily. Ms. Lee, as the author says, “Had a sophisticated fusion of folk and modernist painting that ran the gamut from Grandma Moses to a rather prime Abstract Expressionism.” She was never afraid to try anything that she felt like fusing together. However, no matter what she painted or created, she always managed to add just enough to represent her own style of painting that would set her apart from other artists. One of the pieces done by Ms. Doris is entitled, “Thanksgiving Dinner,” which won her the Logan Prize. Another piece is entitled “City Dog Walker at Night.” Ms. Doris Lee’s ambitious attitude was her muse. With her ambitious attitude, she was inspired to create these and many other pieces that earn her recognition.
Author: Roberta Smith
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 07, 2008
Drawings by Doris Lee (1905- 1983) have been looked over. Her artwork is in the show of Charles Green Shaw, at the D. Wigmore Fine Art Gallery. Ms. Doris Lee’s work is very versatile. Ms. Lee did not conform to any one style of painting. Her artwork can be easily categorized as art and illustration, fine and commercial, easily. Ms. Lee, as the author says, “Had a sophisticated fusion of folk and modernist painting that ran the gamut from Grandma Moses to a rather prime Abstract Expressionism.” She was never afraid to try anything that she felt like fusing together. However, no matter what she painted or created, she always managed to add just enough to represent her own style of painting that would set her apart from other artists. One of the pieces done by Ms. Doris is entitled, “Thanksgiving Dinner,” which won her the Logan Prize. Another piece is entitled “City Dog Walker at Night.” Ms. Doris Lee’s ambitious attitude was her muse. With her ambitious attitude, she was inspired to create these and many other pieces that earn her recognition.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Review of "Past Cliche's"
Title of article: Looking Past the Cliche to See a Bit of the Edge
Author: Karen Rosenberg
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 25, 2008
As time goes on everything goes through a transition and a period of change. As the author of this article says, “new styles and movements take shape.” The New York University gallery displayed an exhibition, “The Downtown Show,” which focused on the Lower Manhattan scene of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. This show was called “New York Cool: Painting and Sculpture From the N.Y.U. Art Collection,” displays late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s. During such period you see the transitional phase of Abstract Expressionism and Pop. This collection points out that this period had more than a few well known artists that were part of this movement other than the artists everyone is familiar with. A few examples are Robert Moses, Seymour Lipton, Robert Goodnough and Conrad Marca-Relli. Pop, as explained by the author, “takes root in two paintings,” by Mr. Katz. During this era we also saw the transitional period for women gracing us with their work as well. Ms. Kusama’s painting “No. Red A” was said that it is a piece of “neurotic abstraction”; its tightly packed red circles conjuring a swarm of insects. We also have Ms. Bourgeois’s “Labyrinthine Tower,” giving a similar “psychosexual force.” All in all, it seems that this show would take us back to the transitional period and show us the beginning of a movement that was a period that would change art.
Author: Karen Rosenberg
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 25, 2008
As time goes on everything goes through a transition and a period of change. As the author of this article says, “new styles and movements take shape.” The New York University gallery displayed an exhibition, “The Downtown Show,” which focused on the Lower Manhattan scene of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. This show was called “New York Cool: Painting and Sculpture From the N.Y.U. Art Collection,” displays late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s. During such period you see the transitional phase of Abstract Expressionism and Pop. This collection points out that this period had more than a few well known artists that were part of this movement other than the artists everyone is familiar with. A few examples are Robert Moses, Seymour Lipton, Robert Goodnough and Conrad Marca-Relli. Pop, as explained by the author, “takes root in two paintings,” by Mr. Katz. During this era we also saw the transitional period for women gracing us with their work as well. Ms. Kusama’s painting “No. Red A” was said that it is a piece of “neurotic abstraction”; its tightly packed red circles conjuring a swarm of insects. We also have Ms. Bourgeois’s “Labyrinthine Tower,” giving a similar “psychosexual force.” All in all, it seems that this show would take us back to the transitional period and show us the beginning of a movement that was a period that would change art.
Review of "Chinese Art to Soar..."
Title of article: Chinese Art Continues to Soar at Sotheby's
Author: David Barboza
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 10, 2008
Art sales are truly a “small” price to pay in order to have a piece of an artists work. Now days, new leaders of art, are beginning to emerge. Chinese contemporary art in three auctions in Hong Kong, on April 10th, sold $51.77 million worth of art. This auction sold more than 100 pieces from the Estella Collection. The biggest purchase of the auction was that of the oil canvas entitled, “Bloodline: Big Family No.3.” According to the article “this piece represents a family of three during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution in China, when children were sometimes led to denounce their parents.” This piece sold for just over $6 million, the highest price to pay for a painting by a Chinese contemporary artist in record. This piece is just evidence that proof that Chinese art is up and coming and here to stay. By China surpassing France last year as the world’s 3rd biggest auction market, behind the United States and Britain, is just more proof that art is a big market.
Author: David Barboza
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 10, 2008
Art sales are truly a “small” price to pay in order to have a piece of an artists work. Now days, new leaders of art, are beginning to emerge. Chinese contemporary art in three auctions in Hong Kong, on April 10th, sold $51.77 million worth of art. This auction sold more than 100 pieces from the Estella Collection. The biggest purchase of the auction was that of the oil canvas entitled, “Bloodline: Big Family No.3.” According to the article “this piece represents a family of three during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution in China, when children were sometimes led to denounce their parents.” This piece sold for just over $6 million, the highest price to pay for a painting by a Chinese contemporary artist in record. This piece is just evidence that proof that Chinese art is up and coming and here to stay. By China surpassing France last year as the world’s 3rd biggest auction market, behind the United States and Britain, is just more proof that art is a big market.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Review for "Meaning or Mischief"
Title of article: A Panoramic Backdrop for Meaning and Mischief
Author: Ken Johnson
Source: The New York Times
Date of Publication: April 22, 2008
Although the author of this piece believes that the seasonal outdoor sculpture show should not be the site to display such artwork, I feel the complete opposite. It is understood that the sculptures will appear smaller than they normally would if they were in a museum. However, the pieces are made seasonal for a purpose. The outdoors just accentuates the magnificence of each piece. It is also understood that the intimacy and detail of the artwork may be compromised. Yet, since artwork was meant to be displayed for all to see, why not display it out were the whole world can view it better. Finally, the article finds the great outdoors as a distracting and contemplative looking. Well, maybe the distractions that the outdoors offers may just offset the artists’ pieces, making it a beautiful accessory for nature. No matter what your opinion may be of these pieces, they are worth viewing them on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Final Term Paper on Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith
As Kiki Smith best put it in a one on one interview, “I’m a thing-maker.” (Munro, 489) She is a living visual artist that is of the Post-Modern field, in which her exquisite individualistic pieces have graced our times. With pieces that may be considered too aggressive, she has made her mark in history and has become one of America’s greatest female artists. Kiki Smith’s artwork proves her statement, “No…I don’t want to be owned by…I don’t want to be hedged by…belief systems…” (Munro, 499) Thereby, pushing the boundaries of society and creating her own style.
Kiki Smith was born with art surrounding her. One of artistic influences was her father, Tony Smith. Tony Smith was a Modernist sculptor and philosopher- rhetorician. Tony Smith’s obsessive drive to solve essential problems shared by several vocations was passed on to Kiki. However, she expressed “I don’t want to be owned by a belief system.” (Munro, 493) Kiki Smith’s artistic inclinations began as a child when she helped her father make cardboard models for his geometric sculptures. (http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/smith/index.html) He also taught her not to draw what she sees, but what she knows. (Posner, 31)
Sadly her father passed away when Kiki was 26 in 1980. To add further tragedy to Kiki Smith’s life, her younger sister Bebe succumbed to AIDS. With these tragedies in her life Kiki was now pushed to explore her curiosity and examine closer the body’s internal systems and fluid systems. (Munro, 493) As a result of her new found interest her first piece was created around 1979. For this piece Kiki Smith made pillow cases and sheets painted in dark red fabric paint with cut-up arms and legs, and eye, and a mouth, and a shirt made the same way. (Posner, 31) Kiki Smith explained that this piece was how her internal psychic life felt, not chopped up, but in disarray, fragile. (Posner, 31)
Following the display of the pillow cases and body parts, Kiki Smith made a piece called Hand in Jar, in which she found a latex hand on the street and put it in a jar with dirty fish water from her aquarium and let algae start to grow on it. This piece was an interesting piece representing the relationships between parasite and host. (Posner, 32) This piece to Kiki Smith was meant for the audience to view the interdependent nature of the world and how collaborative it is, teamwork. (Posner, 32)
Later on in 1990, Kiki Smith put together a Projects Room at the Museum of Modern Art that caused some disarray in the artistic world. By her challenging the boundaries of individualism and art she displayed a theater of body-events including a floor-scatter of blown glass sperm and, on a shelf, twelve glass jugs labeled blood, urine, pus, semen, saliva, vomit, and so on. In addition to those displays, she had paper images of a skinned arm, leg, and torso. Finally, suspended Kiki suspended a tapestry of beeswax cubes, each one a print lifted from a square inch of human skin.
Later on she joined the PaceWildenstein Gallery, where she displayed a series of standing Virgins, some flayed, with internal organs spilling out or lined in silver. Kiki Smith gave the explanation that “The Virgin flayed was a piece about her ‘being in the flesh,’ but robbed of her sexuality in return for her divinity. On one hand, she’s pure and sacred. On the other, she’s the protector of procreation. But in her daily life, she’s robbed...” (Munro, 495) There by even challenging religious view.
However, one of the most interesting pieces that she made was as she described was for “entertainment” value in which she exhibited a figure of a women crouched and urinating in a string of shiny beads. In this piece she transcends the barrier of norms of society and displays the true reality that should not be spoken of.
To sum up, Kiki Smith is a female artist that surpasses the barriers that society and all norms have created to oppress the reality that exists and should be expressed and spoken of no matter what. Her originality and her exquisite eye for detail have given her one of the Post-Modern’s favorite American artists.
Bibliography
Munro, Eleanor, Originals American Women Artists, Da Capo Press (1979, 2000),
pgs. 499- 501.
Posner, Helaine, Kiki Smith, A Bulfinch Press Book (1998)
Art in the 21st Century: the series, (2001-2007). Kiki Smith. Retrieved April 28, 2008, from http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/smith/index.html
As Kiki Smith best put it in a one on one interview, “I’m a thing-maker.” (Munro, 489) She is a living visual artist that is of the Post-Modern field, in which her exquisite individualistic pieces have graced our times. With pieces that may be considered too aggressive, she has made her mark in history and has become one of America’s greatest female artists. Kiki Smith’s artwork proves her statement, “No…I don’t want to be owned by…I don’t want to be hedged by…belief systems…” (Munro, 499) Thereby, pushing the boundaries of society and creating her own style.
Kiki Smith was born with art surrounding her. One of artistic influences was her father, Tony Smith. Tony Smith was a Modernist sculptor and philosopher- rhetorician. Tony Smith’s obsessive drive to solve essential problems shared by several vocations was passed on to Kiki. However, she expressed “I don’t want to be owned by a belief system.” (Munro, 493) Kiki Smith’s artistic inclinations began as a child when she helped her father make cardboard models for his geometric sculptures. (http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/smith/index.html) He also taught her not to draw what she sees, but what she knows. (Posner, 31)
Sadly her father passed away when Kiki was 26 in 1980. To add further tragedy to Kiki Smith’s life, her younger sister Bebe succumbed to AIDS. With these tragedies in her life Kiki was now pushed to explore her curiosity and examine closer the body’s internal systems and fluid systems. (Munro, 493) As a result of her new found interest her first piece was created around 1979. For this piece Kiki Smith made pillow cases and sheets painted in dark red fabric paint with cut-up arms and legs, and eye, and a mouth, and a shirt made the same way. (Posner, 31) Kiki Smith explained that this piece was how her internal psychic life felt, not chopped up, but in disarray, fragile. (Posner, 31)
Following the display of the pillow cases and body parts, Kiki Smith made a piece called Hand in Jar, in which she found a latex hand on the street and put it in a jar with dirty fish water from her aquarium and let algae start to grow on it. This piece was an interesting piece representing the relationships between parasite and host. (Posner, 32) This piece to Kiki Smith was meant for the audience to view the interdependent nature of the world and how collaborative it is, teamwork. (Posner, 32)
Later on in 1990, Kiki Smith put together a Projects Room at the Museum of Modern Art that caused some disarray in the artistic world. By her challenging the boundaries of individualism and art she displayed a theater of body-events including a floor-scatter of blown glass sperm and, on a shelf, twelve glass jugs labeled blood, urine, pus, semen, saliva, vomit, and so on. In addition to those displays, she had paper images of a skinned arm, leg, and torso. Finally, suspended Kiki suspended a tapestry of beeswax cubes, each one a print lifted from a square inch of human skin.
Later on she joined the PaceWildenstein Gallery, where she displayed a series of standing Virgins, some flayed, with internal organs spilling out or lined in silver. Kiki Smith gave the explanation that “The Virgin flayed was a piece about her ‘being in the flesh,’ but robbed of her sexuality in return for her divinity. On one hand, she’s pure and sacred. On the other, she’s the protector of procreation. But in her daily life, she’s robbed...” (Munro, 495) There by even challenging religious view.
However, one of the most interesting pieces that she made was as she described was for “entertainment” value in which she exhibited a figure of a women crouched and urinating in a string of shiny beads. In this piece she transcends the barrier of norms of society and displays the true reality that should not be spoken of.
To sum up, Kiki Smith is a female artist that surpasses the barriers that society and all norms have created to oppress the reality that exists and should be expressed and spoken of no matter what. Her originality and her exquisite eye for detail have given her one of the Post-Modern’s favorite American artists.
Bibliography
Munro, Eleanor, Originals American Women Artists, Da Capo Press (1979, 2000),
pgs. 499- 501.
Posner, Helaine, Kiki Smith, A Bulfinch Press Book (1998)
Art in the 21st Century: the series, (2001-2007). Kiki Smith. Retrieved April 28, 2008, from http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/smith/index.html
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