art

Artist Zach Mendoza’s Tribute to Great Literary Heroes

The Editors

The great reverence that Mendoza has for the past (and an equal infatuation with the lurking shadow of the future) is omnipresent in his alla prima portraits, which pay tribute to his literary heroes. His combination of expressionism and neorealism embodies the era in which many of his subjects thrived. As a perpetual student of history, he draws a line from late modernism through post-contemporary art.

Immerse Yourself in Interactive Art at TeamLabPlanets Tokyo

The Editors

The celebrity-favorite and Instagram-famous teamLab Planets Tokyo has become the world’s most popular single-artist destination, drawing in more than 2 million visitors in its first year. The sprawling interactive digital artwork space allows guests to virtually walk through water and immerse themselves in an enhanced world that responds to live movement. Visitors enter the museum barefoot and become completely immersed with other visitors in the vast, enthralling spaces. The artwork is manipulated in real time by a computer program so previous visual states can never be replicated and will never reoccur -- each visitor’s experience is completely unique.

The Serious and the Smirk: The Smile in Portraiture

Nicholas Jeeves

Such is the field upon which the mouth in portraiture has been debated: an ongoing conflict between the serious and the smirk. The most famous and enduring portrait in the world functions around this very conflict. Millions of words have been devoted to the Mona Lisa and her smirk – more generously known as her ‘enigmatic smile’ — and so today it’s difficult to write about her without sensing that you’re at the back of a very long and noisy queue that stretches all the way back to 16th century Florence. 

Paying Homage to the Brilliant World of Comics and Graphic Novels

The Editors

This exhibition is curated by Kathleen Goncharov, senior surator at the museum. She recruited as her “muse” for this exhibition Calvin Reid, the senior news editor at Publishers Weekly and a leading expert in the field of comics. Reid was one of the first critics to recognize comics as a literary form for adults, and selected the comic books and graphic novels in the reading room where the public can comfortably lounge and enjoy reading (many from Reid’s own private library). 

Joan Miro: The Catalan Magician Remakes the World

Sandra Bertrand

Miro’s immersion into the prevailing Parisian scene was perfectly timed.  Andre Breton’s First Surrealist Manifesto was written in the fall of 1924, and “The Birth of the World” produced in 1925.  Predating by decades the “action painting” of Jackson Pollock, the background is a grey morass of pouring, brushing, flinging gestures to signal the explosive nature of creation, acting as the stage on which his floating shapes take their place.  Acquired by MOMA as a gift from the artist in 1972, it justifies its place of honor in this show.

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future

Sandra Bertrand

Several years before the world was welcoming the gigantic proponents of modernism, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Kazmir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian into the mainstream, af Klint was quietly creating her dazzlingly bold and colorful swirls, her biomorphic shapes and rectilinear constructions.  The pull of the outside world had little interest for her.  So little, in fact, that she stipulated that no one would see her creations until 20 years after her passing.  

The Art of Daniel Calder

The Editors

According to Calder, “In this series of paintings, I use the icon of the blackboard to reexamine some of what we know about a group of our most familiar historical figures, myths, and cultural phenomena. Our understanding of this should not stop at what we were told in elementary school. The impetus for this series is my confusion when confronted with the discord between what we are taught and what seems to be the case."

Eugene Delacroix Unbound: Major U.S. Retrospective of the Artist Opens at the Met

Sandra Bertrand

A not-to-be-missed portion of the exhibit are 17 plates (never before seen in their entirety) for an 1828 publication of Faust by Goethe.   It was an early undertaking that elicited this response from the great author himself: “Monsieur Delacroix has surpassed the mental images that I made for myself from the scenes that I wrote.”  There are plenty of opportunities in his drawings to study his aptitude for classical form and his lifelong love for the Greco-Roman aesthetic (inspired in no small part by the 400-year-old Greek War of Independence against Ottoman rule that ultimately led to the demise of his Greek sympathizer friend Byron).  

Abstract, Figurative Artworks Explore ‘Super Bodies’ in New Exhibit

The Editors

The Anita Shapolsky Gallery is pleased to present a cross-cultural and trans-historical exploration of the body in art. “Super Bodies” moves beyond the typical focus on abstract expressionist paintings to exhibit art from a potpourri of artists, periods, countries, and media. Antiques from Japan, China, Burma, and Greece from Anita Shapolsky’s own collection are scattered throughout the exhibition to complement the modern and contemporary works, all exemplifying the ever-present drive to represent the body in both the abstract and the figurative.

The Paintings of Tennessee Williams

The Editors

“The fact that Williams painted, much less that he painted in Key West, is a surprise to many and his paintings have mostly remained outside of the public eye. We are honored to have these works here at the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, and to be one of the few museums that David Wolkowsky has selected to exhibit these works outside of their Key West home,” according to Susan Gladstone, the Executive Director of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU

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