Metropolitan Museum: Exhibitions April 2013

We discovered these exciting exhibitions at the Met...

"At War with the Obvious" William Eggleston photographs

Untitled (Louisiana), 1980, printed 1999. Dye-transfer print. 11 7/8 x 17 13/16 in. (30.2 x 45.3 cm).

William Eggleston (Amer. b.1939) emerged in the early 1960s as a pioneer of modern color photography. Now, fifty years later, he is one of our most prolific and influential modern photographers. His subject is the American vernacular (especially near his home in the Mississippi Delta). His prints are dye transfers  that reveal qualities of light and saturated chromatics, Eggleston almost single-handedly validated color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. This exhibition celebrates the artist's iconic photographs of commonplace subjects that have become an inspiration for generations of artists, musicians, and filmmakers from Nan Goldin to David yrne, the Coen Brothers, and David Lynch.

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/william-eggleston

"Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity"

"Impressionism,Fashion, and Modernity" looks at the role of fashion in Impressionist paintings from the mid-1860's to the mid-1880's, connecting actual costumes with paintings, photographs and prints. Paris emerged as the style capital of the world with the rise of the department store, the advent of ready-made wear, and the proliferation of fashion magazines. The show highlights the work of artists in the avant-garde, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Zola, Sonia Delaunay and their contemporaries.

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/impressionism-fashion-modernity

"Street" by James Nares

Street, is a new video by the British-born artist James Nares. Over the course of a week in September 2011, Nares—a New Yorker since 1974—recorded sixteen hours of footage of people on the streets of Manhattan from a moving car using a high-definition camera usually used to record fast-moving subjects such as speeding bullets and hummingbirds. He then greatly slowed his source material, editing down the results to one hour of steady, continuous motion and scoring it with music for twelve-string guitar composed and performed by his friend Thurston Moore, co-founder of Sonic Youth.

"My intention was to give the dreamlike impression of floating through a city full of people frozen in time, caught Pompeii-like, at a particular moment of thought, expression, or activity…a film to be viewed 100 years from now."

—James Nares

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/street

After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age

This installation explores various ways in which artists, including Nancy Burson, Filip Dujardin, Joan Fontcuberta, Beate Gütschow, and others, have used digital technology to alter the photographic image from the 1980s to the present.

After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age

Cambodian Rattan: The Sculptures of Sopheap Pich

This exhibition presents ten works by the contemporary Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich (born 1971), who lives and works in Phnom Penh. Pich works principally in rattan and bamboo, constructing organic open-weave forms that are solid and ethereal, representational and abstract. Much of his work is inspired by elements of the human anatomy or plant life. His constructions combine his training as a painter with the spatial conceptualization of a sculptor, creating three-dimensional objects that are largely defined by their graphic character. Pich's art consciously embodies his memories of culture and place. The exhibition is installed in three spaces in the Asian galleries, including an integration into historical displays, and is part of the Museum's contribution to the New York–wide Season of Cambodia

Cambodian Rattan: The Sculptures of Sopheap Pich

  82nd and Fifth

This exciting multimedia online series presents 100 works selected by 100 curators. A new web episode will be offered every Wednesday in 2013. Here is the link to the series:

http://82nd-and-fifth.metmuseum.or

Museum Visit: Wade Guyton at the Whitney

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

New York–based artist Wade Guyton (b. 1972) makes bold paintings and drawings like these wall-sized  bands of color, using digital technologies: desktop computers, scanners, and giant inkjet printers. Guyton tears photographs from magazines, scans them and prints over them. He includes beautiful printing accidents, misprinted photos, broken graphic bands. The exhibition concludes with a spectacular artwork of broken black bands, over fifty feet long on two opposite walls, that Guyton created specifically for the Whitney space. 

The title of the Whitney survey, Wade Guyton OS, refers to a computer’s “operating system,” linking Guyton’s art to the operating systems of our time.

A Project Inspired by Wade Guyton

Select some photographs from a magazine. Either tear them out (with permission) or scan them. Print some large letters, or words on a new page. Print them over the photographs. Try several combinations. Fun, yes? Try enlarging sections. Try collages...real ones...cut and paste...Scan them. Do some more printing combinations. Do some more collages and print color bands over them.

Art News: Cy Twombly's Last Paintings

Today, I visited the Gagosian Gallery at 980 Madison Ave. near 77th Street,  to see the thrilling last paintings of Cy Twombly. I couldn't wait until they came to New York from London. 

In our earlier blog, "Cy Twombly's Scribbles," we wrote about Twombly's early drawings and paintings,  his classical Greek scribbles, his chalk scribbles on a blackboard, his color scribbles with soft pastels. Now in his "Last Paintings," his scribbles have grown to be the size of an entire wall. Painting in juicy oranges across acid green, giant loops leave a web of spidery drips. They are exciting paintings. They take you to a lush place Twombly discovered late in his life. So very beautiful. They will be at the Gagosian Gallery through Dec 22.  A fitting farewell to an amazing American painter.

Art News: Calder's Bronzes

A new exhibit at the L&M Gallery displays Alexander Calder's delightful bronzes. They were inspired by an architect friend, who asked Calder to create sculptures that could be constructed in concrete at a much larger size.

The Vine

Calder is known for his playful "circus" sculptures of acrobats and animals made of wire and bits of fabric. The "Bronzes" exhibition includes playful, little pinched clay animals, like the ones we made when we were children. 

Here is the link to "Calder: The Complete Bronzes," on view thru Dec 8 at L&M Arts, lmgallery.com

Art News: Puppets On Film

This weekend, Puppets on Film, an annual festival from the Jim Henson Foundation, and BAMcinematek, celebrates many different types of puppets. "It's great to see this wide range," said Cheryl Henson, Jim Henson's daughter, and the foundation's president, who organizes the series with Lindsay Briggs. "A lt is being made by young artists on limited budgets. We love the quirky, playful, non corporate, noncommercial approach."

More information and schedules for films and workshops at: bam.org/puppetsonfilm:

http://www.bam.org/film/2012/the-sweatshirt-sheep-puppetmaking-workshop

Art News: Goodnight Moon App

Reading the "Arts, Briefly" a column about art news in the New York Times, on Friday November 9th, 2012, I discovered that one of my favorite children's books, "Goodnight Moon," is now on sale as an interactive app. It was published by Loud Crow Interactive and is available at iTunes for $4.99. The digital version includes a narration and a piano soundtrack. There are two educational add-ons, a "Goodnight Moon" alphabet book and a counting book.

Studio Visit: Greenwich House Pottery

Teen Wheel Workshop

Working on the wheel is amazing. You take a blob of shapeless clay, place it on a wheel, start the wheel turning and press on it with steady hands. It wiggles a bit, but soon,  as if by magic, a beautiful pot rises. It grows taller, or wider, as you press it. You stop to admire it.

We visited the popular Teen Wheel Workshop at Greenwich House Pottery in Greenwich Village. Master Potter, Dave Gibson, is the instructor. It's an exciting workshop where teens (13 to 18 years old) learn to shape beautiful pots on the wheel. 

Dave Gibson Demonstration 

A video of Dave's "centering" demonstration on YouTube :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvLZIkcwR-s&feature=g-upl

The students practice "centering" on the wheel:

They add decorative details...

...with "slip," liquid clay.

One student adds graphic letters to his artwork.

The pots can be painted with shiny glaze in every imaginable color.

When the pots are ready they are loaded into a kiln and fired...

... at 2000 degrees.

Here are some "fired" pots waiting to be picked up.

Here is a wall of beautiful pots on exhibit in the gallery.

Meet Christopher Adams

Greenwich House Pottery is proud of its artist-In-residence program.
Leading artists like Christopher Adams are invited to share
their art with students and with the community.

Greenwich House Pottery is pleased to announce Christopher Adams as its 2012-2013 Resident Artist. Of his work, Adams writes: “My ceramic work relates intimately to my interests and experiences outside of art...and falls into the category of ‘organic abstraction.’ The pieces are influenced by a variety of creatures, but none of them represent any specific organism. Instead, the works usually play on biological concepts—speciation, convergence, mimicry—to generate aesthetic novelty. My most recent efforts relate to a series of wall-hanging ceramic biomorphic abstractions that play on the biological speciation concept of adaptive radiation – a phenomenon in which some pioneering organism enters into a relatively untapped environment and differentiates wildly and rapidly while at the same time not departing too dramatically from its original form. All the works in the series are members of an arbitrarily designed family. The population—currently hovering at around 5,000—has been evolving over the last 10 years…pieces range in size from half an inch to four feet in diameter and all are hand-built.”

This project was inspired by artist Christopher Adams' work...

 You can do this project at home. It is based on the fantasy forms Christopher Adams creates. You will need some clay or playdoh. Create (shape) some fantasy plant forms. Give them lots of wiggly "arms." Design some insect or animal "creatures." Have they come from another planet? Glue your "creatures" to a wood panel (or heavy cardboard) to create a "world," like Christopher Adams did. Give your "world" a name...and a story.

Meet Adam Welch, Greenwich House Pottery Director.

Adam Welch, Director

Greenwich House Pottery

16 Jones Street

New York, NY
Tel: 212 242 4106

You will find the Greenwich House catalogue at:

http://www.greenwichhouse.org

If you have young children, you will enjoy this post about the parent-child class at Greenwich House Pottery:
http://artbusnyc.blogspot.com/2012/06/studio-visit-greenwich-house-pottery.html