Artists are defining new ways to cope and reorganize emotional traumas while strengthening the relationship between health and creative expressions. Can we assume that when it comes to art forms and artists, specific psychological and physical stresses can navigate through artists’ creative process which will work as an antidote for these states and as a gift to viewers? But if artists don’t have to commit to portraying realistic images or responses, can we say that, in this case, the creative process is a very sensible response? “I cannot get rid of my illnesses, for there is a lot in my art that exists only because of them,” said Edvard Munch, famous for the painting, “The Scream.” There has been significant interest in research on the power and capabilities of the arts as a healing method. Famous visual artists, including Frida Kahlo, Yayoi Kusama and Andy Warhol, have been … [Read more...] about ART AND MEDICINE: MECLINA & FORD’S HEALING ART AT THE BEACON
Reviews
A RARE OPPORTUNITY: DALÍ’S SURREALISTIC STACKED DECK IN SPRINGFIELD
Games of luck and chance hold their own natural order, outside the rules of measured existence, and into the realm of magical construct. Who better to visually celebrate the random structure of games of chance than Salvador Dalí? During the 1960s, Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989) worked with the French printing firm Draeger Frères to produce a set of limited-edition playing cards, and created lithographs of the designs shortly after. Eight examples from Dalí’s “Playing Card Suite” are featured in “Card Tricks: Salvador Dalí and the Art of Playing Cards” currently on view at D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield Museums. Bearing the artist’s trademark asymmetrical illusions, the images are at once lighthearted and arrestingly bold in content and style. From childhood, Dalí’s persona was complex and often self-contradictory. Having lost an infant brother nine months before his own … [Read more...] about A RARE OPPORTUNITY: DALÍ’S SURREALISTIC STACKED DECK IN SPRINGFIELD
THE HUSH OF HELD BREATH: JOHNSON’S QUIET PAINTINGS RETURN TO CASTLE HILL
“In his mysterious paintings,” writes Leonard Michaels about Edward Hopper, “he makes felt what isn’t there, the nothing, the nothing that isn’t there.” The same ought to be said about Mitchell Johnson’s oeuvre. Not only because Johnson is an artistic descendant of Hopper, both brilliant colorists, and not only because both have made the landscape around Truro come alive in oil, but also because in some ways the statement is even truer in Johnson’s work, especially lately. True partly in the sense of what isn’t there — unseen narratives and events that bring a life to any given moment, any given moment of seeing — but also who isn’t there. Fewer human figures populate Johnson’s spare but vibrant art than do Hopper’s — and in his next exhibition, “Nothing and Change: Selected Paintings 1990-2022,” which is on view from September 7 through 18 at the Truro Center for the Arts, you can … [Read more...] about THE HUSH OF HELD BREATH: JOHNSON’S QUIET PAINTINGS RETURN TO CASTLE HILL
MAKING THEIR WORLDS OURS: BASEL WAS A REMINDER OF WHY WE BUY, LOOK AT, ART
Art Basel is clearly back, with attendees unmasked (but fully vaccinated) unable to socially distance with huge crowds taking up physical space at the fair, restaurants and tables at gallery booths talking about sales and waiting their turn to buy. With galleries from Germany, specifically Berlin, taking up much of the allotted gallery spaces, and the number of galleries from Asia and the United States way down, art was often comical, nature- oriented and lower-priced than before Covid, but selling briskly. Exaggeration ruled as some galleries claimed sales of more pieces than they displayed, but fabrication is part of artmaking and selling. Big work was selling to private individuals, not only museums and large collections open to the public. Installations followed the children’s poem of some being very, very good and some awful. There was an emphasis on scientific explanations of … [Read more...] about MAKING THEIR WORLDS OURS: BASEL WAS A REMINDER OF WHY WE BUY, LOOK AT, ART
“WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS”: POWERFUL ART FROM GUANTÁNAMO BAY AT CATAMOUNT
Featuring nearly 100 evocative works, “Art from Guantánamo Bay” features the artwork of six men detained at the United States military prison camp in Cuba for as long as 20 years without being charged or convicted of a crime, all of whom have been cleared for release — although two currently remain in detention. The exhibition has a unique local connection because of the work several lawyers did on behalf of detainees. Artist- detainee Abdul Zahir was a client of St. Johnsbury attorneys Robert Gensburg and David Sleigh, who volunteered for over 10 years with the Guantánamo Bay Bar Association, a nationwide group of lawyers assembled by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm providing legal representation for detainees. Gensburg represented Zahir and helped him earn his freedom as a case of “mistaken identity” after 14 years of captivity; Zahir … [Read more...] about “WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS”: POWERFUL ART FROM GUANTÁNAMO BAY AT CATAMOUNT
BREAKING BARRIERS: COPLEY SOCIETY OPEN CALL RESULTS IN A UNIFYING THEME
Throughout my life, I’ve been curious about the people who I share public spaces with, be it on a bus, train, sidewalk or coffee shop. Rarely do I strike up a conversation to fill in the details of my impressions, instead leaving my own to serve as the backdrop for life’s great show. I’ve gotten greater insight into the lives of others through looking through images of the work that’ll be on display this July and August in the Copley Society of Art’s “Crossing Borders” national show. I’ve found myself captivated by Robert Ortiz’s “Una De Muchas” photograph of faces staring out from a commuter bus or train, Karen Israel’s “Another Passenger” pastel painting of a man on a subway train and Viktoria King’s “In the Passage,” capturing in oil a man walking down a not so wide street, his body language suggesting he is seemingly holding a package, walking in the opposing direction of an … [Read more...] about BREAKING BARRIERS: COPLEY SOCIETY OPEN CALL RESULTS IN A UNIFYING THEME