Exploring the Roots of a Fine Art by Brian Goslow Intended to celebrate “an intrepid and colorful group of photographers at the turn of the 20th century on both sides of the Atlantic who fought to establish photography as a fully-fledged fine art, coequal with painting, sculpture and etching,” this exhibition, organized by art2art Circulating Exhibitions, represents much more than an art form. I’d argue that “Photo-Secession: Painterly Masterworks of Turn-of-the-Century Photography,” currently on view at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts at Springfield Museums,” features work that not only served as the blueprint for the photographers who followed them, but helped create what we call, “The American Dream.” “The exhibition shows how photography was developed into an art form,” said Springfield Museums curator of art, Julia Courtney. At the forefront, then as well as in … [Read more...] about Photo-Secession at Springfield

Everything is Dada at Yale by Kristin Nord Nonsense “sound” poetry, nonlinear musical compositions, irony-laden cinematography and the blurring of lines between fine and applied arts were considered highly radical ideas 100 years ago when the Dada movement burst upon the scene. The movement was in many ways a response to the ravages of World War 1, as an irreverent and anti-hierarchical group of male and female artists sought refuge in the safe haven of neutral Switzerland their ideas began to cross-fertilize. Soon they were mounting dance, music, poetry and puppetry performances at Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire in shows that were designed “to shock and provoke,” explains Frauke V. Josenhans, the Horace W. Goldsmith Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery and curator of the current retrospective, “Everything is Dada.” Within … [Read more...] about To Shock and Provoke

Joan Baldwin's Marshes by Elizabeth Michelman At its inception following World War I, Surrealism was a mostly male enclave. Its female adherents went unacclaimed until later, when their work was taken up by the growing feminist movement. Successive generations of women artists appropriated surrealistic technique, with its bizarre juxtapositions and appeal to the unconscious, as a means to challenge the assumptions underlying a male-dominated discourse about the inner experience and erotic imagination of women. Joan Baldwin’s new oil paintings, ostensibly of harmless Cape Cod imagery, continue to tweak surrealism’s still-evolving methods. She undermines conventional reality with cool humor and superb technical skill to reveal the primal passions that govern emotion and shape relationships. A former commercial illustrator of furniture that did not yet exist, Baldwin has … [Read more...] about Bucolic Innuendo

Robert Manning at Catamount by Marguerite Serkin For an artist or any interpreter of time, one’s personal past and the historical past provide a fount of material from which to create. Robert Manning’s early work grew out of his personal background — the life of an Irish American born in 1933 — and has pushed open the envelope to extend into the historical past. What better expression of that historical past than the ever-enduring stones and dolmens that have braved millennia of storms, empires and the curious, and have come to represent the relevance of our most ancient cultures to life today? “I have always identified with being Irish. I am proud of it,” Manning said during a recent interview from his Danbury, Vermont home. “When I was a student at Pratt Institute, they showed ‘Man of Aran’ (Robert Flaherty). It took me 26 years to visit Ireland, and finally my wife … [Read more...] about Rock Solid

A Collector Displays her Gems by Franklin W. Liu Without acknowledgment of tradition, art is like a sightless adult; without innovation, that adult is comatose. Thus, only with an artist’s primed imagination may truth surge from the yoke of tradition to find new meaning and validation in an ever-changing world.” Walking that thin line some 500 years ago was a group of Northern European, Italian, and Spanish artists who are now deemed Old Masters, spanning from the Early Renaissance to High Renaissance Era. What an astounding cultural rebirth it was, inducing new thinking in art, literature, and architecture, circa 1480 to 1527. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston’s Fenway is currently presenting 25 such Old Masters’ works from the Museum’s permanent collection in “Off the Wall: Gardner and Her Masterpieces.” This once-in-a-lifetime exhibition includes works … [Read more...] about Off the Wall at Gardner

Thinking Big at the MFA by Suzanne Volmer Al Miner, assistant curator of contemporary art at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and Laura Weinstein, Ananda Coomaraswamy curator of South Asian and Islamic art, have co-curated “Megacities Asia” by selecting 11 artists whose works explore the idea of critical mass with vocabularies that hinge on interpreting or actualizing an understanding of many. Miner says: “These artists are observing their cities and seeing the landscapes shift before their eyes. They’re feeling a city grow around them, and that’s really the impetus for them to create the works as they do. They want to truly understand … perspectives of their homes — why those places are changing and the results … those changes might bring.” The tactile plethora of materiality engaged by installations in this exhibition at the MFA has a humanizing effect, which brings near … [Read more...] about Megacities Asia