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
September/October 2022
A SHARED SPOTLIGHT IN NEWPORT: O’KEEFFE’S THE STAR, BUT DONNAMARIA BRUTON SHINES
Creating art is a puzzle. Interpreting art is also a puzzle — not a crossword type of puzzle, where one and only one word fits the squares across and another word down — art is a puzzle filled with possibilities. Should the huge flower be painted red or orange? And if Georgia O’Keeffe decides “red,” then what color could the background be? Blues and greens? Yes, red flower with blue/green background she decides. Now it is our turn to puzzle over the “meaning” of the red flower with the blue/green background. We decide; “The red flower is about sex.” “No,” says O’Keeffe, “it is an abstract red flower.” The color red has many meanings in our Western society: anger, blood, love, Valentine’s Day, sex and more. So, when O’Keeffe chooses to paint a “red” flower she automatically teases us to answer “sex” to our interpretation of her puzzle. The puzzle becomes more complex, the … [Read more...] about A SHARED SPOTLIGHT IN NEWPORT: O’KEEFFE’S THE STAR, BUT DONNAMARIA BRUTON SHINES
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
50 YEARS OF CREATIVE FREEDOM: TRURO CENTER FOR THE ARTS LOOKS TO THE FUTURE
Nature and history are frames for a feast of creativity, as Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill celebrates its 50th anniversary, and heads into the next 50 years. There are two sites for the center. The original on Meetinghouse Road hosts the art gallery, art studios and a three-story office in a former windmill tower which looked to the center’s founder, Joyce Johnson, like a castle. Johnson, a Cape icon, an evocative woodblock printer and sculptor in many media of sensuous modernist figures, who self-built her house in the outer Cape dunes, saved the acreage and buildings 50 years back as a place to teach art. While Johnson was not sure that it would take off, it did, enlarging over the years to host some 175 workshops a year. Cherie Mittenthal, the Center’s director for 20 years, said, “Joyce is smiling down and happy about what has transpired here.” The Center is a big … [Read more...] about 50 YEARS OF CREATIVE FREEDOM: TRURO CENTER FOR THE ARTS LOOKS TO THE FUTURE
SOWA DISTRICT REBOUNDS: OPEN STUDIOS SHOWCASE 450 HARRISON ARTISTS
Artists’ studios evolved and changed over time but have always maintained a magnetism that sparks visitors’ curiosity. How is SoWA, Boston’s busiest Art + Design District, and how are artists dealing with the post-pandemic season? Can SoWA ́s Artists Open Studios serve as a continuing model for community revitalization through the arts? The art of revitalizing or the art revitalizing? On my recent visit to Ireland, I was eager to see Francis Bacon’s preserved studio, which has been at Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery since 1998. It is a large project undertaken by a team of archeologists, conservators and curators who carefully recreated every detail, including the dust accumulated since the artist’s death in 1992. The lines of visitors to see the studio through narrow transparent doors are huge. Throughout history, there has been a fascination with seeing the intimacy of artists’ studios … [Read more...] about SOWA DISTRICT REBOUNDS: OPEN STUDIOS SHOWCASE 450 HARRISON ARTISTS
GREETINGS FROM QUINCY!: THE ARTS HELP BRING RESIDENTS BACK DOWNTOWN
Since its inception in March 2006, Artscope Magazine has been based on Hancock Street in Quincy, Massachusetts, AKA, “The City of Presidents.” Earlier this year, we relocated to the fourth floor of South Shore Health Building alongside QUBIC Labs at 1495 Hancock, after the closing of Solomon’s Collection & Fine Rugs, our longtime home base, a half-mile away. When I last visited the area, pre-COVID, much of the area in front of Quincy City Hall was boarded off for redevelopment of the area. Now, it holds a welcoming and beautiful city park, the Hancock Adams Common, hosting statues of John Adams and John Hancock, and the entrance to picturesque Hancock Cemetery, bordered by United First Parish Church and Old City Hall. Thomas P. Koch has been Quincy’s mayor since 2008. “When I first took office, it wasn’t a pleasant experience walking downtown,” he said. “We had to create a new … [Read more...] about GREETINGS FROM QUINCY!: THE ARTS HELP BRING RESIDENTS BACK DOWNTOWN