What percentage of what you do is performance art? I asked myself that question on December 15 as Art Basel Miami Beach 2019 was coming to a close. Earlier that morning, Artscope’s national correspondent Nancy Nesvet suddenly woke up around 4 a.m. realizing the reality behind the strange performance built around the global reaction to the sale of two — and eating of one — banana that composed Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian” installation on the wall of Galerie Perrotin’s booth at ...

“Photo Revolution: Andy Warhol to Cindy Sherman,” at the Worcester Art Museum through February 15, explores the evolution of photography at the hands of the baby boom generation. The exhibition brackets the time frame after WWII but before smartphones and illustrates forces that have shaped popular culture, resulting in currently different standards in contemporary art. Curator Nancy Kathryn Burns invites audiences into this show, which is a roaming look at our cultural climate when photography quickly insinuated itself into daily ...

What a wonderful day of discovery! On a cold and dreary November day to find a new (for me) museum, a new artist and a new town with good restaurants! The Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, opened in 2006, is exhibiting the marvelous photographs of Emil Otto Hoppé (British, 1878-1972) of the Ballets Russes. The exhibition is sponsored by Artscope Magazine. Hoppé, one of the most famous photographers of his day, had exclusive access to Ballets Russes, the ...

Juried exhibitions are a mainstay for art associations, galleries and museums, and with good reason. Everyone seems to benefit from them. Artists enter for the recognition, validation and exposure to possible buyers and to the critical eye of their fellow artists. Gallery owners are able to seek out emerging talent as well as established artists for possible representation. Art aficionados and casual visitors alike can follow and compare artists’ work. Often times, little noted at these shows is the extraordinary ...

“Legacy: Passing the Torch,” curated by Stephanie Mahan Stigliano, presents the work of Boston and New England area artist educators in a variety of media, side by side with that of their students. The show explores the bi-directional influence of the teacher-student relationship, both through the pairings of work as well as through the reflective artist statements accompanying each piece. Presenting the work in this context, said Stigliano, allows us to “ ...explore and support the complex, cooperative, and long-ranging ...

From its beginning in 1995, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking’s mission has been to support, preserve and advance the art of original prints. Located in a converted stone carriage house in Norwalk, Connecticut, CCP is equipped to accommodate intaglio, lithography, monotype, silkscreen, woodblock printing, papermaking, book arts and digital processes.   This year, with the CCP’s Members Show, on display through February 9, viewers are also being introduced to the interior thoughts, dreams and passions that are fueling the work ...

To most people who have ever attended school, sitting for a school photo is a recognizable annual rite of passage. For those who can afford it, the white envelope with prints arrives, opened secretively then proudly shared with friends and family, or ashamedly hidden in the recesses of a dresser drawer. It is a ritual which at once unites and divides along lines of appearance, status, ability, language, and adherence to the perceived norms demanded by society. “School Photos and ...

Two painters well-entrenched in the tradition of modern American realism, a computer animator working with experimental painting and drawing processes, and a sculptor with a site-specific work that will evolve over a period of half a year are in the spotlight in three spaces within the New Bedford Art Museum/ArtWorks! Displayed in the Heritage Gallery, painters Art Ballelli and Roy St. Christopher Rossow make a formidable and complementary pair in their exhibition called “Warmed by Sunshine, Lit by Starlight.” Ballelli, ...

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” — T.S. Eliot. What is it about human behavior that compels us so very often to return to our roots? Maybe not geographically back to our beginnings, but in some representative aspect of our beginnings, we return. That is the case for artist Marcia Blakeman of Bedford, New Hampshire. Blakeman grew up ...

It wasn’t quite the proverbial “dark and stormy night,” but both snow and temperatures fell for the First Friday Gallery Walk in Brattleboro, Vermont, in December, diminishing crowds but not enthusiasm among those who made it. The festive downtown stroll is a monthly tradition with galleries, eateries and drinking venues all welcoming people from as far south as Northampton, Massachusetts, and as far north as Burlington. December offered a special Gallery Walk night for folks to bundle up and face ...

I pretended to hand over the clipboard and pen I was using to take down the rumination of my interviewee, on two of his upcoming drawing exhibitions (the first of which was displayed at Newton Free Library in December). “Here,” I said to Eugene Dorgan, a full professor at Lesley University. “Why don’t you just write the article?” The joke was that in our culture, the visually minded, so the stereotype goes, prefer to grunt rather than answer with sentence ...

Emma Jo Mills Brennan does art for the “exploration and reflection” it affords her. “All of my work is related to my love for the earth, unless it’s abstract and then it’s going into the spiritual realm, then it’s meditative.” That connection to the land started with the family lifeway. Brennan’s Mashpee Wampanoag father (who owned the Mashpee landmark Ockrey Trading Post) provided his family with fresh game, “one deer a year, geese, quail, partridges, ducks, fish,” and with produce ...

As the start of December approached, photographer Peter Moriarty was eagerly waiting for a delivery of 90 boxes holding 10 copies each of his new self-published book, “Warm Room: Photographs from Historic Greenhouses.” Its release coincides with an exhibition at the Cantor Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is the culmination of a 25-year plus project, although the roots of some of the images goes back much further. Its cover features the Royal Palm ...

One of only a handful of women painters in Louis K. Meisel’s stable of top Photorealists in the early 1970s,Fran Bull, by the mid-‘80s, had quit the movement, moved to Vermont and turned toward a more nourishing figural and gestural abstraction. In the years since, she has created a distinctive and profound body of work. Bull’s paintings, etchings and relief sculpture have been prominently exhibited in Barcelona, Milan and the Venice Biennale. Now, rather than waiting for the retrospective that ...

Imagine that the only interruption to creative workflow is the flutter of an oak leaf tapping against your window, or the soft crunch of your footsteps in freshly fallen snow, or perhaps the glint of sunshine flickering off the frozen Gihon River just below your studio. If you are one of the more than 750 painters, sculptors, writers or composers who have attended Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont, this past year, you know that this residency experience has offered ...

New England Watercolor Society Marks 135-Years with the 2020 Signature Members Show. The New England Watercolor Society is one of the oldest watercolor societies in the nation. Its 2020 Signature Members Show, which takes place in February at the Guild of Boston Artists, is a continuation of its solid 135-year history. The Society’s first exhibition was held in 1885. It began as the Boston Watercolor Society. The inaugural show featured nearly 50 works from over a dozen artists. Among them ...

Can a book of photography substitute for an exhibition of the same photographs? This is the question pushed forward by Andrew Child by concurrently publishing a color photography book and mounting an exhibition of the same images at ArtSpace Maynard. The question may seem elementary, and the answer may seem obvious, but it’s more complicated than we think. Child is an artist who is aware of himself. In the introduction to his gorgeous book of color panoramic infrared images, “Cape ...

Miami Art Week 2019 hosted the people’s fairs. Artists at the most democratic fairs ever at Miami Beach and Miami during Miami Art Week used art and craft to deliver clear messages for all the people, showering truth over fictions. Looking toward the future, and back toward the past, work addressed truth versus colonial myth and threats to our common environment, be they political or climatic. The work demanded that we look at ourselves, examine our attitudes and recognize our ...

The new year traditionally brings with it the introduction of the next lineage of artists welcomed into the Copley Society of Art through its New Members Show. “Selected by the Membership Committee of the Copley Society of Art, new members are accepted for membership only if their work is truly outstanding. This year, our new artist members represent a great diversity of backgrounds and media, including pastel, photography and watercolor.” Joining CoSo’s roster are C.R. Bryant, Wray Clifford, Meghan Cochran, ...