Raggedy Ann's Foot

Saturday, July 15, 2017

From Empires to Outcasts: the Met and Wave Hill

First a jaunt through the Asian wing and a quick peek at innovative uses of bamboo in Japan.

Chinese scrolls - here, a solid sense of home encircled by expressive pines.

Many ideas in this scroll in which deities appear in a bubble.

Landscape vase in cloisonne

The incredible Age of Empires exhibition at the Met. Exhibition Link

To think, 221 BC. But Michael Woods' Story of China makes clear how advanced the cultural achievements always have been. About the PBS series

Playing the zither

Ancient textiles

Pair of Goats, Western Han Dynasty (206 bc-AD 09), earthenware with pigment

Lamp with Sixteen Branches, AD 25-220 (Eastern Han)

Plant candelabra

Tomb Gate, Eastern Han

Star of the show: a confident warrior, as recognizable as someone glimpsed on the street.

Shifting gears radically: Rei Kawukobo's iconic fashion works. in Art of The In-Between. Exhibition Link

Matisse, just because.

Greek sculpture, just because.

Also a constrast with China

Indian botanical studies, 1773

Irving Penn Exhibition at the Met Exhibition Link

Sevres Porcelain

Samira Abassy, detail, from Outcasts: Women in the Wilderness at Wave Hill (through July 9, 2017)
Gallery Link

Abassy's beautiful graphite drawings, solid and satisfying.

Detail of Marie Watt's subtle embroidery overlays on fabric

Nancy Spero's works inspired the wild, 'outcast' artists in the exhibition, curated by Deborah Frizzell, Harry J. Weil, Jennifer McGregor and Gabriel de Guzman. The exhibition was reviewed by Paul Laster in Whitehot Magazine. Exhibition Review by Paul Laster

"Women have long been treated and portrayed as outcasts, banished to a literal or symbolic wilderness on the fringes of the social order, whether for political, cultural or religious transgressions. Portrayals of their casting-out span regions and cultures across the globe and across millennia—from Lilith to Jezebel to Hester Prynne. Intensified by the current political climate, and marred by economic disparity and geopolitical conflicts, women continue to be marked as outcasts."

Fay Ku's overlayed graphite and watecolor drawings

Saturday, July 08, 2017

More LES Catch-Up

Medrie McPhee's show at the new LES Tibor de Nagy seen at night outside the gallery. Brilliant work brilliantly reviewed in Hyperallergic by Stephen Maine in one of the best reviews of a show I've ever read, and well-deserved by this serious, thoughtful, wry painter. Hyperallergic Review

Gallery Link

Double Down, a light-hearted summer show, at Pierogi. The sheer obsessiveness of Mark Reynold's drawing captivates me. Long resistant to geometry, I am now falling under its spell: is the need for order, an overriding logic, exacerbated now? Gallery Link

The counterpart. I love the drawing better, but both possess a logic naturally alien to this viewer.

Long time no see and welcome back: Jean Blackburn's witty, masterful sculpture.

Darina Karpov. Watercolor or ink, a liquid medium either way. Not sure if I love or hate it. Thinking a lot about finish right now, in the studio and looking at others' work. Questioning if the interest in finish is about process or vision, after years of fusing gesture with image inspired by Chinese painting? Suspecting about process. To be continued.

Beautiful installation moment at the heart of my question about finish or all at once. Jean Blackburn foreground, Reed Anderson background.

At Rachel Uffner up the street, All That Glitters. Gallery Link
Maria Berio, Detail. There is something so free and beautiful about the way she collages.

One of a diptych by Derek Fodjour. The harlequin pattern pierced my heart. The work is wildly and wonderfully made of crumbling materials and paint.

Ebony G. Patterson's breathtaking floor piece, a retribution to children of color with a devotional lavish that would transfix any child (or adult who loves flowers and glitter).

Maria Berio

Peter Shear at the Fortnight Institute. Small paintings reviewed by Roberta Smith last week NYT Review. Gallery Link
I felt skeptical. Small paintings are a staple in many artists studios and an invaluable way to work out ideas. They have an intimacy and charm that is undeniable. But how developed could these be?

The photos do not do these justice, a few that surprised me the most. What I enjoyed about them most was the texture, Shear's affection for balancing his sweet, juicy hand with a kind of pumice or sanded ground.

Of all of these this felt the riskiest--lame yet overly eager. In other paintings the Guston-esque red and green was more tastefully mixed but here is laid bare. This work is illegible except to painters who make similar works and quietly stack them in a pile of experiments or discards; perhaps why it was fun to see.