From New America Media and NorthStar News:

Every Monday morning, Chicago's newspapers, television and radio stations never fail to bring readers, viewers and listeners the latest news about murders and shootings in Chicago's two other worlds--the South and West Sides.

One reporter jokingly told his editor that murder was a natural cause of death for black men on the South Side.

The repetitive news that one group of black men either has been murdered or wounded by another group of black men or shot to death by the Chicago police, deadens the minds and emotions of readers, viewers and listeners about the tragic daily occurrences. The grisly events, however, generate excitement in newsrooms because the publications, television and radio stations have a lead story for Monday, the beginning of a new week.

"It has gotten to the point that the murders and shootings don't mean anything, or people ask what I can do?" says Shanequa Gay, an Atlanta-based artist.

Unlike some who have thrown up their hands in understandable despair, the shootings and the plight of black men in Chicago and elsewhere have sparked Gay's imagination and creativity.

She used her skill as a painter to provoke members of the black community to take a new look at what is happening to their sons, not to look away. Gay's paintings also bid the black community to look at black men as human beings and fathers.

Gay's work has the same purpose of the paintings appearing in an art gallery in Mogadishu, Somalia, an African country that experienced 20 years of war that devastated the nation and its population. Artists and non-artists have been encouraged to visit the gallery, bring their paintings and even their paint to demonstrate how the war affected them.

Gay has named her project "Fair Game," a name hunters call their prey. In this instance, "Fair Game" are black men who are hunted in order to be annihilated by some of their own, by the police and by others. She says black men are not safe.

Gay is not the first creative black person to refer to black men as wild game or fair game. Author Ishmael Reed, who has spent time Alaska, jokingly said that whites would sometimes see him as “wild game.”

She illustrates this idea in three paintings that are part of a 24-painting exhibition. The Bessie Smith Cultural Center in Chattanooga, Tenn., will host the exhibit until August 30.

In "Fair Game I," a hunter with a rifle and his dog hunt black men, some of whom have grown antlers, as they run for safety.

In "Fair Game II," another black man who has grown antlers fires a gun at three other men who also have grown antlers. An actual deer lies dead in the background. Seven deer look away.

In the final painting of this series, "box-chevy-gods," black men have grown deer antlers. They dance on top of an abandoned car. In the background, two actual deer stare into the far distance. Ominously, the images are caught in the crosshairs of a gun.

In Gay's paintings, black men morph from innocent fawns to bucks. Gay said she did this to show that black men were considered three-fifths of a man as slaves. They were considered animals to be hunted down if they escaped their bondage.

Gay started the "Fair Game" project because she became upset with the carnage in Chicago, the shooting death of an unarmed Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman and the 2011 execution of Troy Davis in Georgia. These are high-profile instances in which black men have been shot to death.

Another high-profile, true-life story involving the deadly shooting of a black man has been turned into a feature film.

"Fruitvale," which is based on the shooting death of Oscar Grant III by Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle on New Year's Day 2009, will open July 12 in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Mehserle shot Grant in the back of the head as he lay face down on a BART’s Fruitvale station platform.

Gay also wanted to address the issue of fatherlessness in the black home, which many in the African-American community accept as normal.

In the painting, "Father of Perpetual Help," which is based on "Mother of Perpetual Help," a father tenderly cradles his baby in his arms.

Other paintings about the plight of black men include "Boxed In II,” in which a black man with his knees to his chest and his head is bent over touching his knees attempts to survive in a box that is too small. The painting illustrates the limits that society often consigns to black men. “It is claustrophobic,” she says.

Another painting, which sums up the exhibit, is the front facial view of the young black man wearing a cap. Written over man's face in large letters is the sentence, "iamhuman."

Black men praise and thank Gay for her work. “It is a disservice to sit by and do nothing,” she said.

NorthStar News

Oliver Šin (1985-) is an award-winning Hungarian artist based in Budapest. His influences come from street art, underground and pop culture mixed with scientific interests. The focus of his artworks are built around prophets, visions with dates, real places and existing people. With direct brushwork, he mostly uses unmixed colors structurally, like an abstractionist, but in the service of a narrative agenda. Color holds his pictures together, and through it they command a space. Images can read without effort – the words, the colors and the construction - but cannot be decoded accurately.

“The very first moment when I realized what abstract art is was the moment when my father came to my exhibition and said:  ‘Okay, but where are the pictures?’

I like to make my pictures about the future and science. Painting is the last thing I like to think about when I create pictures. I just let the artwork be born by itself because that’s the way things work for me. I don’t need inspiration to start painting; my only need is material to work with.  I don’t try to make masterpieces; I give them a chance to create themselves. I just let art work.”

For more information about the artist, visit http://oliversin.eu

Beyond the media spectacle and daily tourists, a parallel world exists within London. A world that seems not to observe the visitor. A reality away from the opulence, the speed and the cosmopolitan daily routine. These are neighbors, people with experiences, or those with more or less truncated lives. People who move silently, unheard, ubiquitous among visitor masses, blind and hardworking.

Working, shopping, walking in their daily routine, stationed on a lamppost, a sidewalk or playing in a corner for a few coins. Kilburn, Finsbury, Hackney, Dalston, Camden. Places where these people seem to act for the visitor who observes amazed and proud to be in that place at that moment and see what you do not see anywhere, thanking himself for the unusual, the bizarre or extraordinary people of London.

I do not see monuments. I do not see music. I see neither bridges nor towers nor wheels. Neither parks nor markets. I see people moving at the speed of light as traffic trails at night, working like ants. These points exist. I see people. Anonymous, hidden by a frantic pace that ignores them, leaving them apart.

I've been in London a few months and I have noticed, among other things, that each person’s worries. Their lives, their jobs, their schedule, their interests and objectives. A city with so many people and where it is so difficult to make real friends. Mutable, changeable, interchangeable. Another London.

Visit http://miguellois.wix.com/impressions for more information. 

Southampton, NY – Tripoli Gallery currently presents a solo exhibition by Eric Freeman titled New Paintings.

The paintings are ephemeral. While we understand that these works are fastened to the canvas, that the paint is permanent once dried, there is an ever-evolving quality to their surface—one seems to not only respond emotionally, but the paintings themselves react optically to the colors and light around them. Stripped of narrative and void of external references, what remains is pure and intense color.

In an age where artists are constantly exploring new mediums and trying to break away from what has already been done, Eric Freeman finds his mode of expression by pushing through the traditional medium of oil on canvas. He has continued to energize his own practice and the fundamentals of being a painter by experimenting with the combination of elements in the buildup of oil paint. Fascinated with the qualities that make up a color, he has recently started exploring with iridescent pigments, raising the depth of each color at hand and adding just the right amounts of various oils, before applying the new blend to the canvas in confident and graceful brushstrokes. Freeman applies layer upon layer, thinning them out intermittently—a process through which he creates different surfaces for light refraction to occur at various speeds, allowing the light to actually bounce between each layer resulting in a backlit quality.

Painter David Salle referenced an “illusive immateriality” to Freeman’s work, noting: “Where does the energy in these pictures come from? What does Freeman want us to feel? A sense of giving over to it; the thrill of the roller coaster gives way to something more internal. Accept the sheer physical/optical fact, these paintings seem to say, because that’s what painting is.”

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1970, Eric Freeman earned his B.F.A. from Tufts University in 1993. He has shown at the Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm, Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, Alain Noirhomme, Brussels, Mary Boone Gallery, Stephen Stux Gallery and Feature Gallery in New York, Springs Fireplace Project and Glen Horowitz Gallery in East Hampton, The Western Project in Culver City, and the Saatchi Gallery in London. His work is included in the collections of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland, Saatchi Gallery, London, and in the collection of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York. Freeman currently lives and works in Sagaponack, New York.

Exhibition Dates: November 7th - December 28th, 2013

Lisa Sette Gallery presents Arizona-based photographer Binh Danh, whose works explore the sublime landscapes of the American West and the individual human narratives playing out within them.

As a child, Binh Danh examined photographs of National Parks as a way of escaping the boredom of working in his father’s television repair shop. Yet he had never visited his home state’s own inaugural park until he embarked on the series of exquisite daguerreotype images that make up the photographer’s Yosemite series. Danh, who grew up in suburban California after his family fled the turmoil in Vietnam in the 1970s, has commented that until recently, “Yosemite, like the Vietnam war, only existed in my imagination because I only saw the landscape in photographs.”

Lately that dream-like landscape has been threatened by wildfires and Binh Danh’s unique daguerreotypes remind us of the precious quality of a pristine wilderness that can be lost at any moment.

Danh is well known for his rigorous photographic experimentation, having previously innovated a method of printing images on living leaves in order to create a botanical archive of victims of the atrocities in Vietnam and Cambodia. Similarly, creation of the Yosemite series involved outfitting a specialized van for the on-site creation of large-scale daguerreotypes and spending many seasons camping and working from within the park.

An in-camera exposure that is chemically etched on silver-coated copper plates, the daguerreotype is a difficult and early photographic process resulting in photographic objects with mirror-like reflective surfaces. Danh’s images of well-known sites, such as Bridalveil Fall, are both gorgeous and eerily mutable, as we see our own faces, and the faces of people around us, reflected in their sublime surfaces. In Danh’s re-envisioning, these much-photographed scenes of American splendor become unique, individual representations of the multitude of experiences of the American West, from the vistas of Yosemite to the suburban daydreams of a young immigrant artist.

Wild and woolly knit graffiti puts the art back in craft

Yarn bombing, yarnstorming, knit graffiti, guerilla knitting, urban knitting—regardless of the name it goes by, the art form is unmistakable. Colorful knit and crocheted materials have been popping up in urban spaces all over the world, as tree cozies, pole warmers, statue scarves and numerous other decorations. Bicycles have been bound, cars covered and entire buildings blanketed with cleverly woven yarn pieces. This isn’t a quaint folk art tradition found in bucolic hamlets (although it happens there, too): fiber creations are being thrown up with regularity and purpose in the same busy cityscapes that showcase spray-painted murals and other graffiti. And make no mistake: yarn bombing is a new type of street art, often full of as much intricacy and artistic expression as a work by Banksy or Retna.

Knitting-as-public-art started appearing in the first decade of this century. Houston-based textile artist Magda Sayeg was decorating the door handles of her boutique with custom-made cozies in 2005. Since then, she has founded the yarn bombing collective Knitta Please, created numerous knit installations around the globe (including a yarn-bedecked bus in Mexico City) and even enjoyed a solo exhibition in Rome in 2010. The attention she brought to the art form earned her the title “mother of yarn bombing.” Shanon Schollian’s Stump Cozy project of 2002 predates Sayeg, but her knit decorations for clear-cut trees occurred in Oregon forests, not urban areas. The JafaGirls’ (aka Nancy Mellon and Corrine Bayraktaroglu) Knit Knot Tree in Yellow Springs, Ohio, popularized yarn bombs in the Midwest in 2008, while Knit the City began yarnstorming (a term the group popularized, preferring it to the violent undertones of “bomb”) London in 2009. Other knitting crews have set their needles to work from coast to coast and throughout Mexico, the UK, Taiwan and Europe.

According to Arzu Arda Kosar, yarn bombing’s recent popularity obscures a rich history of fiber as decoration that goes back centuries. “Decorating public elements with knit and fiber-based materials has existed long before now,” she explains. Kosar is a Los Angeles-based artist with a keen interest in street art and community-building projects, and the founder of the guerrilla knitting collective Yarn Bombing Los Angeles. “Growing up in Turkey, I remember being fascinated by the ancient tradition of wishing trees where colorful strips of fabric are tied into tree branches.” She also references the deeply rooted knitting tradition in Peru, “where people have been using knit or woven material to decorate their surroundings (private and public) for centuries.”

Historical background aside, yarn bombing is as varied and individual as any art. Many artists think of it as a reclaiming of public spaces that have become cold, sterile and unwelcome. Woolly embellishments add color and whimsy to abandoned cars, chain link fences, broken-down payphones, potholes, traffic barriers and other examples of urban blight. Sometimes the message is more political, as when a military tank gets swathed in an afghan, or a statue of a soldier suddenly wields a cozy-cloaked pistol. Urban knitting can also be about bringing a community together, as the Knit the Bridge project in Pittsburgh demonstrated. Dozens of volunteers as well as several organizations came together in August to cover the Andy Warhol Bridge from end to end in more than 500 blankets, afghans and other fiber panels—the largest yarn bombing installation in the United States thus far.

But even in its most provocative form, knit graffiti is a gentle nudge to contemplation rather than an angry outburst. Knitting and crochet are nearly synonymous with the warm and fuzzy. Cozy, warmer, granny: the very language we use to describe fiber materials evokes gentleness and comfort.

According to Knit the City founder Deadly Knitshade, speaking on the knit collective’s website (www.knitthecity.com) yarnstorms foment change “with a grin instead of a grimace, a whisper instead of a bellow.” Most yarn bombers are women, which should come as no surprise: fiber arts, in general, are associated with women and domesticity. Guerilla knitters play with this idea by bringing their home-spun craft (more on that idea in a bit) out into the world of street art, dominated by the masculine, the gritty, the confrontational. “In its seemingly odd juxtaposition of knitting and graffiti, often associated with opposing concepts such as female, granny, indoors, domestic, wholesome and soft versus male, enfant terrible, outdoors, public, underground and edgy, the practice of yarn bombing redefines both genres,” explains Kosar.

Threep Parlour, the alias for an artist who founded the knitting crew Yarn Bomb Ojai, states outright that yarn bombing is a “female street art.” She has always had an affinity for graffiti and murals, and was inspired by the work she saw in and around Los Angeles. But she says that she often didn’t feel welcome, as a woman, trying to participate in the street art scene. Yarn bombing became a way for her to express her artistic vision in a safe space. The women of Yarn Bomb Ojai (who range in age from mid-40s to late-60s) started anonymously stitching up the Ojai Valley, a small community about 80 miles north of Los Angeles, in the summer of 2012. For practitioners like Parlour, yarn bombing isn’t merely a revitalization of rundown urban spaces; it’s also a reclaiming of space by and for female artists.

When the knitting collective Yarn Bomb Los Angeles put up CAFAM Granny Squared this past spring, covering the Craft and Folk Art Museum with hundreds of knit and crocheted pieces, several ideas pulled from the yarn bombing phenomenon were simultaneously being expressed. Janet Owen Driggs in her excellent article, “Unraveling the CAFAM Yarn Bomb,” published on the KCET website (www.kcet.org) notes the tension between high and low art at which urban knitting tugs. CAFAM’s building stands out on Museum Row as a charming, relatively small dormer-windowed structure dwarfed by its more contemporary neighbors, including the modernist monolith Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Covering this dollhouse-like edifice in vibrantly hued string begs a comparison to Pop Art, and “Just as Pop Art used the imagery and aesthetics of popular culture to challenge the traditions of fine art, YBLA is using the materials and methodologies of popular craft to mount a similar assault.”

“Popular” is an apt choice of words: knitters from all walks of life, in 49 states and 25 countries, donated some 7500 granny squares to the project. YBLA members carefully arranged the pieces into images that explored color, line and form in sophisticated ways, challenging the notion that art (aesthetics, the product of genius, transcending ordinary life) and craft (utilitarian, common, created by technicians rather than artists) occupy separate spheres.

This is an important distinction, as many artistic endeavors—including pottery, textiles, tapestry, folk art—labeled “craft” are automatically assigned a lower status, and thus their practitioners are excluded from the fine arts by definition. As graffiti (itself another lowbrow art) became a vehicle of expression for young, urban, often African-American and Latino artists who had been marginalized by the art establishment, knit graffiti has become the medium of (largely) female crafters and street artists. Cheerful though the CAFAM installation may be, it’s also a bold statement about what art is, and who defines it.

One other important point about yarn bombing is worth exploring: its almost intentional impermanence. Unlike paint graffiti, knit graffiti doesn’t alter or damage the objects on which it is placed, and removal is as easy as a scissor snip. When yarn bombers dismantle an installation, they tend to reuse the materials (frequently already recycled from old knitting projects, discarded sweaters, thrift-store afghans etc.) for other art projects or turn them into blankets and other objects donated to charity. Sometimes yarnstorms are simply taken down or stolen by unknown individuals. Parlour recalls the fate of one of Yarn Bomb Ojai’s carefully composed fabrications. “We did a beautiful pole with Matilija poppies and the next day, they were just gone. We throw our art out there into the world, and then sometimes it disappears. Nothing lasts in life. There’s something about that ephemeral quality that appeals to me.”

Perhaps the one common thread that ties together all types of street art, including yarn bombing, is that it’s a way of bringing art out of the elite realm of the museums and galleries and into the world at large, by and for the people. Knit graffiti makes art visible and accessible to the public, and also makes it seem doable. Anyone who can knit or crochet could potentially throw up a pole cozy or hang a pom-pom in a tree on the sidewalk.

Yarn bombing at its woolly heart is essentially democratic, and its “leaders” are happy to embrace the common knitter. Knit the City offers workshops throughout the UK, and Yarn Bombing Los Angeles holds monthly Stitch ‘n Bitch meetings. Those who prefer self-guided education can peruse Mandy Moore’s Yarn Bombing: The Art and Crochet of Knit Graffiti or Illiante Kalloniatis’s Art of Yarn Bombing: No Pattern Required. A simple online search will turn up several websites with yarn bombing patterns and practical tips. In the words of Deadly Knitshade, “Our squishy street art does many things. It takes a woolly hold on forgotten public spaces and gives them soul. It treats the whole world as an art gallery. It encourages others to bring their own city to life in ways only they can imagine.” Consider it a call to yarns.

Author Bio:

Nancy Lackey Shaffer is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.

Photos: Knit the City; Magda Sayeg; Twilight Taggers (Flickr).

A blue bow, a bowler hat, a candle, a bird, a vanity mirror and an apple—commonplace objects, right?  Think again.  If you visit the Museum of Modern Art’s current exhibit, Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, expecting to be comforted by the familiar, you are in for a rude surprise.  These items are part of a painting entitled The Daring Sleeper and are framed below a sleeping figure of a man.  The Belgian-born surrealist painter (November 21, 1898-August 15, 1967) had more inside his infamous black bowler hat than you ever dreamed of and if you dare to look closely, you will never dream the same way again.

From the moment you step inside the sixth floor’s main entryway, you are confronted by The Menaced Assassin, one of Rene Magritte’s most massive and mysterious paintings.  There are actually two assassins (don’t try to rationalize the titles), one hiding on each side of the canvas foreground, just out of view of the scene of the crime.  A nude and bloodied woman is draped across a settee, while another man (a detective perhaps), briefcase and overcoat placed on a nearby chair, bends over a Victrola.  Magritte lifted the idea from a popular crime film of the day, wanting to transpose onto the canvas the mystery inherent in the film.  But this is no ordinary recreation.  Three identical male heads peer into the room through a background window.  We are, to be sure, in Magritte’s world and not the filmmaker’s. 

It’s a disarming pictorial display, and one which was part of Magritte’s first major exhibit at the Galerie le Centaure in Brussels in 1927.  Executed with a finesse and economy of means that set the artist apart from surrealist compatriots of the fantastic and bizarre—like Max Ernst and Salvadore Dali—it became a precursor for many of his most disturbing images to come.  Masterful depiction aside, the exhibit was not a success and depressed by the outcome, Magritte moved to Paris for the next three years.  It was a wise move, placing the painter front and center with philosopher and critic Andre Breton’s surrealist group. 

Undoubtedly, it was a perfect match of sensibilities at the time.  As Breton defined surrealism in William S. Rubin’s definitive publication, Dada and Surrealist Art, “we mean to designate a certain psychic automatism that corresponds rather closely to the state of dreaming.”

Even if some young viewers may not be quick to recognize this artist in the historical context of his times, MOMA’s curator Anne Umlaud has mounted an exhibit of Magritte’s most brilliant and prolific period.  We are first introduced to some highly arresting black and white photographs of the movement’s major players.  In one photograph the group is pictured with eyes closed, obviously symbolizing their disavowal of the external world.  In another portrait of the artist, he poses himself next to a painting of his double, who appears to disappear into a brick wall.  There are also a series of publications on display, including the seminal periodical, la revolutions surrealiste (1924-1929).  But it is the 80 paintings and readymade sculptural objects that grab the eye.

A particularly grisly painting from the same year as The Menaced Assassin, is Young Girl Eating a Bird (Pleasure).  This bloody depiction leaves no question, according to the wall notes, that eros and thanatos—the battle between life and death-- are often elemental subjects of our dreams, or more aptly, our nightmares.  No surprise that some viewers move quickly on to The Lovers, from 1928, which pictures a man and woman kissing but with heads concealed underneath heavy swaths of white cloth. 

What gives a startling resonance to this painting is the fact that Magritte’s mother, a former milliner before her marriage to the tailor Leopold Magritte, attempted suicide several times.  When the artist was 13, she drowned herself in a nearby river, her dress covering her face upon discovery.  Whether or not the boy actually witnessed this troublesome image may not be proven, but several paintings from this period reveal faces covered with cloth.  It is the exquisitely rendered contour of the wrapped figures in The Lovers and the simplicity of the overall composition that give it power.

Another smaller, wonderfully executed painting is a portrait of a woman, Discovery, wherein the nude figure is morphing into another substance, portions of her shoulder and buttocks and breast clearly no longer skin but grains of wood.  The accompanying notes in Magritte’s words describe his own discovery in the ability of things to “become gradually something else, an object merging into an object other than itself.”  In this way, he saw “no break between the two substances” and the eye would have to think about the image in a profoundly different way.

In The False Mirror a giant eye confronts the viewer.  Where the whites of the eye would be positioned, there is the transparency of clouds and blue sky.  If we are to believe his title, is Magritte telling us that we should not believe the old adage that “the eyes are the windows to the soul?”  Maybe the message is simply in the void beyond. 

Titles for Magritte (like the Dadaists before him) are beside the point and were often arrived at after the completion of a certain work—an arbitrary and playful exercise meant to prevent the onlooker from conveying any meaning to the enterprise at all.  Take for example, The End of Contemplation.  A head is pictured in profile, but the profile has been neatly shredded, like a child’s paper cutout exercise.  In Denizens of the River, a headless figure in a dinner jacket with what appears to be a pipe fitting for a neck takes center stage, while on the left a leg disappears off canvas.  Making a rational connection between the image and the naming is a futile if not laughable act. 

Disembodied parts of the human anatomy are always unsettling and Luis Bunuel, an early surrealist filmmaker, understood this all too well.  In his early film, Le Chien Andalou, a woman’s eye is sliced with a razor blade—unsettling to say the least.  Magritte understood that we may be so much more than our physical bodies or simply a stray assortment of segments to be taken as a grain of salt.  The Rape portrays a woman’s body featuring the pubic hair as mouth and her breasts as eyes.  She is reduced to her body parts and as a consequence, her facial expressions—her individuality—is inconsequential.  Is this the supposition we are expected to make?  Magritte is a puzzler.  He doesn’t expect his riddles to be solved, but we try nevertheless.

The strongest public awareness of Magritte’s work burgeoned full-force in the Pop Art phenomenon of the 1960s.  His own unique graphic sensibility of the everyday world influenced works by painters Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Duane Michaels and Ed Ruscha, among others.  Andrea K. Scott, in her September 23 review in the New Yorker, claims that Magritte’s art “has been hijacked for designs ranging from the Beatles’ record label to a Volkswagen ad to a bowler-hat light fixture.”  When Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art curator Lynn Zelvansky interviewed Ed Ruscha for the LACMA website, Ruscha described his favorite Magritte painting, Time Transfixed, (on view in the current MOMA exhibit) without really knowing why he was transfixed:

“… There is the unlikeliness of it. In our daily lives we don't see trains coming out of fireplaces. So that's a number one good thing for that picture. There's an unreality, or a misreality there. And then there's the reality of the exhaust that the train is pushing out. The smoke that comes out of the engine is going back up the fireplace, and that brings you to some sort of rigorous truth. I mean, isn't smoke supposed to go up fireplaces?”

This struggle between the unreality and the reality of the painting is for Ruscha “the right kind of struggle to make a great picture.”

There is a 1967 photo portrait of Magritte by Lothar Wolleh, which has the artist standing in front of one of his iconic paintings.  It’s a headless Magritte in typical business man’s attire, with the familiar black bowler hat floating atop the invisible head.  Perhaps Magritte was the ultimate magician.  His hat held for his audience a thousand mysteries, a thousand dreams and deceptions, but the magician himself was not to be found. 

(Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, is on view at The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019-5497, 212-708-9400 until January 12, 2014.)

Author Bio:

Sandra Bertrand is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.

I’m as interested in the process of photographing people as much as I am in the final product. The act of creating portraits is a collaboration between the photographer and the subject. This relationship provides a certain feedback that’s not present when photographing, say, a building or still life. That’s what draws me to people—the energy exchange and the nuances of that relationship. But it’s even more complicated than that, in addition to the back and forth that happens between the photographer and his or her subject, the camera becomes part of that affiliation and creates another layer of complexity.  It, literally and figuratively, comes between the subject and the photographer. While I look through the lens, my subjects look at the lens. Then, in a 1/250th of a second, I’m able to stop time and capture what would otherwise be just a fleeting moment.

These photographs are either the product of longer relationships—where I’d either known my subjects for extended periods or spent hours with them during the photo-making process—or shorter affiliations where I had a minute or two to capture a moment in a stranger’s day. In both cases I tried to create what I hoped to be some sort of visual narrative.

Anthony Rhoades is a Brooklyn, NY photographer who was born and raised in and around Portland, OR. He splits his time between editorial and commercial assignments for a variety of clients. For more of his work, visit: http://anthonyrhoades.com

Eleanor Bennett is  the CIWEM Young Environmental Photographer of The Year 2013 and has also won first places with National Geographic, The World Photography Organisation, Nature's Best Photography and The National Trust to name a few. Her photography has been published in the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The British Journal of Psychiatry, Life Force Magazine, British Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and as the cover of books and magazines extensively throughout the world. Bennett’s art is globally exhibited, having shown work in New York, Paris, London, Rome, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Washington, Canada, Spain, Japan and Australia amongst many other locations. 

These images are inspired by her shop. In addition to being an acclaimed photographer, she is also an antiques dealer. Bennet likes to immortalize these artifacts by preserving them in photographs. 

The Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York City is presenting a multifaceted group of abstract paper works by 27 artists the gallery has exhibited over the

years.

Paper experimentation shows the dichotomy between planning aspects in art and free form automatic drawing. These works show great technical skill which brings the artists visions to life. The works gives incredible insights into their diverse approaches and the timelessness of their art.

The molten iron paintings by Michael Dominick, for example, result in gestural strokes and splashes, which create beautiful and unpredictable marks that not only scorch the surface but also burn down into the depths of the layered paper.

The abstract photographs of Aaron Siskind evoke wonder at his ingenuity. Antoni Tàpies's prints are a good introduction to his ideas for earthly paintings. Richards Ruben's oil pastel paintings of Venetian walls on Kochi paper are ethereal. Agustin Fernandez's exquisite prints done in Paris by Lacouriere et Frelaut evoke sensuality using mechanical parts (i.e.screws, pipes, etc.).

Artists include: Mario Bencomo, Robert Blackburn, Seymour Boardman, Ilya Bolotowsky, Ernest Briggs, Lawrence Calcagno, Pérez Celis, Nassos Daphnis, Beauford Delaney, Michael Dominick, Herman Cherry, Amaranth Ehrenhalt, Claire Falkenstein, Agustín Fernández, Grace Hartigan, John Hultberg, Elaine Kurtz, Joel Le Bow, William Manning, Henri Michaux, Richards Ruben, Ann Ryan, William Saroyan, Kendall Shaw, Aaron Siskind, Antoni Tàpies, and Petra Valentova.

Claire Falkenstein, Mandala #1, 1980, sugar lift etching, 35 x 23 in

Henri Michaux, Untitled, 1973, acrylic on paper, 22 x 14 3/4 in

Beauford Delaney, Untitled (Ibiza), 1956, gouache and watercolor on paper, 17 7/8 x 11 13/16 in

Mario Bencomo, Torquemada series - Inquisition Hoods, 2001, acrylic on paper, 11x14 in

Richards Ruben, Pink a boob, 1988, Mixed media on kochi paper, 30 x 42 in

Ilya Bolotowsky, Untitled, 1970's lithograph, 37 1/2  x 27 1/2 in

Aaron Siskind, Lima 89, 1975, photograph, 24 x 20 in

Picture an eclectic exhibit featuring among others, coyotes, rabbits and even a snowy white mountain goat thrown in for good measure.  And I’m not talking about a visit to the local Museum of Natural History, or even a neighborhood taxidermist.  It’s an art show.  Even if the subjects are no longer breathing, at least with a little imagination, some of them manage to come startlingly alive. 

The House of the Nobleman, a New York and London-based organization known for fostering the careers of artists through a series of prestigious arts events, has mounted an eye-opening show, Breathless, at the Rush Art Gallery in the heart of New York’s Chelsea area.  Through various media, including taxidermy, painting, drawing, embroidery, and sculpture, the various objects on display manage to be alternately gorgeous and grotesque.  At its worst, the exhibit runs the risk of elevating shock over substance.  At its best, it makes us rethink the mortality of a once living creature and whether art itself can resuscitate its existence. 

Upon entering, several pieces take center stage—Mark Swanson’s elk antlers, awash in jet black crystals, is an artful construct, in contrast to his trophy head buck on a nearby wall, covered in crystals worthy of a disco ballroom.  Joey Parlett’s Sandwich #6 reveals an exquisitely rendered ink and watercolor drawing, a mix of tiger heads surrealistically placed between two slices of bread. A curio case is chockfull of goodies—a particularly winsome pigeon in party hat by Jackie Mock is worth mentioning, atop a stack of books with such titles as Abe Lincoln of Pigeon Creek and Galsworthy’s The Pigeon. 

Kimberly Witham’s archival pigment prints “On Ripeness and Rot!” reveal a microscopic attention to detail.  Like Dutch paintings from the Golden Age—filled with  flowers, fruit in decay and objects of the hunt—they exemplify the brevity of life.  The most hypnotic assemblage on display is Rising by Andrea Stanislav, a taxidermy coyote with a rabbit in its jaw, suspended from the ceiling along with aurora borealis crystal pendants, over a mirror glass pedestal. 

Two standout entries in the back room include Hugh Hayden’s American Hero #2, a taxidermy mountain goat whose white coat is elaborately braided by the artist.  The animal stands proud atop a foundation of bricks.  Are we to assume the goat has lost its footing in an urban world?  Whatever the intent, it’s an attention-grabber.  Dustin Yellin’s Jaws is a fantasy recreation of an antediluvian skeleton, according to director Kristin Sancken (a former Highbrow Magazine contributor), from his personal collection--an intricate layering of glass panes, resin poured between each layer, resulting in a collage of singular brilliance. 

It’s a timely exhibit, especially in light of Nathaniel Rich’s “the New Origin of the Species” article in the New York TimesMagazine (March 2, 2014).  He notes that the last captive passenger pigeon, “Martha,” died at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.  A now extinct species among many others, he tells us that the pigeon’s nesting ground “once occupied an area as large as 850 square miles, or 37 Manhattans.”  Through new genomic technologies in the works, a Harvard molecular biologist believes resurrection of the species is within sight. 

If each and every part of the show doesn’t leave the viewer breathless, it may at least breathe new life into species other than our own through the alchemy of art, helping us better appreciate our co-existence on the planet.  And that’s a very worthy enterprise.

(Breathless, a House of the Nobleman exhibit, is currently on view at the Rush Art Gallery, 526 West 26^th Street, #311, New York, NY  10002 through April 11^th, 212 691-9552).

Author Bio:

Sandra Bertrand is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine and the magazine’s Chief Arts Critic.

ArtCenter’s new exhibition, “In His Own Likeness,” showcases diverse media (photography, sculpture, painting and video) of four Latin American artists who illuminate  the subject matter of gender and its relationship with power and divinity. 

The artists are from Guatemala, Mexico and Cuba and include ArtCenter/South Florida resident artist Othón Castañeda, plus visiting artist Eny Roland, with Rocío García and Mario Santizo. 

The exhibition is currently on view through March 16 at the Richard Shack Gallery,

800 Lincoln Road.

To curate this exhibition, ArtCenter invited Marivi Véliz, a contemporary art lecturer specializing in Central and Latin American Art who moved to Miami last year.

This is her first exhibition in the United States. Veliz is originally from Santa Clara, Cuba with experience curating and lecturing throughout Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil,

El Salvador and Honduras. In recent years, her focus has been gender studies. 

The show aims to reaffirm existence as equally divine through its diversity and its complexities. The images of eroticized men allude to the tradition of defining God as masculine and thereby associating power to the male gender.

This in turn addresses how masculinity can unfold, how it can express itself, and even lose all meaning through sex.

 "With this new exhibition I wanted to address eroticism and masculinity from my own perspective - as a woman," said Marivi Véliz. "I wanted to create a platform to view gender complexities through male sexual expression."

 "The photographs, video, painting and sculpture work together - and individually - to show how male sexuality can be expressed beyond the hetero norm that has traditionally defined the 'rules' of gender roles," adds Véliz.

  "I really wanted to boldly open a dialogue about sex, to launch this issue onto the public sphere.

To break old patterns by reinforcing images of men built around eroticism, since historically this process has usually been inverted."

About the Artists:

Othón Castañeda trained as an architect at Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí in México. His work explores sexuality and body references by removing common preconceptions and associations, and transforming them into semi-abstract shapes and forms. For In His Own Likeness, Castaneda premieres Staging Desire, a large-scale sculptural installation.

Rocío García was born in Santa Clara, Cuba. She received a Master in Fine Arts at the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia. Internationally acclaimed, Garcia began working with erotic themes in the early 90s and mostly paints men in sexual tensions. Her work for this exhibition is an acrylic on canvas, from her 2009 series Very, Very Light … and Very Oscurco: Un Policia con Alzheimer.

Eny Roland is a self-taught artist who began his career in Guatemala City as a photojournalist and progressively found himself working with portraiture and urban photography. His photographs combine kitsch, pop, religion, and eroticism. For this exhibition, his 2012 video Blow Job en el Cinema is an homage to Andy Warhol’s 1964 underground film Blow Job. Additionally, Roland has three 2013 prints in the exhibition.

Mario Santizo  was born in Zaragoza, Chimaltenango, Guatemala. He studied at La Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas “Rafael Rodriguez Padilla.” He has worked in staged photography since 2006 and is the subject of his own photos. His work focuses on masculinity, sexuality, religion and art history. For In His Own Likeness, Santizo’s six photographic prints are from his 2013 Vengeance series, a reinterpretation of the Hierarchies of Intimacy photo series by Luis Gonzalez Palma.

Since its founding in 1984, ArtCenter has been home to more than 1,000 resident artists. ArtCenter also offers over 100 studio and artist development classes per year at its South Beach location and satellite venues. More information is available at 305/674-8278 and artcentersf.org.

“…that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind.” --Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

“The work of art in the age of digital reproduction is physically and formally chameleon.  There is no clear conceptual distinction now between original and reproduction in virtually any medium based in film, electronics, or telecommunications.  As for the fine arts, the distinction is eroding, if not finally collapsed.  The fictions of “master” and “copy” are now so entwined with each other that it is impossible to say where one begins and the other ends.  In one sense, Walter Benjamin’s proclamation of doom for the aura of originality, authored early in this century, is finally confirmed by these events.  In another sense, the aura, supple and elastic, has stretched far beyond the boundaries of Benjamin’s prophecy into the rich realm of reproduction itself.”--Douglas Davis, “The Work of Art In The Age of Digital Reproduction”

"Will the digital age kill off art?" No.  Next.”--Commenter for The Guardian’s July 2^nd, 2013 article “Will The Digital Age Kill Off Art?”

Last month, this writer had both the great and terrible misfortune to be in New York during the final week of Jean Paul Gaultier’s traveling retrospective The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk; which was ending its run at the Brooklyn Museum. Sadly, in the end, she had to appease herself with merely viewing images of the show from websites such as Racked, The New York Times, and various YouTube videos.  Being able to view the pieces on a Smartphone didn’t incite a thrill about having to live vicariously through those who were lucky enough to be present.  Viewing iconic pieces worn by Madonna at the peak of her fame on a three-inch screen paled in comparison to seeing them in person, and only heightened the sense of loss on missing a great exhibit.  However, for others in a similar position, that surely would have and did suffice.  In the November 20, 2013 The Creators Project article“Painting The Internet: Jeannette Hayes’ Art For The Digital Age,” Madison Alexander Moore wrote that “People love capturing art on their smartphones, whether it’s allowed or not…the smartphone has become a major character in museums and art galleries around the world.”  

This current state of affairs far surpasses anything either Benjamin or Davis could have predicted.  As Benjamin prophesied, the slow and steady “shattering of tradition” the digital age ushered in has been greatly accelerated by the advent of the Smartphone.  The evidence is everywhere: From ubiquitous iPhone cases showcasing works by contemporary artists like the late Keith Haring and British graffiti activist Banksy and even more profoundly by the popularity of image-driven apps like Tumblr and Instagram, not just with the general art viewing or buying public, but also amongst the creators themselves. 

During her interview with Moore, New York based artist Jeannette Hayes waxed ecstatic about the use of filters on sites like Instagram.  “That’s how the world is and it’s cool because why not?  If you want to fix something or look a certain way you now can do exactly what you want.  When it comes to filters and things, I think there should be hundreds more.  It’s insane that we’re stuck with the eleven or whatever filters they pick.” 

Hayes’ pieces celebrate the current era by gleefully juxtaposing classic works of art alongside the banal realities of modern life.  In her “Botticelli Photobooth” series, she metaphorically copy-pasted the Renaissance painter’s works into modern photo-editing programs.  Her interview with Moore also bore more of the same:  She shamelessly discussed her “Warholian” influences and working on a painting inspired by emoji icons alongside her admiration of TMZ and reality TV stars Tamar Braxton and Nene Leakes.  A few of the icons she compares herself to in her Twitter introduction are Ivanka Trump, Heidi Montag and Jeff Koons.

 In the headline for the January 17, 2014 Paper.com profile about her, she quips that “…Rembrandt would have loved taking selfies.”  When one learns that Hayes transitioned from modeling into her present career, that she provided designs for the fashion designers Proenza Schouler, and that her big break was courtesy of a 2012 group show that also featured work by Girls star Jemima Kirke, it would seem that she represents a new kind of art star, but Ms. Hayes’ cynicism-free embrace of our media-saturated world is no more different than Haring’s Pop Shop or Basquiat collaborating with Warhol in their primes.  It will be fascinating to see how Hayes utilizes all the possibilities of digital art. 

One of the possibilities that await Instagram users who are driven either by curiosity or boredom with their current feed is to take a chance on the “explore” feature.  Within seconds, a user who observed a fellow foodie’s dinner in Los Angeles can now be transported to such far-flung locales as Malaysia or Sao Paolo.  Spain-based artists Jorge Martinez Phil Gonzalez have now taken that feature one step further with the creation of the world’s first Instagram Gallery in Miami.  The new space, situated in the celeb magnet otherwise known as Wynwood is devoted to “…promoting and disseminating the most outstanding and valued photos in the Instagramers Gallery digital platform… There the Instagramers Gallery becomes a real experience exploring the unique worldview of instagramers and providing them with opportunities to attend discussions, forums, events, presentations and, of course, a wide range of expositions.”

What was once thought of as just another vehicle for documenting the lives of millenials has now been elevated to a higher status as a forum that has the potential to showcase art from up-and-coming photographers from places as diverse Brazil, South Africa and Italy, all of which have been featured on the gallery’s website.  In addition to featuring their artists both in their galleries and online, Instagrammers Gallery Miami also awards a daily prize of $1,000 to the best instagram of the day.  There are also plans later this year to open a second European gallery in Madrid. 

Spaces like the aforementioned are yet another reminder that we live in an image-saturated time replete with Internet memes, retweets, and shares.  It’s probably too soon to ask whether a picture still manages to speak a thousand words if it’s been through a litany of Photoshop and Instagram filters.  At the time that Davis wrote his piece, video conferencing was a “phenomenon” and the DAT and QuickTime movies presented new opportunities and challenges for artists. 

Nearly 25 years later, cameras are more commonplace than Starbucks in the country, and MP3 players are a thing of the recent past.  While this author didn’t appreciate experiencing a major retrospective through her Samsung, last December, the International Arts Museum Malaysia recently made over 100 contemporary Islamic works available for the first time through their Smartphone app. Art lovers who are unable to hop on a flight to Kuala Lumpur can now discover artists from China, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia; and as they are countries that have a tendency to get short shrift coverage in Western media, it would be extremely obtuse to ignore the impact of such a move. 

Author Bio:

Sophia Dorval is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.

MARCH is presenting an exhibition of new works by painter Carrie Mae Smith, featuring culinary still lifes rendered in oil on panel and vellum. The  show opened March 20, 2014 and continues through May 30.

At once restrained and exuberant, Smith transforms compositions of comestibles, silverware, cutlery and plates into tableaus teeming with resonance and eloquence. “Food is something we all have a relationship with,” said Carrie Mae Smith. “My work examines and re-examines these familiar subjects, experimenting with composition, brushstrokes, light and shadow, inviting the viewer to fill in the blanks of both form and context.”

Inspired by Morandi’s simplified still lifes and Wayne Thiebaud’s iconic edibles, Smith’s fascination with food began at a young age while watching countless episodes of the French Chef and assisting her father in his butcher shop, and later developed during her time working as a chef on Martha’s Vineyard.

This is Carrie Mae Smith’s second solo show at MARCH.  Her work is included in major private collections.

From PRI’s The World and reprinted by our content partner New America Media:

Bruce Lee had a tough road to Hollywood stardom. And while those difficulties aren't unique, they are now the subject of a Broadway play written by Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang.

 The stage production tells the story, complete with dramatic martial arts-style choreography, of how Lee's brash approach to martial arts and his rejection of Asia's 20th-century culture of submission made him a symbol of Asia's rise in the 21st century. The play is called "Kung Fu," and its star is Asian martial artist Cole Horibe.

For Hwang, this project took a long time to bring to life. He says he first began thinking about the play in the early 1990s. "At that point, I thought of Bruce Lee as a symbol of the rise of the new China," Hwang says. "When I was a kid, China was considered poor and uneducated, and now, it's in a very different place. That was the symbolic thing I wanted to explore in the early 90s."

"By the time we get to this version, which I started to write two or three years ago, I also wanted to look at Bruce Lee as a human being" says Hwang, "because I feel like he has become such a recognizable icon, but nobody really knows how he became Bruce Lee. So, in some sense, 'Kung Fu' is Bruce Lee, the prequel."

In addition to China's shifting role and Lee's legacy, the play explores Asian masculinity, something Hwang says was "denigrated" in the West and in American culture. "Bruce created this new archetype — the Asian male hero," Hwang notes.

"Kung Fu" also tells the life story of Lee. Hwang says he spent the last two decades reading biographies about the action hero. "I was really pleased that Linda, his widow, and Shannon, his daughter, came to our opening night and told me that they thought it was the most authentic telling of his story that they've seen," he says.

"I think it was incredibly exciting — even now — to see an Asian man who is completely assertive, completely confident, completely masculine, and has no apologies or illusions about that. In a way, it's like Muhammad Ali in the ‘60s. Yes, being arrogant, but being arrogant because that was necessary in that time period and social system."

Hwang had the challenge of showing the complex and tumultuous relationship Lee had with his father. The playwright says that, at a certain point, Lee's father essentially kicked Lee out of Hong Kong and told him not to come back.

"And yet, his father ends up transmitting a lot of information that Bruce uses later in life to become the star that he becomes," Hwang explains. "It is a complicated relationship and I think it's true of a lot of father-son or parent-child relationships — you get the good and the bad."

In the play, Hwang shows Lee with his own son, "trying to transmit both good and bad, and working through that."

"Kung Fu" is at the Signature Theater in New York through April 6.

Let’s face it—Paris is probably one of the most photographed places on the planet, so what’s all the fuss about one more photographer adding his own indelible images to the list?  A reasonable point of view perhaps, but when the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibit, Charles Marville:  Photographer of Paris is the subject, it’s worth a great deal of fuss.  Capturing the picturesque streets and alleyways, monuments and churches, lampposts and clouds of the City of Light in the mid-1800s was no easy assignment, but Marville was the man—maybe the only one—for the job. 

Born in 1813 in the city he was destined to immortalize, his real name was Charles-Francois Bossu or “hunchback,” but there all similarity ended.  By 1832, calling himself Marville, the young man who cut his teeth on wood engravings and illustrations for the popular press had begun to take photographs in earnest.  Only a few years earlier, Fox Talbot had invented salted-paper prints and Marville quickly mastered the technique, demonstrating an extraordinary delicacy and acuity of detail. 

Marville was best known for his appointment as the official photographer for the radical modernization project launched by Emperor Napoleon III and his chief urban planner, Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann.  Yet, this extraordinary artist in a new and problematic medium brought the same care he showed for documenting the soon-to-be-demolished Old Paris to the landscapes of the Bois du Bologne, the haunting caryatides in the Louvre and the lampposts that lit up Parisian arrondissements where city-dwellers had once been afraid to step outside without flaming torches to guide their way.  It is to the credit of the National Gallery of Art in association with the Met’s own curators, that a healthy portion of the 100 and some images on view are from a wide spectrum of Marville’s passions, not just the estimable array of streets and structures that would vanish from the world if not its conscience. 

A few images of the many in this prior category worth mentioning include a number from the Notre Dame Cathedral, ie., The Roofs of Notre Dame from the Gallery of Towers which shows elephants and tigers topping the nearby spires.  Gargoyles aside, it’s a veritable circus of creatures inhabiting this imposing structure.  A young Marville has even posed himself in front of La Porte Rouge, The Red Door, Northern Portal (1851), an imposing entrance for the clergy.  He appears very much the dandy during these shooting sessions, having set up the composition then left the assistant to time the exposure.  Another such evocation of subject matter, South Portal of the Chartres Cathedral, shows the effect that the interplay of light and shadow can have on such a scene. 

Close-up portraits are a rarity, but a picture of his studio assistant, Charles Delahaye, is noteworthy.  Resting on his elbow, dark locks of hair spiking helter-skelter from his head, he resembles denizens of New York’s East Village dwellers today.  Among Marville’s lamppost series, a beautifully ornate candelabra on the Avenue de l’Opera catches the eye, as well as a series of lampposts at the entrance to the Ecole de Beaux-Arts.

As for a natural affinity for nature which shines through this exhibit, his cloud studies are all the more remarkable for the difficulty inherent in rendering them at all.  A photographer may have had to expose two images, one for the ground landscape and another for the sky, the latter often whited-out otherwise or deliberately ignored.  In some instances, clouds actually would be painted onto the negative.   Obviously, Marville’s tireless curiosity paid off in the results.  It’s a fair speculation that the early 20^th century cloud photographs by Edward Steichen were inspired by an exposure to Marville’s works. 

An expansively wooded preserve, otherwise known as the one and only Bois de Boulogne, came under the Emperor’s all-seeing eye—quickly becoming a top priority for transformation.  Marville’s reflections of the area’s surrounding trees in water, with a resting canoe, as in The Prefect’s Pond, could have served as an early inspiration to none other than Claude Monet in his Giverney garden and pond paintings.  The Longchamps windmill was captured by Marville as well in the Bois, the last remnant of the 13th century abbey of the same name. 

The Top of the rue Champlain features a young boy seated on the rise of a hill in the 20th arrondissement, overlooking a cluster of desolate buildings.  It manages in its stillness to transcend the rubble below, creating a melancholy sense of isolation in the viewing.

As for the impressive collection of photographs done during Baron Haussmann’s urban leap into modernity, there are many images to ponder or single out.  Every aspect of urban civilization was fair game, from the construction of the Paris Opera to the issue of sanitary urinals.   But first, it’s worth noting that the plan underway, referred to as “piercings” was a two-step process of tearing down the ancient structures and streets in question, then creating wide arteries for the boulevards of his dreams.   We can be thankful that he had the foresight to hire Marville to document what would soon be lost forever.

Marville had an approach in subject matter that allowed for a measure of idiosyncratic detail.  Tanners are seen taking a break from their hide scraping as they lean against crumbling pillars soon to disappear.  One can almost smell the stench from the watery, putrid run-off.  This we are told by detailed wall captions was a section of the Bievre, a tributary of the Seine that now runs underground.  Medieval merchant’s quarters and old print houses with their peeling posters advertised everything from baths, mechanical beds, and umbrellas to the photography of a certain Pierre Petet.  In a few instances, there is an almost haunting vapor-like blur where the exposure was too slow to capture the milling throng of passers-by or horse-drawn carts.

There’s a sweet, lingering sadness to be had viewing this vanished world, as if a ghost had crossed one’s path in the course of our wanderings.  But it’s a caring spirit, maybe Marville himself, giving us a fresh look into a very real past.

Paris as Muse

In an adjacent room of the exhibit, the visit is enhanced by a small but intriguing series of 40 photographs, Paris as Muse, created over the first 100 years of documenting the magical city.  Focusing primarily on architectural views and street scenes, it still manages to convey the poetic approach employed by visiting or resident photographers. Wall quotes help to signify the changing times, ie., Gertrude Stein’s quote from 1940, “Paris was where the 20^th Century began.”  Another from 1918, by James Thurber, suggests the total rush of one’s initial exposure to the place:  “Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in everything.” 

Gyula Halasz, aka Brassai, for those who are exposed to this photographer of the demimonde for the first time, is always fascinating and revelatory for his times.  One such example shows us a string of street girls, possibly prostitutes, poised in eye masks in languorous “devil may care” poses.  Such pictures were typical of his legendary collection, “Paris by Night” from 1933.  Another shows us a man stationed in the fog of night which could have served as an outtake from the final film scene from Casablanca.   Ilse Bing’s lamppost at night is also a moody delight.

Andre Kertesz , another Hungarian émigré, was a master of composition and contrast.  We see a disinterested Parisian woman resting on a bench with a splashy row of Dubonnet posters featuring their iconic little man as subject in the background.  A more signature example of his genius is a photograph shot from above, presumably at the top of the Eiffel Tower’s base.  The shadows of its grillwork spill over an ant-like arrangement of visitors below.

No exhibit from this time period would be complete without Atget’s wonderful eye on display.  Never one to make people a priority in his compositions, the delicacy of his landscapes, urban and otherwise, prove him the worthy descendant of Marville’s own pair of eyes.  The resultant quietude is evident in a row of empty café chairs or a window of mannequins along the Avenue des Gobelins.  Atget’s corsets window along the Boulevard de Strasbourg is also worth a peek.

This is an exhibit worthy of being experienced before its May 4^th closing date. 

Author Bio:
Sandra Bertrand is Highbrow Magazine’s Chief Art Critic.

Karl Hagedorn (1922-2005) was an artist shaped by the time and history he lived through, as well as the geography of where he resided. His hometown was a small village in the mountains of what had previously been the Weimar Republic, Germany. His life was impacted by world history. As he wrote, "The Weimar Republic had given way to the Nazi regime and one's own life was no longer one's own but at the service of the government.

Living in the Russian zone, Hagedorn related, "Art became more dream than reality." He and his family escaped to West Berlin in 1952. In Munich, he became a student at the Art Academy at the age 34.

He considered his six years in West Germany (1953-1959) of tantamount importance to the growth of his art. He visited Paris which was a pivotal experience for him, as he came in contact with artists he had previously been unaware of. The Cubists and Surrealists, along with Leger, Picasso, Miro and Matisse were a revelation to him. He wrote, "They jolted my artistic system alive and capitulated me into the mid-20th century with a clearer direction for myself in it."

The next stop for Hagedorn was the United States. In Minneapolis, the Walker Art Center grew pivotal in his life and was where he had his first solo museum exhibition.

By 1973 he relocated to New York City and he ultimately connected with the well-regarded Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery on Madison Avenue. He was featured in their "New Talent Show," and at 51 years old received a mention in John Russell's review in the New York Times. He exhibited there for more than 20 years while maintaining close ties to Germany.

He spent the last years of his life with his wife, Diana, in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.     

"Symbolic Abstraction" was the term Hagedorn used to reference his work, which spanned the 1950s to the 21st century. He employed the mediums of painting, drawing, watercolor and gouache. Through the decades the connective tissue throughout his output was his vivid colors, forms, and shapes.

His work relates all these elements in the search  for a connection between the human  system, spirit, and the world it simultaneously reflects and creates. Hagedorn worked in the traditional European style, mostly small paintings well balanced with great precision, pleasing to the eye, apolitical, stressing growth of industry and entwined with the human element.

What a difference between the younger German artists of the21st century who defy easy categorization. They are inventive, skeptical of all authority, and work within a broad range of mediums that vary in size from notebook to monumental paintings - between high culture and low, figuration and abstraction, the heroic and the banal - allowing flux rather the stability to prevail.

Selected collections: Brooklyn Museum, Walker Art Center, New York Public Library, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Goethe Institute, Deutsches Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Karl Hagedorn “Symbolic Abastraction” will be on view at the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York City from May 8 – Summer 2014.

If it’s true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder happened to be Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich henchmen, then the likes of Kandinsky, Kirchner, Kokoschka, and Klee (and that’s just the early 20^th Century artistic giants whose names start with “K”) were in big trouble.  By the time the Nazi campaign to purge the world of modernist art ended, some 20,000 pieces were confiscated, hidden, sold, or destroyed.  Some survived, and for those of us fortunate enough to visit New York City’s Neue Galerie where “Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937” is on display, we can celebrate this moving and unforgettable exhibit.

Housed in one of the most elegant mansions on Fifth Avenue, the Neue Galerie’s home was built in 1914 by the firm of Carrere & Hastings, which also designed the New York Public Library.  Once acquired by Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III, it was purchased in 1994 by art collector Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky to showcase an expansive collection of German and Austrian art.

An integral part of the exhibit centers on the “Entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art) show which debuted in Munich in 1937.  Fortunately, a number of examples first shown in Munich make an appearance here.  Max Beckmann’s Cattle in a Barn (1933) and Oskar Kokoschka’s Poster with Self-Portrait (1910) among many others take a bow. No art movement was spared—Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, and Dadaism—they were all part of Hitler’s attempt to implicate the works and their creators as inferior and beneath contempt.  Whether the public attended out of cultural curiosity or simply a puerile interest in what “degenerate” implied, the traveling exhibition was a hit.

As chancellor, Hitler had inaugurated his own museum for German art in Munich only the day before.  As Holland Cotter in his New York Times review of March 14^th noted, “most of the art was locked into uplift-intensive academic styles of an earlier time” and “even Hitler seemed disappointed with the result.”  Obviously, the government-sponsored “Entarte Kunst” show was mounted to convince the ordinary citizen the difference between “good” and “evil” art in no uncertain terms.

As the visitor ascends the magnificent spiral staircase of the landmark mansion to the third floor, a giant black and white photo mural of the exterior of the Haus der Kunst in Berlin greets the eye, its hordes waiting to get a glimpse of the infamous exhibit. Navigating the narrow hallway to the main show room, one is struck by contrasts—on one side is a photomural detailing a lineup of arriving Jews at the Auschwitz-Burkenau train stop.  On the facing wall, yet another mural pops up of visitors lined up to view the 1937 exhibit.  It’s not such a stretch to see that the vilification of modern art was only a few heartbeats away from the vilification of human beings, in other words, the Final Solution.   

The same hallway boasts a timeline of the Nazis’ confiscation and plunder of art, along with posters meant to unify the German war effort.  Utilizing a black, red and white color scheme, their geometric shapes are reminiscent of early Russian poster art and warrant more than a cursory inspection. (The amount of information to digest throughout, along with the artworks, is reason enough to make an early visit, as the lines to get in seem often on a par with the original opening exhibit of 77 years ago.)

The choice to highlight the contrasts between the Third Reich’s classicism and the rejected examples of everything outside its ideal is an excellent one.  The shock of seeing the two sensibilities, split in half in the first central room, is almost palpable.  The chief example is Max Beckmann’s triptych, Departure (1933-35) which details subjugation and torture on the side panels and a mysterious band of allegorical figures departing in an open boat in the center.  It’s a powerful piece, leaving it up to the onlooker to decipher the deeper meaning.  On the left, Adolf Ziegler’s The Four Elements gives us a triptych of four Aryan-appearing female nudes, representing fire, earth and water in the center panel, and air in the third.  They fit the academic model but are a bit lackluster, for example, if compared to the radiance of a Botticelli Venus. 

It’s worth noting that Hitler initially put Ziegler in charge of the purging of major museums throughout Germany, under the auspices of his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.  The Four Elements must have worked its spell on the Fuhrer, because it hung over his own fireplace. Nevertheless, even Ziegler fell out of favor, eventually retiring after being sent to Dachau.

Near the Ziegler triptych, “DeCathlete” (1936), a neo-classical male nude by Richard Scheibe predominates, majestic in form but the pose as impersonal as an Egyptian tomb guard.  Conversely, Karel Niestrath’s “Hungry Girl “(1925) in bronze on the opposing side, presents a young woman with ribs showing, a touching vulnerability suggested in her stance with the toe from one foot overlapping the other.  Another bronze, “The Berserker” (1910), by Ernst Barlach portrays an angry man, twisting in his robes in a Samurai-like fashion.  The Barlach sculpture and Ewald Matare’s “Lurking Cat” (1928)—as abstractly sleek as a Brancusi bronze—make it clear that there is room for greatness in all styles of artistic expression. 

The Bauhaus school, whose artists and architects were forced out of Dessau as early as 1931, reopened in Berlin but was closed two years later.  The clean futuristic line of their buildings if not “degenerate” was obviously anathema to the National Socialist party vision.  Thankfully, many of them were prescient enough to leave the country for acceptance elsewhere.  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and his Die Brucke (The Bridge) colleagues—Otto Mueller, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff—are represented in a large group painting from 1925-26.  They’re an impressive lot--looking as successful as a quartet of Dresden bankers, as yet unaware of the nightmares to come.  Kirchner would die of a self-inflicted bullet wound in 1938.

It is in this Dresden room of the exhibit where Kirchner’s group portrait, along with all but one of the Brucke paintings that were included in the Entartete Kunst exhibit, can be found.  Each commands attention and close inspection.  A few standouts include Schmidt-Rottluff’s Pharisees (1912), a frightful band of figures jutting out at the viewer like a dark creation from the Brothers Grimm, and not to be missed, The Life of Christ (1918), a profanely satirical portfolio of woodcuts.  Another gripping work is Lasar Segall’s Eternal Wanderers (1919), appearing like giant totems of despair.  Paul Klee’s childlike apparitions are well represented, as is a surprisingly simple and lovely landscape by Kirchner entitled Winter Landscape in Moonlight (1919). Photomurals are once again evident—on one end wall an aerial view of bombed-out Dresden from 1945 and on the other the same medieval city, intact from a few years earlier. 

Lest we forget the master works that are lost to us, several empty frames are hung in a first floor gallery to remind us of their absence.  Also on view is a meticulously typed inventory of art works that passed through Nazi hands, on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum and several self-portraits that suggest in their renderings the devastation many of them faced, along with the destruction of their works. 

The theft and obliteration of so much art from the period has captured the public imagination for a number of years.  Films such as John Frankenheimer’s The Train from 1964 and George Clooney’s recent directorial offering, The Monumens Men, have put the whole business front and center for public enlightenment.  More importantly, the German government’s confiscation in 2012 of 1,280 paintings and drawings from the Munich home of Cornelius Gurlitt has had a huge impact on the art world at large.  Three hundred works collected from that raid were originally part of the 1937 Munich exhibit.

For any reader curious to know more, it’s a fascinating story of one family’s obsession with art.  Hildebrand Gurlitt, Cornelius’ father, was one of four art dealers allowed by the Nazis to buy and sell those works considered degenerate, some considerable part of them still in the custody of the German government.  Cornelius Gurlitt passed away at 81 in early May of this year, with no known heirs.  The trove of art treasures unearthed make the mind almost reel in disbelief—Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Kandinsky—the list goes on.  Many are still in Gurlitt’s possession and many more subject to claims of restitution. 

To explore the passions and imperfections of humankind in all its manifestations as these artists under attack did is a worthy goal, but one that was unacceptable to the Nazi ideology.  There can be a hollowness and danger at the core of ideals for the sake of ideals alone, and it is this theme that is so conscientiously executed in the exhibit.  Thanks are due to board member and art historian Dr. Olaf Peters, who not only impeccably organized the show but edited the accompanying  publication.

Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937will be on exhibit until June 30, 2014.  The Neue Galerie, a Museum for German and Austrian Art, is located at 1048 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028 (212) 628-2800.

Photos:  1. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, A Group of Artists, 1925-26; 2. Lasar Segall, Eternal Wanderers, 1919; 3. Ernst Barlach, The Berserker, 1910; 4. Oskar Kokoschka, Self-Portrait for Der Sturm, 1910;  5. Max Beckmann, Departure, 1932-35; 6. Adolf Ziegler, The Four Elements, 1937.

Author Bio:

Sandra Bertrand is Highbrow Magazine’s Chief Art Critic.

The 21st century design industry has become saturated with organic materials and hypoallergenic textiles moving business away from strictly aesthetic elementals. Due to the rise and demand by conscious consumers, a new wave of artists focused on innovative, practical and health conscious living have permeated the trade world with certified organic textiles being at the forefront.

Per the ever-changing political landscape, many of these new designs and products are also created in the U.S., supporting the American Trade Industry and further satisfying the new kind of consumer.

According to case studies conducted by economic research campaigns like Blue Corona, organic office furniture Web searches have increased by over 8,000 percent. With companies such as Urban Green and Ekla Home gaining popularity with consumers worldwide, and shaping the evolution of the organic furniture movement in both the home and workplace, organic sofas have become big business. From sectionals to chairs, many of these products are sustainably made with certified organic fabrics heightening the definition of quality furniture.

The organic trend is no longer a stranger to the artisanal industry either, with organic cotton canvas mediums making their way into mainstream art and craft stores. Supporting organic agriculture and following in suit of the newest craze, certified organic paint has now increased in popularity in fine arts, homes and businesses. Created for various surfaces such as canvas, dry wall and furniture, companies such as Real Milk Paint have gained notoriety with their line of all organic paints, finishing oils, creams and waxes, reforming the artisanal community.

Also successfully wooing high-end consumers and even flooding the conventional marketplace are hypoallergenic and non-allergenic products, which have significantly increased in production. According to the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, the number of people who suffer from allergies has risen to 50 million people, with one in five affected by allergies. With millions of people increasingly suffering from allergies, allergists suggest consumers switch to hypoallergenic products as a course of treatment.  With a projected growth affecting all facets of the art and design industry, many more products are in the works making hypoallergenic business a competitive industry.

Hypoallergenic bedding has steadily increased in popularity over the past two decades. However, designers such as Elice Marie are pioneering the hypoallergenic decorative industry. As a coveted home status symbol, her decorative home accents have been celebrated in the designer pillow industry as all of her designs are hypoallergenic, sustainably made and exclusively created with U.S. derived fabrics and materials.

Decorative hypoallergenic products have been booming in all areas of home décor, including the blind and curtain industry with companies like Rawganique finding their way into large-scale department stores.

With the aim to reduce indoor air pollution, non-allergenic home and business construction is also on the rise. Developers like Sun Garden Houses specialize in significantly reducing indoor air pollution beginning with clean wall-siding alongside a closely monitored installation process, and the results are homes and offices free of toxicity and common allergens. Urban developers are creating similar luxury high-rise buildings in Los Angeles and New York City, attracting the elite and a wide range of foreign investors.

 With so many allergen-free and organic products elevated to the ‘must have’ status for the modern consumer, we can fully expect these unique designs to continue to redefine the home décor and artisan industry at a national level, offering health-conscious and pragmatic solutions to consumers seeking clean, health-conscious living. In both the office and home environment, the status quo of design and trade textiles have being successfully challenged, accommodating this perspicuous shift in consumerism. 

Author Bio:

Elice Baxter is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.

For Highbrow Magazine

The famous memoirist Anais Nin once said, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”  On the evening of January 31, 1889, five women calling themselves The Woman’s Art Club met at the studio of Grace Fitz-Randolph on Washington Square in New York.  They were there to “demonstrate that creative achievement need carry no sex distinction,” but they were setting in motion an artistic revolution in scope and genius that is still honored today.

One hundred and twenty-eight years later, you might ask what a small group of women sitting around a table chatting that winter night have in common with courage?  Well, just consider the climate of the time.  It was simply not acceptable for a woman to pursue a professional career.  Decorative artwork, maybe, with magazines like Art Amateur to light the way. In the words of NAWA’s past president Penny Dell, speaking at the recent opening of members’ works at the Ridgefield, Conn. Library, “This is the 100^thAnniversary of the Women’s Vote.  The National Association of Women Artists is older than that!  It is hard to imagine the changes that have transpired.  Women went from not having access to exhibiting their works or the privilege of generating drawing from life models to now, where there is freedom to generate any image the artist can imagine.”

Susan G. Hammond, the executive director of the first national organization to support women’s art, has made “Our history is our future” her mantra. It’s for good reason.  A long line of dedicated women artists, given unswervingly to the mission of “fostering and promoting awareness of, and interest in, visual art by women in the United States,” have enabled members like Faith Ringgold, Judy Chicago and legions of others to find their way.  Many of their NAWA exhibiting predecessors were just as distinguished—Mary Cassatt, Cecilia Beau, and later, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Louise Nevelson, Alice Neel and countless more.  It would be remiss not to mention that Faith Ringgold was just honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the College Art Association at 105 years of age.

Few would argue that Cassatt’s star is permanently affixed in the firmament, but in 1892 when she exhibited along with almost 300 other member entrants in a West Village space leased for the occasion, the New York Times critic was unforgiving.  “The women and children in these colored prints (there are no men) are one and all of the last degree of ugliness.”  It must have taken a rare kind of mettle, even for a talent of Cassatt’s caliber, to weather such a review.

Of course, exhibiting always implies a level of risk, but these were women willing to take the leap.  The same year the Women’s Art Club was formed, only four of the Society of American Artists’ 108 members were women.  The number of women represented in the National Academy that year was 49, an impressive number until one realizes that 362 artists in all exhibited.  In 1911, the critic Christian Brinton in reviewing the Club’s Annual, acknowledged that women were important in their “development of taste” but that they were “deficient in handling landscape painting and should not attempt to identify either in theme or in handling with that of men.”  Climbing the ladder of visibility and credibility would continue to be a slow and arduous effort.

Even if some members may have identified with the mythic Sisyphus, trying time after time to gain solid footing only to fall repeatedly back to square one, others exhibited in the words of another critic “a splendid optimism.” Membership and opportunities with each Annual showing were on the increase and in 1913 the Club changed its name to The Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, not only to demonstrate the increasing importance of sculpture but to put to permanent rest the idea that the organization existed solely as a social club.  In 1917, “National” was added to this new designation and in 1941 a less cumbersome title was adopted and is still in use today.

Visibility is important, but short-lived exhibitions don’t guarantee a permanent record of an artist’s accomplishments.  Documented exhibits are archived within the Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Library of Congress, among many others. The permanent collection from NAWA’s earliest days to the present is housed at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

With growing pains an expected part of increased membership and more exhibiting opportunities, early attempts were made to organize chapters in Philadelphia and Baltimore.  This soon proved impractical.  Greater efforts were then made to organize shows in other parts of the country. In NAWA’s recent past, member Liana Mooney was an ardent supporter of chapter building and in the early years of our new century, became the driving force behind the founding of NAWA’s Massachusetts and Florida chapters—both highly successful and thriving in their communities today. Thanks to the power of the internet, committee members statewide and nationwide can meet “face to face” informally and as part of various committees.  One can only imagine what such ease of contact would have meant to earlier counterparts.

The ups and downs of the real estate market took their toll over the years but this resourceful band of renegades was hardly deterred.  In 1925, when funds were needed to purchase a club house on 62^nd Street, an auction of paintings was held.  Members anticipated that rental of the upper apartments and gallery, plus a restaurant concession, would pay the mortgage interest. When zoning regulations forced the Association to liquidate, the sale at $50,000 over the purchase price allowed for a lease on West 57^th Street at the Argent galleries.  NAWA found itself at last in the heart of the art world. 

Other locations over the decades followed, with the same entrepreneurial spirit in play.  Just this past spring, NAWA moved its headquarters from the Union Square district to 315 West 39 Street, this time in the heart of the bustling Garment District.  In-house exhibits are held throughout the year in an Arts and Design building filled with artist studios and periodic open houses for the public.  NAWA’s juried annual exhibits are a prestigious affair, with over $9,000 dollars in awards.  For the last several years, these shows have been held at the Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery in Manhattan to packed audiences.

This past year, a prestigious two-part exhibit, between NAWA and the Women Painters of Washington, was held in Seattle and Women Artists Coast to Coast - EAST is currently at the Prince Street Gallery in Manhattan through the month of March 2017.  New York Public Library exhibits, headed by NAWA member Anita Pearl, demonstrate an ongoing commitment to the public.  Last spring, thanks to a generous grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Renaissance Women—a traveling exhibit with panel discussions—was conducted at five different branch libraries.  In December, SHELTER, a joint exhibit by NAWA in cooperation with Violence Transformed—a Boston-based organization founded to celebrate the power of art to confront, challenge and mediate violence—was held at the Harlem School of the Arts.  NAWA anticipates that future exhibits with such social impact will be an ongoing consideration.

The old adage, “You can’t keep a good woman down” is particularly apt this spring.  In honor of Women’s History Month, two library exhibits—one at the Riverside branch near Lincoln Center for the seventh year in a row and another at the historic Ridgefield Library in Ridgefield, Conn. continue the tradition of bringing NAWA members’ works to the community at large.

In addition to outside shows, NAWA holds fundraisers and workshops as well as theme-related exhibits for members in its own gallery space.  Periodically, they rent the gallery to women artists who have often achieved considerable recognition.  This month, the work on view of Elizabeth Meyers Castonguay and Margery Freeman Appelbaum addresses environmental and mythological themes.  Through visual positioning and mixed media, both Castonguay and Appelbaum give voice to the natural world—contained or set free.  Castonguay sees the more than 41,000 endangered species of fauna and flora as important to nature’s fine balance as humankind itself.  Appelbaum’s recent portraits refer to the shared complexities and pain between Greek mythological women and their contemporary counterparts. Like NAWA’s Susan Hammond, she believes “the past still follows us into the future.”

These are powerful themes.  Daryl Mintia Daniels is a young emerging artist recently awarded a one-year free scholarship to NAWA.  Singled out by her professors, along with several other outstanding graduating students in the fine arts last year makes women of color her subject.  “I embrace the physical features within them that I was once insecure about…many of my figures are represented as Goddesses powered by nature.”

Such confidence within the generation of women artists coming up is inspiring.  But is there a pressing need to continue such support? Absolutely.  For the Guerilla Girls, giving up the battle is unthinkable.  In 1985 iconoclastic posters decrying the marginalization of women artists appeared on walls in Soho and the East Village.  Howling indignation followed but these anonymous costumed women (as gorillas) have continued their efforts, aiming their wit at museums nationwide and abroad.  NAWA’s benefit luncheon this spring will feature costumed members of this controversial group.

Scholarship recipient Marie Peter-Stoltz believes that “women artists and the artists of color, those from the LGBT community, and artists from the “minorities” are not enjoying the exposure they deserve.  Her hope is that organizations like NAWA “will change mentalities so that tomorrow’s art world will offer more diversity to the public’s eyes.” As for camaraderie, Vice-President Jill Baratta believes in the healing aspects of art and attests to the deeply meaningful friendships she’s formed based on a “joyful, creative and sometimes serious common interest.  We have our own cultural needs, often distinct from those of men.”

Ronald G. Posano, the Guest Curator for NAWA’s Centennial celebration in 1988, summed up the continuing importance of women working together to carry on the spirit of their goals this way:  “In this day and age, when so many people, including artists, are busy promoting their own interests and careers, and have lost sight of the years of effort that have advanced them to a position to do so—is it not time to look back and reassess such values?”

Featured art: 1. Susan Hammond; 2. Guerrilla Girls; 3. Margery Applebaum; 4. Elisabeth Castonguay; 5. Mary Cassatt.

Author Bio:

Sandra Bertrand is Highbrow Magazine’s chief arts critic.

For Highbrow Magazine