Articulating Ideas: the Poster Art of Luba Lukova (Luba Lukova: Designing Justice at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, to March 22, 2022)
The history of poster art and/or the “art poster” is surprisingly short, beginning with French lithographers in the 1880s, often produced by artists trained as painters, yet created for commercial ends: advertising a product, place, service or event. From this point of view, not much has changed. But posters have also been used to express […]
Invitations to Emergence: “The Regional” at Contemporary Arts Center, December 10, 2021-March 20, 2022
I would say that in my experience, The Contemporary Arts Center has not been the sort of museum much interested in exploring the tastes and talents of Cincinnati, let alone the Midwest at large. To do that might require, for example, regular curated exhibits of the artists of the region, and they haven’t done that. […]
More Than a Starry Night: ‘Through Vincent’s Eyes: Van Gogh and His Sources’ Columbus Museum of Art, November 2021
Seeing ‘Through Vincent’s Eyes: Van Gogh and His Sources’ that opened in November 2021 at Columbus Museum of Art is stunning for its insights into Van Gogh’s world, literally. At a time when this beloved artist has been Disneyfied by the blockbuster Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience which is a 20,000 square foot light and […]
But the Box has 6
Manifest Gallery’s current exhibition The Five Themes Project is an expansive undertaking; not unlike re-inventing the Whole Earth Catalog. This time, however, it’s not about self-sufficiency and ecology but perceptions about the world and mankind’s relationship with it. The five themes – Wilderness→ Rural→ Suburban→ Urban→ Post-Urban – are installed as a somewhat chronological survey […]
Lyrics in Vases
Kwan Jin Oh’s “Emptying and Filling”, on view at Kate Oh Gallery from January 1 – 30, 2022, teeters on intermedia, balancing formal prowess with poetic lyricism. This is evident in how Jin Oh’s paintings, each of which display ceramic moon jars, cleverly play with dimensionality and photorealism, albeit without allowing for any one facet to overdetermine […]
Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle
Abstractionism—think Kandinsky—denied representation altogether, but assumed all the conventions of pictorial space, hence the nonrepresentational use of color, line, form, and so on. J.M. Bernstein, “Freedom From Nature” in Hegel and the Arts, ed. Stephen Houlgate (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 220. Approaching it in one way I see no essential difference between a line […]
Twenty-first Century Museum Interprets Ancient Middle Eastern Art.
Visitors to the Cincinnati Art Museum may have noticed that the first gallery on the right past the entrance – the Middle East Gallery – has been closed about a year. In a marvelous four-year research project, the museum made significant physical and curatorial changes to the museum’s existing 2,800-square-foot ancient Middle East that reopened […]
Can’t Buy Me Love: “Simply Brilliant: Artist-Jewelers of the 1960s and 1970s” at Cincinnati Art Museum, October 22, 2021-February 6, 2022
I can’t think of the last art show I saw where I wanted to write, off the top, about its sound track. In the course of two visits to “Simply Brilliant,” the Cincinnati Art Museum’s stunning two-room exhibit of some 120 pieces of extremely fine jewelry from the master designers of the 1960s and 1970s—all […]
Concord and Discord: Examining Ancient Stories
“Concord and Discord: Examining Ancient Stories” is a two person show of the work of area artists, Mary Anne Donovan and Cynthia Kukla. In many ways, though, it is a single show as well. Themes, palettes, strategies, motifs and formal approaches bounce back and forth between the work of both artists. Each artist invites the […]
Drawing Every Day
In 1970, I started my first year in the MFA program at the University of Cincinnati. The MFA studios were at that time in old houses behind St George Church on Scioto and Classen Streets. While moving into my studio, I noticed a man in gray coveralls working on his 1950 Chevy pickup. I first […]