Best Fiction of 2017
In spite of entire months going by with little fiction of note, 2017 did give serious readers some terrific fiction. Part of the problem is that publications offering book reviews have radically different ideas about what’s worth reading. And it’s an important time to be on the lookout for political correctness and other ideologies common […]
Framing the Air: “Cole Carothers: 40 Years & New Works” at Caza Sikes, November 3-27, 2017
As you walk into Caza Sikes in Oakley to see the ambitious mini-retrospective of Cole Carothers’s paintings, you are greeted by a large scale self-portrait called “Livestrong” (2005). In it, he is standing in what for many of his paintings is his home away from home, the corner of his studio. It is brashly hung—it […]
“Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry,” National Gallery of Art, through Jan. 21, 2018
I think one of the appeals of 17th-century Dutch genre painting is that the narratives they present are familiar to us. Lutes may be in short supply today, but guitars and other stringed instruments abound. Women still fuss at their toilette. Today we read emails on our phones, instead of having the tactile experience of holding […]
How a Czechoslovakian Artist Promoted the Modern Woman Alphonse Mucha: Master of Art Nouveau, Dayton Art Institute September 16 through December 31, 2017
Like Impressionism, with its wild brushstrokes and look of abandon in representing the world shocked the smug Parisian Salon art community, so too, Art Noveau originally was intended to be moderne, to usher in the new century, the twentieth century. But now, oh those erotic cascades of hair in Alphonse Mucha’s women smoking in Job […]
Clavilux: Paintings by Cedric Michael Cox at Cincinnati Art Underground
In his most characteristic paintings, Cedric Cox fractures the world in order to bring it to a new whole. The recent work of this gifted local artist is on display in a solo exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Underground through January 13, 2018. The exhibit includes twelve large canvases and several smaller works. Cox completed […]
“Elegant Geometry: British and American Mosaic Patchwork Quilts,” Taft Museum of Art, through January 21, 2018
Girls aren’t good at math, but don’t tell that to the makers of the 19 mosaic patchwork quilts, made between 1776 and1890 in England and America, in “Elegant Geometry: British and American Mosaic Patchwork Quilts.” Mosaic patchwork, sometimes called “paper piecing,” originated in Britain at the beginning of the 18th century and was carried to America by British colonists. Its […]
Swoon, a survey, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati September 22, 2017 through February 25, 2018
Swoon makes magic. Swoon stirs souls. The world needs more Swoon. I get cynical about politically inspired art much of the time. Such art is often self-serving (great way for an artist to get a solo show in our hyper-correct gallery and museum environments.) Or simply, it is handy for an artist to use the […]
Serenading the Bones: Animal Magnetism at Wave Pool Gallery
Whether appearing in pictorial narratives of the hunt or anthropomorphic representations of cultural traditions, the iconography of the nonhuman animal stalks the pathways of human epistemology. Wave Pool Gallery’s Animal Magnetism alludes powerfully to that history, not as a culminating insight but as the backdrop against which to make more subversive arguments. Those arguments posit […]
A Tale of Two Art Festivals: the Duality of ArtPrize Nine
Art fairs, biennials, and public art festivals, on the rise since the 1990s, define much of the post-1989 international art world. From Venice to New Orleans to Gwangju and everywhere in between, urban centers transform into art world Meccas and back again all over the globe, creating a map of flickering lights and a web […]
When Size Matters: “Small Paintings from the Taft Collection,” Taft Museum of Art, July 14-November 5, 2017
In the Music Room at the Taft, all of the paintings are grand. A few are truly monumental. In the Taft’s Sinton Room right now is an exhibition of another sort of painting, eight of them in all, the largest dimension of which is just a hair over a foot and a half tall. […]