A Godfather of Pop Becomes the Pop-father of a God: Jim Dine’s “Pinocchio (Emotional)” outside the Cincinnati Art Museum
With his new bronze sculpture, “Pinocchio (Emotional),” a scary-monster/sweetie-pie welcoming people outside the Cincinnati Art Museum, Jim Dine conjures a lot of pop-culture ghosts and nightmares while also paying homage to the original 1883 children’s novel, The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. The statue is imposing, and the glazed patina of it harkens back to Rodin. High […]
Letter From New York: Anti-Gravity
This is the third in a series of a quarterly letters, which will cover painting shows in greater New York. Paintings shouldn’t simply be seen, they should change the viewer, suspend him or her in an altered moment. Although this is the hope each time a visitor enters a gallery, it is a rarity. A […]
Joseph Winterhalter at Clay Street Press
Joseph Winterhalter’s show “The Revolution Says:” at Clay Street Press, presents a portrait of a contemporary American society lacking political will and stifled by emotional inertia. He presents two large paintings on canvas, a series of small sculptural paintings, a wall sculpture of hand made tiles, and some lithographic prints. When listed this way, the […]
Dearly De-parted: Airstream: New Work by Peter Haberkorn at Prairie
“The Bambi [Airstream model of 1960] is a machine for living and traveling, the sort of industrialized, rationalized vessel that had long been the dream object of modernist architects, from Le Corbusier to Buckminster Fuller.” – Christian Larsen, curatorial assistant, MOMA. [1] The aluminum-clad Airstream travel trailer conjures up a virtual cavalcade of nostalgic American archetypes, […]
Skirball Museum at Hebrew Union College
The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, home of the Skirball Museum, was established in Cincinnati in 1875, due primarily to the efforts of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who was responsible for the organization of the College’s founding body, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. In the mid-1850s Wise moved to Cincinnati—a city which […]
Letter From Los Angeles
Our Debt to the West Coast: Pacific Standard Time: 1945-1980 “An unprecedented collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California coming together to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene.”1 Visiting L.A. is like a review of your whole life. Driving around greater L.A. in traffic much less crazy than my hometown […]
Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill capture the Kaiser
Ten years ago when I was teaching Intro to Painting at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, I was cutting through the galleries on the second floor of the Art Museum when “The Unwelcome Guests” by Henry Farny suddenly caught my eye for the first time. There was a luminosity in that yellow sky that jumped […]
Drive-By Photographs by Brad Austin Smith at the Weston Art Gallery
A vivid group of photographs by Brad Austin Smith are on display at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery through June 3, 2012. At the heart of this exhibition is a raw look at the Queen City, its suburbs and American culture. Playful and striking photographs coalesce around a common viewpoint of […]
THREADS: Changing Landscapes Contemporary Chinese Fiber Art
Ah, the creative mind! It changes our vision, our perceptions, our world, using the vastness of the unnoticed, mundane material of our daily lives. Like thread, a single one of which is so ordinary, so small, so inconsequential, that it is seldom acknowledged in any but a practical way: sewing a button on, mending a […]
Faux Real Exhibition Review
Admittedly, authenticity is a word I know well. As a specialist at a local auction house, I am often asked to verify a work of art. Usually, I consult a variety of resources and other experts who help to conclusively argue for or against the veracity of an object. The most difficult items often get […]