Atypographical design is the ultimate “art that conceals itself.” That means you’re not supposed to notice the font you’re reading, or rather, that you’re supposed to appreciate it only subliminally, without being distracted from the substance of the text. Unless, of course, you’re a typography geek. In that case, you definitely notice.
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Symphonies of Color
February 2010Seminal advances in abstract art aren’t usually thought of as coming from Americans, especially in the early modernist period, when the avant-garde of Europe was busy revolutionizing the visual vocabulary that had held sway for hundreds of years. Nonetheless, in 1913 Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, two young American expatriates in Paris, created a technique and style they called Synchromism, which represents a major step in the direction of nonobjective painting.
Continue reading...Monuments to the Obscure
February 2010One might imagine that at this late date there are no more discoveries to be made in the art world, or at least no discoveries outside the realm of what the trade likes to call “emerging artists.” And yet some more or less forgotten artists continue to emerge from the obscurity into which they have been cast by prejudice or by happenstance. In this issue, we consider a few of these.
Continue reading...Talking Pictures: A Life in Letters
February 2010Vincent van Gogh’s letters have offered the general public an intimate view of the artist’s life and psyche since at least 1893, when the French painter Émile Bernard published a selection of items that he had received from Van Gogh in the Mercure de France. This was just three years after the troubled Dutchman’s death by suicide at the age of 37, during a period when the name Van Gogh was little known beyond a small community of avant-garde artists.
Continue reading...Collecting: And Still They Rise
February 2010African-American art has come a long way since 1876. In that year, at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, artist Edward Mitchell Bannister won the bronze medal, the top prize for painting, but was denied the chance to attend the award ceremony when officials realized he wasn’t white. Exactly 100 years later,Two Centuries of Black American Art, a groundbreaking show that appeared at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, and the Brooklyn Museum, raised public awareness and was followed by scores of others that examined art made by African-Americans.
Continue reading...Gold Standard
February 2010Gold is a seemingly magical substance. Virtually impervious to corrosion, this most malleable of metals can be made to flow, to fold, to be pounded into sheets as thin as foil. It can be shaped and pierced, made solid or hollow, cast to replicate any form the goldsmith desires. Perhaps the most magical technique of all is granulation—affixing patterns of tiny gold balls onto a gold surface.
Continue reading...Essay: Cut and Paste
February 2010It would be hard to argue against the Internet being the fastest-spreading technological revolution of all time, but the rise of photography in the 19th century was surprisingly swift. Within two decades of its invention in 1839, it had deeply penetrated the middle classes of Europe and the United States.
Continue reading...In Perspective
February 2010UPCOMING AUCTIONS Zero Hour: Almost 50 works from the Sammlung Lenz Schönberg Collection of ‘Zero-Art’ will be offered in Sotheby’s contemporary art auction in London on Feb. 10. Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni and Victor Vasarely are among the artists who will be represented in the sale, which is expected to garner more than [...]
Continue reading...Market: Indigenous Finds
February 2010By: Jenna Curry San Francisco has been the go-to city for tribal arts in February, and this year, two major shows are scheduled for the same weekend. In its 24th year, the San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show, running Feb. 12–13, will showcase art from Oceania, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central and South [...]
Continue reading...Market: The Outsider Edge
February 2010By: Sheila Gibson Stoodley The 2010 Outsider Art Fair will take place Feb. 5–7 at 7 West 34th Street off of Fifth Avenue, returning to the venue it moved to last year. Among the nearly 40 exhibitors of works by artists who received little or no formal artistic training will be the Luise Ross Gallery [...]
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