Pottery by Lucie Rie; painting by Okada Kenzo, “A Story” A seasoned and accomplished artist friend recently shared a painful encounter with a curator. During a studio visit, the curator—much younger than my friend—declared that her work lacked irony and anxiety. In his view, her approach was not relevant to the contemporary 21st century experience. […]
MFA
Dreaming of Shambhala
Tangka from Seeking Shambhala (Photo: MFA) The MFA’s small show, Seeking Shambhala, is a quiet treasure chest opened up in a corner gallery of the Asian Wing. With a mythical utopian location at the heart of the exhibit, Shambhala (or as it is sometimes referenced in the West, Shangri-La) offers an open invitation to blend […]
Contemporary Art at the MFA
First floor view of the new Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art at the MFA, Boston I’m of several minds when it comes to the oft-argued place that museums should/could/would claim in the cultural milieu of contemporary life. Beyond the obvious tensions—high brow vs low brow (in a world that is increasingly no brow), elitism […]
Chihuly at the MFA
Chihuly installation in the new courtyard of the MFA A new exhibit of Dale Chihuly’s glass sculpture has opened at the MFA. People who are new to his work are often full of awe and delight. I remember feeling that way too when I first encountered his wildly expressive, technically mind-boggling, larger-than-life work. There was […]
Boston Museum Update
Two Boston museum recommendations: At the ICA Charles LeDray, Mens Suits (Photo: ICA, Boston) I have looked at examples of Charles LeDray’s work online for several years, but seeing his work in person is a whole different kettle of fish. As an idea his approach seemed almost too precious—his curious obsession (and I mean that […]
More on Museum Expansion
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston I just found a spunky rebuttal to the much-discussed article by the Times’ Robin Pogrebin about the recent era of museum overbuilding. Pogrebin’s article is referenced in yesterday’s post, and anyone who has read her piece should also read through Lee Rosenbaum’s article on CultureGrrl, Not Dead Yet: Museum Building […]
Robert Irwin, Part 2
If you take the cubist idea and really press it…what you have is what I was now being forced to deal with…In other words, the marriage of figure and ground—which is how they always term the cubist achievement—of necessity leads to the marriage between painting and environment; essentially they are the same thing, just taking […]