Speed of Life

We'll understand the US better if we better understand how American artists extended their ideologies in their pictures. (We'll understand even more if we understand that Ralph Waldo Emerson told them how.) https://t.co/FyT8eeVJUx — Tyler Green (@TylerGreenBooks) October 6, 2021 From the Publisher: Illustrated by classic American paintings and photographs, and accompanied with a prescient new appraisal, this stunning publication on Emerson’s seminal 1836 essay is at once a meditation on the ways artists influence each other and a timely  cri de coeur  to cherish and preserve America’s landscape. Get your copy here:   https://amzn.to/3leSiTC  or here  https://www.indiebound.org/book/9783791378695

by Gregg Chadwick Frequent readers know that I enjoy the wit and  erudition  of Tyler Green. His Modern Art Notes Podcast is always worth a listen. The latest episode, embedded above, features  art historian  William E. Wallace   and curator   Julian Brooks. Wallace discusses his latest book - “Michelangelo, God’s Architect: The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece.” Wallace's new book is available on Bookshop .   Tyler writes :"The book offers a rich and lively biographical examination of the last two decades of Michelangelo’s life, a period when he became the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other buildings, even as he continued to sculpt and draw."  Michelangelo The Florentine Pietà  1547-55 Wallace's discussion of Michelangelo's late  Pietàs is exceptionally interesting. These are two of my favorite sculptural works by Michelangelo because of their incomplete nature.  Michelang...

This week's The Modern Art Notes Podcast by Tyler Green features artist  Julie Mehretu  and curator  Jane Aspinwall. Tyler's podcast is timed with the new Julie Mehretu mid-career survey that opens at LACMA on November 3, 2019. More info from LACMA here:  https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/julie-mehretu From LACMA: Co-organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, Julie Mehretu is a mid-career survey that will unite nearly 40 works on paper with 35 paintings dating from 1996 to the present by Julie Mehretu (b. 1970, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). The first-ever comprehensive retrospective of Mehretu’s career, it covers over two decades of her examination of history, colonialism, capitalism, geopolitics, war, global uprising, diaspora, and displacement through the artistic strategies of abstraction, architecture, landscape, movement, and, most recently, figuration. Mehretu’s play with scale, as evident in her intimate dra...

Wonderful podcast by Tyler Green featuring artist Lari Pittman. The Hammer Museum at UCLA is featuring the exhibition “Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence,” a retrospective of Pittman’s nearly forty-year career.  Tyler writes: The exhibition reveals Pittman’s engagements with America’s history and with issues and subjects that have been core to our history and identity, including landscape, violence, citizenship, belonging and more. The exhibition was curated by Hammer chief curator Connie Butler. It is on view through January 5, 2020. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Prestel.  Amazon offers it for $51.

by Gregg Chadwick Tyler Green at  Modern Art Notes , along with art blogs and art sites across the globe will be concentrating today on the plight of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Tyler Green writes, " In an effort to spotlight the collections at the Detroit Institute of Arts that would be lost if the threatened sale of art in collections at the DIA are sold, all day long    Modern Art Notes  and many other sites will be  spotlight  art at the DIA. " Sakyamuni  Chinese Sculptor late 13th/early 14th Century wood with lacquer , gilding , and traces of color 11 3/4" x 88 1/8" x 6 1/2" Detroit Institute of Arts I heartily agree with Tyler that the more we can put a spotlight on the Detroit Institute of Arts rich collection, the more concerned - art lovers, historians, and the general public will be about the peril that the collection faces.  Vilhelm Hammershoi Interior With A Lady 21 5/8" x 20 7/8" oil on canvas 1901 Detr...

Joseph Mallord William Turner ( April 23, 1775-December 19, 1851) The Fifth Plague of Egypt 48" x 72" oil on canvas 1800 Indianapolis Museum of Art photo courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art Spurred on by fellow artblogger, Tyler Green , the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art are putting their paintings on the line over next weekend's Super Bowl between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts. I'm calling an improbable New Orleans victory over the Colts. In which case the Indianapolis Museum of Art will lend Turner's vibrant and mysterious The Fifth Plague of Egypt to the New Orleans Museum of Art. If the favored Colts win, the New Orleans Museum of Art will lend Claude Lorrain's Ideal View of Tivoli to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Check out Tyler's blog for the ultimate in museum director trash talk and mannered New Orleans (and Indianapolis) grace as well. New Orleans Museum of Art director E. John Bulla...