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Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Portrait of Tom Wolfe By Everett Raymond Kinstler

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portrait of tom wolfe by everett raymond kinstler photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Tom Wolfe was famous for his writing, his distinctive New York persona — and, of course, his signature white suits. American artist Everett Raymond Kinstler captured all three in this striking 1987 portrait of the author.

Painted in oil on canvas, the 50-by-27-inch portrait shows Wolfe dressed entirely in white, leaning casually on a walking stick with one leg crossed over the other. The long, narrow composition gives him an almost theatrical presence, while the loose brushwork keeps the painting from feeling overly formal. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Portrait of Tom Wolfe By Everett Raymond Kinstler →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Cecily Brown, Hangover Square

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hangover square by cecily brown photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Rich purples lend lushness to this overstuffed interior, whose piles of clothing and jumble of furnishings suggest the morning after a raucous night of mayhem. The painting’s title, Hangover Square (2005), is a pun on London’s upscale green Hanover Square, one that artist Cecily Brown gladly borrowed from a 1941 novel. With its unabashed clutter, the disarrayed room foreshadows Brown’s return to painting crowded interiors 15 years later, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

 

Arts and Culture

A Wedding Cake You Could Take Home: Claes Oldenburg’s Wedding Souvenir

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claes oldenburg wedding souvenir photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

I’ve seen some pretty unusual works of art in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this: an entire wedding cake made out of pieces of a Claes Oldenburg sculpture.

I spotted this wonderful object while on a tour of  the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in Beverly Hills, and admit it does look like an elaborate, slightly lumpy white wedding cake. Look closer though, and you can see the obvious seams. This isn’t one sculpture carved to look like a cake — it is a cake assembled from individual slices of one of Oldenburg’s most delightfully unconventional works, Wedding Souvenir, created in 1966.

And yes, there is an actual wedding story behind it.
Continue reading A Wedding Cake You Could Take Home: Claes Oldenburg’s Wedding Souvenir →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Knight Horrors by Aaron Bohrod

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knight horrors by aaron bohrod photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Knight Horrors looks like some sort of surreal still life extracted from  a child’s  fever dream — and the longer you look, the stranger it gets.  A tiny armored knight on horseback  occupies the center of the scene, surrounded by an outrageous assortment of creatures and characters: a grinning finger puppet-style monster perched on the helmet of a Roman soldier, a grimacing gremlin, a colorful parrot, a rat, a flamingo, a skull and assorted other fantastical beings. It’s part cabinet of curiosities, part nightmare, and part seriously weird family portrait.

Painted in 1985 by American artist Aaron Bohrod, Knight Horrors is an oil painting on gesso panel measuring just 12 by 16 inches. The title itself seems to contain a little visual joke: Knight Horrors sounds suspiciously like “night terrors,” which makes the painting feel like a parade of creatures that have escaped from somebody’s particularly bizarre dream. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Knight Horrors by Aaron Bohrod →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Katharina Fritsch, Car and Caravan

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katharina fritsch car and caravan photo by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

I’ve been a fan  of artist German artist Katharina Fritsch and her oeuvre of hyper-realistic (and often surreal) sculptures since I first  met These Guys. This past May, I wandered into Matthew Marks Gallery and was happily supposed to find a selection of her sculptues on view!  Having experienced many family camping trips a small child, I was particularly entranced by Auto und Wohnwagen / Car and Caravan (1079 / 2026). Sure, it looks like a perfectly ordinary road-trip scene — a sleek black car pulling a little white caravan. But this is definitely not your average family vacation.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Katharina Fritsch, Car and Caravan →