Photos By Gail
African American designer Ann Lowe (1898 – 1981) learned to sew from her dressmaker mother, Janie Cole, and her grandmother, Georgia Thompkins. One of her earliest pleasures was crafting fabric flowers, a skill that became one of the defining characteristics of her beautifully constructed occasion gowns for debutante and brides. This Evening Dress designed by Lowe for A. F Chantilly (1968) presents a terrific example of this skill.
Photo By Gail
For more than 25 years, Cecily Brown has transfixed viewers with vivid color, bravura, brushwork, and complex narratives that relate to some of Western art history’s grandest and oldest themes. After moving to New York from London in the 1990s, she also helped revive painting for a new generation at a moment when critics and artists were questioning its relevance. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Cecily Brown, Selfie
Photos By Gail
Norman Bel Geddes (1893 – 1958) was an influential American industrial designer known for his innovative and futuristic designs in the early to mid-20th century. One of his notable creations was the Patriot radio (1940): a sleek and modern tabletop radio that showcased Geddes’ forward-thinking design sensibilities. It was a departure from the traditional boxy and ornate designs of radios at the time. Instead, Geddes envisioned a streamlined and futuristic appearance for the Patriot, incorporating modern materials and a distinct visual aesthetic.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Norman Bel Geddes, Patriot Radio
Photo By Gail
In 1980, Jane Dickson (b. 1952)and her husband, artist Charlie Ahearn (b. 1951), moved into a loft near New York’s then seedy, but glittering Times Square where, two years earlier, she’d found work programming the first Spectacolor billboard. Attracted to the neighborhood’s brilliant nighttime signage, she began working with oil stick against deep-black backgrounds to evoke the gleam of the nocturnal scenes she witnessed. Traveling to Florida in the mid-1980s, Dickson happened one night upon a carnival filled with amusement rides. She eventually created Big Oval (1985) from pictures and sketches, painting the roller coaster’s arc of blazing lights stretching up into the night.
Photographed in The Museum of Modern Art in New York City
Photo By Gail
Vincent Van Gogh’s Window in the Studio (1889) depicts a room with a barred window that he was allowed to use as a studio in the hospital in Saint-Rémy. Pots and bottles stand on the sill of a window that looks out over the walled garden on the hospital grounds, with several of Van Gogh’s own paintings hanging on either side of the window. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Window in the Studio By Vincent Van Gogh