All Photos By Gail
While wandering through the Museum of Modern Art last week, I noticed something unexpected in the gift shop: a new collectible Barbie inspired by what is arguably Vincent van Gogh’s most famous painting, The Starry Night. The doll felt perfectly placed, considering the original painting hangs just upstairs as part of MoMA’s permanent collection.
Continue reading Yes, It Exists: Starry Night Barbie
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For many artists working in the 1960s and ’70s, ideas often superseded the physical making of art. These ideas were typically ideological, structural, and philosophical in nature and conveyed in the form of words, grids, and graphs. By the 1980s, Thomas Schütte and other artists ushered in a return to representation, which some critics described as a response to a “hunger for images.“ Around this time, cherries, watermelon, and other kinds of comestibles became motifs in his work.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Thomas Schütte, Melonely
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Different designer’s experiments with new materials have marked important, turning points in the history of design. Gaetano Pesce never stopped experimenting with them – in particular with residence. As one could infer fro its name, 1984’s Pratt Chair (3) is one of nine he produced as part of a project for the Pratt Institute, are renowned art, and design school in New York. Continue reading Eye On Design: Gaetano Pesce Pratt Chair (3)
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Jean Dubuffet’s Study for Tower with Figures (1968), standing nearly ten feet tall, makes a striking statement when encountered outdoors; its painted polyurethane on epoxy facade, bold black outlines and puzzle-like shapes making it instantly recognizable as part of Dubuffet’s famous Hourloupe cycle.
At first glance, it looks playful — almost cartoonish. Tangled forms, bulbous limbs, and abstracted faces interlock like a jigsaw puzzle sprung to life. But beneath the humor lies Dubuffet’s serious artistic mission: to challenge the polish of modernity and instead celebrate the raw, the provisional, and the imperfect. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Jean Dubuffet Study for Tower with Figures
Photo By Gail
In 1961, artist George Siegel began using a recently released Johnson & Johnson product – gauze bandages, pre-treated with dry plaster – to make full-body plaster casts of family and friends. He combined these unpainted, lifelike figures with found object from every day life. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: George Segal Portrait of Sidney Janis With Mondrian Painting