Tag Archive | portrait

Modern Art Monday Presents: Alice Neel, John I. H. Baur

Jun1

john i h bauer by alice neel photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

John I. H. Bauer, head of the Brooklyn Museum‘s Department of painting and sculpture from 1936 to 1952, here appears seated in an interior space, perhaps his office. His body, cropped at the head and ankle, fills the frame. Painted in 1974, Alice Neel captured idiosyncrasies such as his slightly rumpled suit, wrinkled face, and veiny hands. One of her guiding principles as a portraitist was, in her words, that “every person is a new universe unique with its own laws.“

Photographed in the Brooklyn Museum.

Pink Thing of The Day: Andy Warhol Barbie with Pink Fur Stole

May22

andy warhol barbie photo
Photo By Gail

In March of 2019, I attended a fun event-thing called the Barbie 60th Anniversary Pop-Up Experience, which was just insane. Imagine being wedged into a crowded labyrinth of bright lights, neon colors, and every type of Barbie-branded doll in the universe, including Gender-Nonconforming Barbie and Dad-Bod Ken. Now, add little kids with their parents, and millennial Instagram-whores, and you’re got an idea of the scenario that I consider myself lucky to have survived with my sanity intact. Still: super fun!

While I saw literally hundreds of Barbies that day, the one that I will surely never forget is this Pink Mink Stole-draped plastic goddess known as the Andy Warhol Barbie. Here’s why: this Barbie (the third such doll produced in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Foundation) is the definitive celebration of Warhol, drawing inspiration from the original Warhol Barbie portrait created by the artist in 1986. Barbie’s strapless gown features a sweetheart neckline and an overall print of the Warhol Barbie Portrait (you can see a few details of Barbie’s face on the dress if you look closely at the above photo). Beyond the fabulous Pink faux fur stole with blue lining, the doll’s accessories also include blue pumps accented with glitter inspired by Warhol’s technique of “diamond dust” crushed glass on canvas, earrings, necklace, ring and doll stand. Rad.

andy warhol barbie backdrop photo by gail worley

Sadly I could not capture details of the glittery shoes, as Andy Warhol Barbie was encased in a vitrine, to protect her from molestation.  The statement to the left of Barbie’s face in the above photo reads as follows:

Andy Warhol made his mark by creating images of American icons. Barbie was added to the list when Warhol painted her in 1986. The first Barbie portrait was reportedly inspired by Warhol’s muse, Billy Boy, a jewelry designer and member of new York downtown scene in the 1980s, who owned a vast collection of Barbie dolls.

barbie neon sign photo by gail worley

Five Conversations By Lubaina Himid On The High Line

Sep3

Five Conversations
All Photos By Gail

The High Line always seems to have new public art installed along its mile-plus length of green space, and Five Conversations by Tanzanian-born artist Lubaina Himid, although it has been up since April, was new to me as I walked south along the path on my way to the Whitney Museum one sweltering Sunday afternoon.

Five Conversations

For Five Conversations, Himid introduces five wooden doors reclaimed from traditional Georgian townhouses, painted with life-size portraits, cut into silhouettes, that stand freely as flat sculptures. The portraits depict everyday, stylish women who love talking to each other!

Five Conversations Detail

These works have a theatrical quality, referencing stage sets and the simplified histories that dominate our world. In her signature way, Himid brings the two-dimensional medium of painting into our three-dimensional world.

Five Conversations Detail

Part of the En Plein Air, a Group Exhibit that Examines and Expands the Tradition of Outdoor Painting, On View Through March 2020.

 

Modern Art Monday Presents: Gertrude Abercrombie, Self Portrait As My Sister

Jul8

Self Portrait As My Sister
Photo By Gail

Chicago-based surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie (1909 – 1977) was acclaimed for her enigmatic paintings of stark interiors and illusory landscapes. On first glance, Self Portrait As My Sister (1941) appears to be relatively straight-forward representation, lacking the idiosyncratic imagery of her complex, dreamlike works. But Abercrombie was an only child, and the title’s allusion to a sister heightens the paradox of the painting. She frequently used self-portraiture as a means of trying on new guises and personas, later observing, “It’s always myself that I paint, but not actually, because I don’t look that good or cute.” Indeed, in her records she referred to this work as “Portrait of Artist as Ideal.” Her reference to a fictitious and prettier sister hints at desire to be a different person, a longing she could satisfy through her painting.

Photographed in the Art Institute Chicago.

Modern Art Monday Presents: Portrait of Paul Cadmus By Luigi Lucioni

Jun3

Portrait of Paul Cadmus
Photo By Gail

Luigi Lucioni and Paul Cadmus probably met as students, and they doubtless shared acquaintances within New York’s circles of gay artists and writers. Lucioni’s likeness of Cadmus (1928) celebrated the shared passion of two young moderns for the ideal forms of Italian Renaissance art, particularly the paintings of Piero della Francesca. Within a modern close-up format, the artist captured a gaze that is at once tentative and mesmerizing.

Photographed in the Brooklyn Museum.

Modern Art Monday Presents: Portrait of Pat Whalen By Alice Neel

Jan7

Pat Whalen
Photo By Gail

Over the course of a career that stretched from the 1920s to the 1980s, Alice Neel painted portraits of hundreds of friends, family members, lovers, artists art historians, writers, and political activists, believing that “people are the greatest and profoundest key to an era.” Seeking to express psychology above absolute physical likeness, she often used exaggerated colors and expressive brushstrokes and eliminated extraneous details in order to capture the inner lives of her subjects.

Neel was a longtime supporter of leftist causes. In the painting of Pat Whalen (1935), she depicts the Communist activist and union organizer for the longshoremen of Baltimore as a paragon of social justice. Whalen’s creased face and expression — along with a copy of the Daily Worker, the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA, resting beneath his large, clenched — suggest both a noble archetype of the blue-collar worker and an all-consuming commitment to the working man’s cause.

Photographed in the Whitney Museum in NYC.

Modern Art Monday Presents: The Businessman Max Roesberg, Dresden By Otto Dix

Nov19

The Businessman Max Roesberg, Dresden
Photo By Gail

German painter Otto Dix portrayed his subjects with a hard-edged, detached realism, accentuating unattractive features and signs of age. Since this portarit, The Businessman Max Roesberg, Dresden (1922) was a commission, his treatment of his subject was rather kind. Dix highlights Roesberg’s business prowess — which was short-lived — in several ways. The room is cluttered with materials central to a productive professional practice, such as a telephone, calendar, and tools for correspondence,while the palette of greens and blues alludes to rh coorof money. Moreover, Roesberg’s body is almost completely obscured by his business suit —  a mark of his professional identity.

Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

Modern Art Monday Presents: Lee Krasner, Self Portrait

Apr16

Lee Krasner Self Portrait
Photo By Gail

A powerful rendering by the artist in her twenties, this picture was made with a practical purpose; it was painted as a reception piece for admission to the life-drawing course at the National Academy of Design. While Lee Krasner (1908 – 1984) is best known for the personal style that she developed within the movement of Abstract Expressionism in the 19540s, this self portrait (c. 1930) is a rare example of her early work, using the thick brushwork and high color of the Impressionists and Realists of the previous generation. Strikingly, Krasner depicts herself at work in nature. She eyes the viewer, who stands on the spot where, presumably, a mirror hangs on a tree. Her expression and strong handling of light and shade evoke the resolve of a young woman rising to the challenge of her artistic vocation.

Photographed in the Jewish Museum in NYC.

Everyday Heroes NYC By Alexander Millar

Apr10

High and Mighty
High and Mighty, 2018  (All Photos By Gail)

Following a five-day preview run, ideally located at the New York City Fire Museum on Spring Street, artist Alexander Millar’s firefighter portrait series, Everyday Heroes NYC moves on to a two-week run in a popular pop up space in SoHo. Hailing from Glasgow, Scotland, but now living in the north of England, Millar is a self-taught contemporary impressionist with a particular interest in late 19th and early 20th century blue collar workers.

Black FF
Portrait of Wesley A. Williams

Millar now brings his critically acclaimed artwork to Manhattan with his series of original oil paintings and pencil sketches of New York Firefighters, some of whom have sacrificed their lives in the line of duty. The series is, not surprisingly, very moving, includes a portrait of Wesley A. Williams. Born in Manhattan in 1897, Williams became only the third African-American to join the New York City Fire Department, at a time of segregation and discrimination. He became the first African-American to be promoted to the rank of officer, when he became a lieutenant in 1927. Williams (now deceased) retired in 1952 with the rank of Battalion Chief.

A New Dawn
A Group of Firefighters Raise the Flag at Ground Zero in A New Dawn (2018)

Everyday Heroes NYC is a collection of original oil paintings and limited edition prints which pay tribute  to firefighters both past and present; fathers, brothers, songs, daughter, mothers and sisters. Everyday heroes. These portraits were inspired by and honors the men and women of the New York Fire Department; some of whom perished in the tragedy of  the 9/11 attacks.

Forever in Your Arms

The subject of Forever in Your Arms (2018) is modeled after Keithroy Maynard,  who was one of twelve African American firefighters to die at the WTC on 9/11. Maynard was just 30 years old.

We Could Be Heroes

Painted in a similar style is We Can Be Heroes, seen here as the original oil painting from which a limited print series will be available. The final version of the print will not feature any reference to the FDNY, but will reference New York only, and it can be customized by Millar with any name of your choosing added to the jacket.

Fuerza Y Honor Strength and Honour
Fuerza Y Honor (Strength and Honour), 2018

I like this one a lot.

Power and Glory
Power and Glory (2018)

This one is great, too. This lady was at the opening reception.

No One Left Behind
No One Left Behind (2018)

Alexander Millar’s Everyday Heroes NYC will be on Exhibit Through Saturday, April 20th,  2018 at Millar Fine Art Gallery, a Pop Up Space Located at 138 Wooster Street, NYC 10012. 20% of the profits from sales of these artworks will be donated to the city’s Fire Museum and the Vulcan Society. Visit the Exhibit’s Website at This Link!

Installation View
Installation View

Modern Art Monday Presents: Amedeo Modigliani, The Jewess

Jan15

The Jewess
Photo By Gail

In titling this painting The Jewess (1908), one of the first that Modigliani exhibited, the artist declared that the sitter’s cultural identity was more important than her name. The model was most likely Modigliani’s lover, Maud Abrantes. Beyond her pallor, she is depicted with a withdrawn, languid demeanor, her cheeks and deeply set eyes touched with startling tabs of green, a streak of which also highlights the ridge of the patrician, aquiline nose. A curious pale mark obscures the area between her eyes, further isolating and drawing attention to her nose

This emphasis on the nose recurs throughout Modigliani’s work and is a focal point of his sculpture. It is s self-referential facet of his own Jewishness — an identity that his daughter later recalled as being deeply important to him. Modigliani’s exploration of his Jewish identity, as a central aspect of his portraiture, has been little noticed.

Photographed in the Jewish Museum in NYC as part of the Exhibit Modigliani Unmasked, which Continues Through February 4th, 2018.