Photos By Gail
The Candytopia is a candy-themed immersive exhibit that has been touring major cities across the US for a while now. The newest space (and the largest to-date) is located in the Penn Plaza district of NYC, and inhabits 24,000 square feet, boasting 17 different interactive environments, Instagram-worthy photo opportunities, and offering delectable tastes of your favorite sweet treats along your journey!
All Photos By Gail
Kehinde Wiley’s new artwork Portrait of a Young Gentleman (2021) is based on Thomas Gainsborough’s painting of the same name, which is commonly known as The Blue Boy (pictured below) which is an icon of the collection at southern California’s Huntgington Library. Blue Boy (1770) follows a tradition of portraiture often referred to as ‘grand manner,’ whose stylistic formula is designed to announce the wealth and status of those who are portrayed.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of a Young Gentleman
Photo By Gail
The unveiling of the portrait of President Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley in 2018 was a historic moment. With the Obamas‘ selection of Wiley and Amy Sherald (who painted First Lady Michelle Obama’s portrait) to produce their official likenesses, these painters became the first black artist to receive the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s commission for portraits of a President or First Lady.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Portrait of President Barack Obama By Kehinde Wiley
Photo by Gail
Chuck Close is known as much for his detailed representation of the human face as he is for his subsequent deconstruction of it. Close uses head-on portraits as his templates, exploring portraiture and his subjects through a variety of drawing and painterly techniques, as well as through printmaking, tapestry and photography. John (1971–72) one of Close’s earliest paintings, is described as photo-realist. Indeed, Close refers to photographs to create his artworks, employing their inconsistencies perspective as much as their verisimilitude.
Here, the sharp detail of the rim of the subject’s glasses contrasts with the blurred soft focus of his shoulders and the back of his hair, as it likely did in the original photograph. But instead of using mechanical means to transfer his images onto canvas, Close works entirely from sight to achieve the intensely animate detail, sectioning off the reference photographs into grids and transferring each piece by hand onto is monumental canvases,
Photographed at The Broad in Los Angeles, CA.
Photo By Gail
For more than sixty years, Alex Katz has created paintings distinguished by their bold colors, sharp outlines, and subjects taken from his daily life. By simplifying facial features and using flat, unmixed colors in works such as Edwin, Blue Series (1965), Katz emphasizes the form of the painting above its content. Here, he has cropped the left side of the body, asserting the figure as a subject of abstraction. The painting depicts Edwin Denby, a modernist poet and dance critic as well as a close friend of artists including Katz, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and Franz Kline. Katz credits Denby for his appreciation of abstraction. Refusing to reveal his subjects’ personalities or interior life, Katz’s paintings focus instead on technique and visual invention.
Photographed in the Whitney Museum in Manhattan.