All Photos By Gail
Lynda Benglis‘ work of poured latex takes painting to an extreme. Despite employing a medium, that is not itself paint, Benglis nonetheless draws attention to paint’s essential, primary properties: color and liquidity. To make Contraband (1969), the artist created, mixtures of powdered pigment and latex in 5-gallon cans that she then poured and let run on the floor with minimal intervention. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Lynda Benglis, Contraband
Photo By Gail
The only painting in which Edward Hopper depicts a cinema screen, New York Movie (1939) is one of the artist’s most compelling and spatially complex theater pictures. This work depicts three distinct features within the movie house: the screen, the moviegoers watching it, and the usher tasked with watching them. The space itself is an amalgam of hoppers on-site research from four New York theaters: the Globe, Palace, Republic, and Strand. Hopper’s wife, Jo, who posed for both the usher and the audience members, noted Edward’s struggle in bringing this painting together: “it is such a difficult subject…Not to be there as he looks – not even taken from any one theater – bits from all of them.” Examples from the 53 extant sketches show both the design flourishes characteristic to each theater, as well as certain architectural typologies common to all.
Photographed as part of the Exhibit Hopper’s New York on View at the Whitney Museum, New York City, Through March 5th, 2023.
Photo By Gail
Agnes Pelton (1881 – 1961) strove to portray a spiritual realm beyond material appearances. Her artistic breakthrough came in the mid-1920s in a series of abstract paintings, depicting incorporeal subject matter such as air, light, water, and sound. In the decades that followed, as she began to immerse herself in the study of esoteric and occult philosophies, her imagery evolved. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Agnes Pelton, Resurgence
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Cy Gavin’s recent paintings, such as Untitled (Snag) from 2022, conjure landscapes and the natural world. His imagery frequently starts from his observations of his immediate surroundings, but his selections also carry metaphorical weight. Recent paintings have depicted cosmic phenomena, a failing human-made dam patched by beavers, native and invasive flora, and a forest’s regrowth in the wake of earth disturbances such as construction activities.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Untitled (Snag) By Cy Gavin
All Photos By Gail
To make the figure in this sculpture, a sleeping bag was draped to suggest the contours of a human body and then cast in clay. The thousands of empty bullet casings that surround the ceramic form become a protective barrier. “In some way,” artist Rebecca Belmore (b. 1960) has said, “the work carries an emptiness. But at the same time, because it’s a standing figure, I am hoping that the work contains some positive aspects of this idea that we need to try to deal with violence.”
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: ishkode (fire) By Rebecca Belmore