ARTES MAGAZINE

   “The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.”  —Willem de Kooning They say that autumn is the time when the boundary between the living and the [...]

September 12, 2011 In late summer of 1948, a strange gathering took place on the top floor of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Distinguished men (all men) from the fields of arts, letters, academia and the publishing world were invited by LIFE Magazine to discuss and debate the then-current state of the “modern painting” [...]

The English-born artist Rackstraw Downes is finally, at the age of 71, having a long-overdue moment. After toiling for four decades making meticulous onsite paintings of landscapes, cityscapes and interiors – without the aid of a camera – Downes is enjoying his first major career retrospective. The stunning Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008, which opened [...]

Over the past three decades, the marriage of high art and finance has steadily enriched the latter while acutely impoverishing the former. The business artists of today, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Shepard Fairy, known more for their public personae and brand identity than the quality of any single work, would be unimaginable without the template [...]

In his recent oil paintings, Yigal Ozeri explores personifications of youthful innocence, visualized as lovely young maidens-cum-goddesses. He situates them lingering in an iconic Eden, poised to confront the dangers and delights that womanhood encompasses. Ozeri captures the essence of young girls seen in contemplation or at play, pondering their existence and surroundings, unaware of [...]

Anne Ferrer’s new series of colorful cloth sculptures, curated by Edward Rubin, is reminiscent of inflatable, shaped balloons that wink and bob in a kind of rhythmic modern dance. Up-down movements mingle with in-out ‘breathing’, as air slowly and randomly inflates and deflates each work. The seven pieces are composed as a tightly-clustered group. But [...]

Jasper Johns said, “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. Do something else to it.” He encourages each artist to embrace the act of creating something that enthralls, the moment it is perceived. Enhance the work by pushing its boundaries to a new level, he seems to be saying. Expand [...]

“We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men… trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true: but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings – many of them not so much.” -John Muir, Scribner’s Monthly, November, 1878.  “I frequently tramped eight [...]

 While the title of Santa Fe-based artist Joyce Melander-Dayton’s current outing at the June Kelly Gallery in New York City reads Extravagant Constructions—an apt title, especially when you are standing up close, studying the artist’s intricately bejeweled craftsmanship and her use of materials and patterning (think Faberge Egg or the Gobelin Tapestries )—it could just [...]

Home Stills leave home or stick around. Bastienne Schmidt wanders, metaphorically or on foot, in and out of a woman’s life and imagination, her own and by inference, many another’s. At home and not-home, amid order and disorder, roaming and staying put, hiding out in plain sight, she builds narratives where multiple meanings glimmer below [...]