Some Western art history books do not mention an American artist until Winslow Homer. A case can be made that Homer (1836-1910) was the first truly great American painter, certainly that he was the greatest of the 19th century, possibly even that he is the greatest American artist of all time. Apologies to Jackson Pollock. […]
Ahmed Alsoudani is fortunate to have been born in Baghdad, Iraq. Had he been born in South Bend, Indiana, I doubt his wild neo-surrealist paintings would be selling for big bucks to some of the world’s biggest art collectors or that they would be hanging now at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Ahmed […]
In the interest of full disclosure, Portland gallerist Andres Verzosa is a close friend and my partner in a forthcoming publishing venture, but after 35 years of writing about art in Maine, if I refrained from writing about artists and art dealers I know personally, most of the best would be off limits. The current exhibition (September […]
A century after the brutal ax murders of Andrew and Abby Borden, the question of who killed them remains unanswered. In this Yankee Classic from 1992, explore Fall River’s enduring fascination with its most infamous native, from the collectors and historians still searching for answers to the startling theories that continue to surround the case.
Oh, Canada (not to be confused with the Canadian national anthem O Canada) is a survey of contemporary art from Canada at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in the far western Mass. Art mecca of North Adams (through April 1, 2013). I am indebted to my colleague Greg Cook of the Boston […]
Hugh J. Gourley, III, director of the Colby College Museum of Art from 1966 until 2002, passed away in Portland, Maine, on July 25 at the age of 81. There is no way to overstate the impact Hugh Gourley had on the Colby museum, Colby College itself, and the Maine art scene. There is no […]
Eric Aho gets around. Born and educated in Massachusetts, raised in New Hampshire, he lives in Vermont, summers in Maine, and currently has a solo exhibition in New Hampshire. Transcending Nature: Paintings by Eric Aho at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester NH (through September 9) features 30 paintings that display the range of […]
On Friday, July 13, I am planning to attend a press preview of the William Wegman retrospective at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine. Entitled William Wegman: Hello Nature, the exhibition is the first major show by Wegman, a Maine summer resident and one of the country’s most famous photographers. The […]
“Dogtown looks like a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge – essentially druidic in its appearance – it gives the feeling that an ancient race might turn up at any moment and renew an ageless rite there. Dogtown is therefore not the ground for sketch artists and that is why they never go there […]
The Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, Maine began life in 1952 as an artists’ cooperative called Maine Coast Artists. It was still Maine Coast Artists in 1992 (and always will be to me) when it celebrated its 40th anniversary with a landmark exhibition entitled On the Edge: Forty Years of Maine Painting […]
Twenty-one years ago, back in March of 1991, I wrote a short profile of Boston painter George Nick for Yankee in which I observed that “though he rarely paints people, George Nick is a society painter.” “In the solid, reassuring facades, high bay windows, and ornate stone entries along Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue, […]
The contemporary Maine art scene was largely created by groups of artists who got together following World War II to create such institutions as the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (1946) and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (1950) and to form cooperative galleries such as the Barn Gallery (1958) in Ogunquit, Maine Coast […]
