Boston tends to have an inferiority complex when it comes to art. One of the world’s great college towns, it’s a great place to learn to be an artist, but not always a great place to pursue a career in art, existing as it does in the long shadow of New York City, one of […]
Carol A. Wilson is the only architect in Maine who is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. She is also the state’s finest practitioner and proselytizer of “modern” architecture, that much bandied about term that sometimes refers to the current and contemporary but actually has more to do with style than time. In […]
Okay, I’ll admit it. I know nothing about Japanese anime (animated films) and manga (comics). And I know even less about their influence on contemporary American art. I’m guessing a lot of New England art lovers are in the same boat. That’s why I’m so impressed that the pioneering Portsmouth Museum of Art has seen […]
Like Pat Steir (Just Looking, Feb. 18, 2010), the artist whose show preceded hers at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Lynda Benglis is a creature of the Post-Minimal 1970s. She is probably best known (or notorious) for the full-page ad she took out in a 1974 issue of Artforum in which she posed […]
Frank Stella, the pioneering Minimalist who is among the greatest contemporary American artists, is also one of the most famous artists that Massachusetts has ever produced though he has never really been identified with Massachusetts. Born in Malden in 1936, Stella graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover in 1954, left New England to attend college, […]
The gentle Cranberry Isles scattered off the shores of rugged Mount Desert Island have provided shelter and subject matter to some of the best artists in modern Maine art history – William Kienbusch, John Heliker, Robert LaHotan, Dorothy Eisner, Emily Nelligan, Ashley Bryan, Gretna Campbell, and Campbell’s son Henry Finkelstein. Like most of the artists […]
Meg Brown Payson is a Maine painter whose work tends to be seen more often in Massachusetts than in Maine. Currently, it’s in Chester, Connecticut, subject of a solo exhibition at Eo Art Lab entitled Hydrostatic Pressure (through September 26). The title, which in fluid mechanics is “the pressure at a point in a fluid […]
All representational art is an optical illusion, the representation of three dimensional objects and space on a two dimensional surface. But when we think of art and illusion, we generally think of things such as trompe l’oeil paintings, the visual conundrums of an M.C. Escher, and the hypnotic geometries of 1970s Op Art, art works […]
The Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Eastport, Maine, has been having a 1970s summer. The exhibition that just closed, The ’70s: Art & Place at Passamaquoddy Bay, Maine, featured artists active in the area in the 1970s. Now, (through September 19) the Tides Institute is featuring a solo exhibition by Richard Van Buren, […]
No one has ever been able to satisfactorily explain to me why a traditional New England prep school boasts an art museum that would be the envy of most colleges, but the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts is just that. The Addison has been closed since 2008 for a […]
The old fire barn that houses the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in the village of Rockport, Maine, is filled top to bottom with three wonderfully satisfying solo exhibitions between now and September 25. CMCA was on the financial ropes last year and appeared on the verge of collapse, but with new director Suzette McAvoy […]
A decade ago, Scottish painter Peter Davies painted two famous paintings “The Hot One Hundred” and “The Hip One Hundred.” Both paintings are simply colorful lists of important artists. Alex Katz made both paintings. He was No. 90 on “The Hot One Hundred,” but he was No. 4 on “The Hip One Hundred.” Since the […]
