The Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art is on a roll. Coming off the success of their Keith Haring exhibition, Realms of Intimacy: Miniaturist Practice from Pakistan, is yet another visually compelling and conceptually astute exhibition. Close reading of the title no doubt echoes curator Justine Ludwig’s major point: the traditional practice of miniature creation is applied to contemporary non-miniature...
In 1973 the art critic of the Cincinnati Post wrote that Thom Shaw “a young Cincinnatian, Art Academy trained, is possessed of a powerful line and sense of balance within his works.” An exhibition of Shaw’s black and white masonite block prints was at the Miller Gallery, then on Edwards Road. I was the art critic.
Carmel Buckley’s slice of the universe is filled with sheer unlimited creativity, topped, like the traditional cherry on a sundae, with surprises, as if the universe were not enough. With a twist of wire, a dollop of clay, and a few well-used found objects, her sculptures blossom with curious freshness and drawings and prints become hypnotic in their profound simplicity.
This is the first in a series of a quarterly letters, which will cover painting shows in greater New York If you want to experience the New York art scene from afar, watch James Kalm’s videos. Kalm tirelessly travels the city documenting art openings and exhibitions from Manhattan to Brooklyn. His videos are a selective, but fairly accurate portrayal of gallery going in New York. James Kalm is actually a psuedonym.
Bequeathed to the people of Cincinnati in 1927, along with its collections, the Taft Museum of Art opened in 1932. Once the home of Nicholas Longworth and then Charles Phelps Taft, the house was originally finished in 1820 by Martin Baum, Cincinnati’s first millionaire and founder of the Miami Exporting Company, which in 1803 became the first bank chartered in Ohio.
Like doodles scribbled on the edges of homework, Peter Saul’s exquisitely moronic pictures (on display mostly in lithographic form at Carl Solway Gallery through December 22, 2011) have a rote yet somehow ominous quality, a blurry merger of the popular and profane. While seeming to be birthed from boredom and cynicism like punk rock, they also have the cozy innocuousness of storybooks published on the cheap. Blatant and iconic...
“Speed Trials” was an essay commissioned for the catalog accompanying the exhibition “Trial by Fire: New Glass Work by Darren Goodman” at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM). Goodman was selected by the 4 th Floor, an associated group of the Museum, for its biennial 4 th Floor Award, a competition to promote local artists. The organization is named for a level that is yet to be built in the Art Museum and encourages future...
Currently on display at the Miller Gallery on Hyde Park Square, is an exhibition featuring 25 artists whose work offers outstanding examples of contemporary realist painting. A movement towards figurative painting among artists has accelerated in the past five to eight years. Whether artists are painting portraits, interiors or still lifes, the work is incredibly exciting.
Once I thought of Bessie Wessel with some pity, a victim of her times, when women were permitted to study, but not to enjoy a full, satisfying career. Men, like Bessie’s husband, Herman, would pursue success in the world, while the ladies, God bless ‘em, tended the comforts that would enable the men to fight the good fight. Then I saw Bessie’s self portrait at Ran Gallery, painted in her mature years.
