Tag Archives: Painting

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Persistence and Patience Paying Off

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Persistence and Patience Paying Off

It’s probably a good time for our semi-annual hockey post that highlights some bizarre (or perhaps, pertinent?) parallel between the New York Rangers and teaching with contemporary art. This post is devoted to persistence.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Contemporary Art Turns Four

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Contemporary Art Turns Four

No sooner are we celebrating our upcoming fourth year with Art21 Educators as I am reminded that the Teaching with Contemporary Art column also turns four this week. Looks like I’ll be playing the fourth horse in the fourth race this weekend. Last year I celebrated by looking back over the first three years but today I’d like to just look back over the past twelve months because it’s been quite a ride. Here are some highlights since last spring.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | The Painter of Light is Radically Not Me

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | The Painter of Light is Radically Not Me

Catherine Wagley reflects on the passing of Thomas Kinkade, the infamously popular “Painter of Light” who pushed the idea of coziness to mind-numbing extremes.

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | Brilliance Under Pressure: Dana Schutz’s Monotypes at Gallery Met

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | Brilliance Under Pressure: Dana Schutz’s Monotypes at Gallery Met

Sarah Kirk Hanley looks at Dana Schutz’s most recent body of work: a series of large watercolor monotypes created at Two Palms, New York.

Moving In

Moving In

Artist Dmitry Samarov finds that moving into a new home can be a source of fresh inspiration.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | LACMA’s Rock Star

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | LACMA’s Rock Star

Lily Simonson looks at Michael Heizer’s 340 ton sculpture “Levitated Mass,” and wonders why relatively few female artists have produced large-scale public works.

Cairo in Context: Art and Change in the Middle East

Cairo in Context | Female Problems

Cairo in Context: Art and Change in the Middle East

Cairo in Context | Female Problems

How have the ways of representing, questioning or challenging gender in the visual arts changed in Egypt over the past year?

No Preservatives: Conversations about Conservation

No Preservatives | Looking Back to Nigeria: Ben Osaghae’s Critical Observations [Part III]

No Preservatives: Conversations about Conservation

No Preservatives | Looking Back to Nigeria: Ben Osaghae’s Critical Observations [Part III]

In this five-part series, Richard McCoy looks back on his recent trip to Nigeria through the lens of artists working in the area.

Art21 Extended Play

Exclusive | Lari Pittman: Audience

Art21 Extended Play

Exclusive | Lari Pittman: Audience

Our latest web-only Exclusive features Lari Pittman on the role that spontaneity plays in the construction of his paintings.

On View Now

On View Now | Damien Hirst’s Spot Paintings and the “Joy of Color”

On View Now

On View Now | Damien Hirst’s Spot Paintings and the “Joy of Color”

Max Weintraub argues that Gagosian Gallery’s exhibition provides convincing evidence that Damien Hirst is indeed an extraordinary colorist.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Transformation and Distortion

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Transformation and Distortion

Two of my classes begin a new unit where students are asked to work with the themes of distortion and transformation. Especially for teens, the idea of transformation- of the self, objects, symbols, even the meaning of words- is an attractive proposal. Add the multiple implications associated with distortion and it becomes the kind of field day you really want in a classroom.

Stefano Spera, Grand theft auto, 2009, oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm

Videogame Appropriation in Contemporary Art: Grand Theft Auto (GTA)

Videogame Appropriation in Contemporary Art: Grand Theft Auto (GTA)

Artists like Joan Pamboukes draw on the Grand Theft Auto videogames to explore real-world issues of violence, gender, and social and economic ills.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Under the Radar: Best of 2011, Part 2

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Under the Radar: Best of 2011, Part 2

Following up on last week’s post, here are a few more shows that flew under the radar in 2011, including Dana Schutz at the Neuberger and Katharina Grosse at Mass MoCA.

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Centerfield | Against Nature: An Interview with Hernan Bas

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Centerfield | Against Nature: An Interview with Hernan Bas

The painter known for his lush, fanciful landscapes discusses the roles that literature, Romanticism and the theatrical play in his work.

Gastro-Vision | It Was a Sweet Year

Gastro-Vision | It Was a Sweet Year

Think sweets are just for kids? Think again: Caruth surveys ten memorable food art projects from 2011 that take a cutting-edge approach to the dessert genre.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Under the Radar: Best of 2011

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Under the Radar: Best of 2011

Some excellent shows from 2011 flew a little under the radar, even a few housed in major museums, and they had plenty to offer when it comes to inspiring students and teachers. Part 1 of 2.

Constructing the Sacred Dramas: David Maxim’s Revealing Bible Stories

Constructing the Sacred Dramas: David Maxim’s Revealing Bible Stories

Do Biblical narratives still have relevance to contemporary practices? A look at the paintings of David Maxim, which restage Biblical tales in abstract, emotional terms.

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | Tales for Our Time: Amy Cutler’s Prints

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | Tales for Our Time: Amy Cutler’s Prints

  Fantastical narrative is a guiding principle for many artists who have come to prominence in the past decade; Amy Cutler and Dana Schutz are foremost among these.  Both possess …

From the stage to the studio | Terence Hannum: unholy bows, negative litanies, and amidst throngs

From the stage to the studio | Terence Hannum: unholy bows, negative litanies, and amidst throngs

  Terence Hannum is a musician and studio artist who has recently relocated from Chicago to Baltimore to teach at Stevenson University. I first met Terence shortly after moving to …

On View Now

On View Now | I See A Darkness: Warhol and Lichtenstein, Shadows and Mirrors en Abyme

On View Now

On View Now | I See A Darkness: Warhol and Lichtenstein, Shadows and Mirrors en Abyme

  “People are always calling me a mirror, and if a mirror looks into a mirror, what is there to see?” – Andy Warhol In the current exhibition at the …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

It’s OK to Make Art…

Teaching with Contemporary Art

It’s OK to Make Art…

It’s amazing… After over twenty years teaching I still get nervous. And I’m not thinking about the first day of classes (everyone gets nervous then), I was actually thinking about …

William Harsh on Tradition, Anonymity, Picasso and the Barbaric Yawp

William Harsh on Tradition, Anonymity, Picasso and the Barbaric Yawp

This past summer, San Franciscans were treated to an art smorgasbord from Paris’s Banquet Years, before the Great War. A Picasso exhibition came to the de Young Museum, and an …

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Suburban Seriality

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Suburban Seriality

We were not the same, though when we came together, we acted as one. Growing up together, seven girls in the suburbs of Northern California, we told each other’s stories and …

Money/Market

Money/Market

Let’s face it. Occupy Wall Street, and just about everything else, is about money – who has it and who doesn’t – and how the market can help or hurt …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 New York Close Up

Teaching with New York Close Up: Keltie Ferris Spray Paints in Solitude

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 New York Close Up

Teaching with New York Close Up: Keltie Ferris Spray Paints in Solitude

While watching Keltie Ferris Spray Paints in Solitude, I kept wondering to myself… What can students and teachers learn from engaging with this five minutes of film? I wanted a …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Getting Set for PS1’s “September 11”

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Getting Set for PS1’s “September 11”

In two weeks I am taking a group of students to visit the September 11 exhibition at PS1. Most of the high school students in these two classes have some …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Whiplash

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Whiplash

Last week, I had the displeasure of experiencing exhibition whiplash at Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue. On one side of the building, “Continuum”- an exquisite show by Jenny Saville and …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Taking the Long Way Home: Working With a Theme in a Series

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Taking the Long Way Home: Working With a Theme in a Series

One of the students in my advanced classes is taking on the theme of “looking vs. seeing” for her first semester portfolio. She wants to explore the things people tend …

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Both a Science and an Art, Part 2

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Both a Science and an Art, Part 2

    Alison Kendall creates drawings and paintings in which viewers’ expectations are breached by dreamlike intruders. The San Francisco–based artist went to school for scientific illustration, learning to draw animals …

Letter from London

Letter from London | Rarely Pure, and Never Simple

Letter from London

Letter from London | Rarely Pure, and Never Simple

  Maybe Thomas Struth’s 1995 photograph of the interior of the church of San Zaccaria in Venice is too obvious a way to epitomise the relationship between contemporary art and …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Fruits of Summer

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Fruits of Summer

Summer offers fantastic opportunities for educators of all kinds to catch interesting group shows and special exhibitions that are happening before we start up the engines again in the fall. …

Selina Trepp: Artist Avoiding Painting

Selina Trepp: Artist Avoiding Painting

Thea Liberty Nichols: I left your studio, which you were kind enough to have me visit the other day, inspired to make new work because hearing about the “instructions” you …

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Both a Science and an Art

Bedfellows: Art and Visual Culture

Bedfellows | Both a Science and an Art

Every Wednesday night, my grammar teacher takes chalk to blackboard to underline subjects and circle direct objects. White dust falling to the floor, she puts brackets around prepositional phrases and …

The Lexicon of Alisha Kerlin

The Lexicon of Alisha Kerlin

I’ve held my own definition of literacy for some time now: that becoming increasingly literate is essentially seeing the world with increasing nuance.  Greater literacy means grasping the many shades …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Revealing “Unfinished Paintings”

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Revealing “Unfinished Paintings”

The nature of painting – its objecthood, its permanence — demands a level of resolution and wholeness to which other more ephemeral art practices need not always answer.  Hence the …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Nicole Eisenman and Wynne Greenwood

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Nicole Eisenman and Wynne Greenwood

Digging through Nicole Eisenman’s current show at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, one begins to understand why it’s so perfect that the artist presents us with 77 different titles for …