Art and the Postwar Political Climate

The ADD-Challenged Eye

G. Roger Denson’s second essay on  Leftist political art covers the period from the end of the Second World War to the middle of the 1960s, an era of rapid political and cultural change.  His survey is world-wide and very thorough and I’ll limit my discussion to three strictly American aspects of it; Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and the treatment of Race in America.

I’m not sure that I buy into Denson’s contention that humanity was conscious of a radically changed world at the end of WWII. My parents and their siblings were of that generation and most were veterans and they fully expected things to return to normal after the war, albeit with better economic opportunities available. The gravity of the nuclear age would take awhile to dawn on them.

I don’t know if the things that happened in the 1930s and 40s, like the Holocaust and the Rape…

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Pablo Picasso, Public Sculpture, 1967, Chicago, Illinois

Top Ten Sculptors – Barbara Hepworth

GIO’ POMODORO: THE PATH OF A GREAT SCULPTOR

ROBERTO ALBORGHETTI

 Monferrato area (Italy): events and shows to celebrate the great master of international sculpture

 

” Gio Pomodoro, The path of a sculptor: 1954-2001″ is the theme of one of the most important exhibitions devoted to the celebrated Italian sculptor. The show opened on December 7, in Alessandria (Piemonte, Italy) and it will continue in the enchanting Monferrato area. Villas, Palaces and Museums will become a sort of network by which people may approach the works of the great master of international sculpture. The events started in Alessandria and they’ll also reach Acqui Terme, Novi Ligure, Valenza, Tortona and Casale Monferrato.

During the great show, which involves nine venues, will be exhibited 173 works, offering a trip back in cognitive poetics and aesthetics of the monumental and magnificent works of Gio’ Pomodoro, whose intellectual roots, mathematics and philosophy, have been recognized and appreciated throughout the world. The event is sponsored…

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Modern Art Along The Scioto Mile

Webner House

Columbus wants to complete its Scioto Mile Park with a monumental sculpture.  The plan is to add a large piece of artwork along the riverfront that will become as identifiable with Columbus as the Gateway Arch is with St. Louis and the Space Needle is with Seattle.

The proposed piece would be abstract, six stories tall, made of reflective metal, and shaped like . . . the cooling tower of a nuclear plant.  Not surprisingly, some people are questioning that design.

I like the idea of putting a large piece of public art along the Scioto Mile.  I think it should be a bold statement, not some timid, compromise product of a committee.  We don’t need another realistic sculpture like the big statue of Christopher Columbus in front of City Hall.  I’m not sure how I feel about the “cooling tower” design — it seems like the shape is…

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Whitney Museum of American Art

Library Hotel Concierge Portal

• 945 Madison Ave (at 75th St) Upper East Side
• (212) 570-3600
• Subway: 6 to 77th St | Get directions
• A map can be found here

Opening Times Wed, Thu, Sat, Sun 11am–6pm; Fri 1–9pm

Admission $18; seniors, adults 19–25 and students $12; ages 18 and under free

Like the Guggenheim, the Whitney is set apart by its unique architecture: It’s a Marcel Breuer–designed grey granite cube with an all-seeing upper-story “eye” window. When Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a sculptor and art patron, opened the museum in 1931, she dedicated it to living American artists. Today, the Whitney holds about 18,000 pieces by about 2,700 artists, including Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Edward Hopper (the museum holds his entire estate), Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O’Keeffe and Claes Oldenburg. Still, the museum’s reputation rests mainly on its temporary shows, particularly the exhibition everyone loves to hate, the Whitney Biennial…

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Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Guggenheim Museum, a masterpiece of architecture.

Library Hotel Concierge Portal

• 1071 Fifth Ave (at 89th St) Upper East Side
• (212) 423-3500
• Subway: 4, 5, 6 to 86th St | Get directions
• A map can be found here

Opening Times Mon–Wed, Fri, Sun 10am–5:45pm; Sat 10am–7:45pm

Admission $18, seniors and students with ID $15, children under 12 accompanied by an adult free. Sat 5:45–7:45pm pay what you wish

The Guggenheim is as famous for its landmark building—designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and restored for its 50th birthday in 2009—as it is for its impressive collection and daring temporary shows. The museum owns Peggy Guggenheim’s trove of Cubist, Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist works, along with the Panza di Biumo Collection of American Minimalist and Conceptual art from the 1960s and ’70s. In addition to works by Manet, Picasso, Chagall and Bourgeois, it holds the largest collection of Kandinskys in the U.S. In 1992, the addition of a ten-story tower provided…

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Beaming Geometry

Red Nails and Teacups

I could probably turn Red Nails into a blog solely devoted to photographs of cool light and smoke installations and no one would know any better. While I’m going to park editorial redirection for the moment, the work of Jim Sanborn, an American artist and sculptor, is worth considering. His long exposure photos of gigantic light-installations in the American and Irish wilderness, are eerily stunning – framing the enormous scale of the natural monuments with their geometric beams. I particularly like pictures 2 and 4 (in order of scrolling) with the constellations captured so perfectly behind them.

{Bandon, Oregon}

{Cainville, Utah}

{Rough Rock, Arizona}

{Notom, Utah}

{Longsturn, County Cork, Ireland}

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The Prison

The prision