Archive for June, 2019

June/July Issue of Aeqai Online

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in Announcements

The June/July issue of Aeqai has just posted.  We apologize for the delay this month; my pneumonia dragged on and on and I’ve had limited energy to work. But short though this issue is,we believe that it’s an important and stimulating one. We review two museum shows and one major arts center in Cincinnati this […]

Posthuman Design: Creatures: When Species Meet at the Contemporary Arts Center

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in *

Posthuman Design: Creatures: When Species Meet at the Contemporary Arts Center

Creatures: When Species Meet locates creative processes less in the imagination of singular artists than in the encounter between living things, their negotiation of each other’s habits and desires through media both traditional and emergent. As the show catalogs those processes, it disrupts humanist views of nonhuman animals, defending against their reduction to symbols within […]

Does Size Matter?: “Magnitude Seven: 15th Annual Exhibition of Small Works” at Manifest Gallery, May 31-June 28, 2019

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in *

Does Size Matter?: “Magnitude Seven: 15th Annual Exhibition of Small Works” at Manifest Gallery, May 31-June 28, 2019

“Magnitude Seven” is neither the oldest nor the smallest show of small things in town, a distinction that probably goes to the Art Academy’s “Minumental” show every fall, which has run for over thirty years, and requires that each work be no larger than two inches in any direction. Jason Franz, Founding Executive Director and […]

“L’ Affichomania: The Passion for French Posters,” Taft Museum of Art, through September 14, 2019

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in *

“L’ Affichomania: The Passion for French Posters,” Taft Museum of Art, through September 14, 2019

Sometimes it takes time for the aesthetic worth of something to be recognized. This most definitely was not the case with French advertising handbills AKA posters from its Golden Age, from 1880 to the late 1890s. They immediately attracted a passionate bunch of collectors, earning them the sobriquet affichomaniaques–poster maniacs. “L’ Affichomania: The Passion for French […]

Hilna Af Klint at The Guggenheim: Metaphysics as it Patrols Mortality’s Borders

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in *, June/July 2019

Hilna Af Klint at The Guggenheim: Metaphysics as it Patrols Mortality’s Borders

The Guggenheim’s spring retrospective of the seminal Swedish painter, Hilma Af Klint, has, naturally, evoked a multitude of art critics and visual culture scholars who laud her radical abstraction which, at the beginning of the 20th century, preceded Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian. Yet, where much attention has been given to the symbology and motifs riddling Klint’s […]

From the Mythic Nile to the Mighty Ohio

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in *

From the Mythic Nile to the Mighty Ohio

“Egypt: The Time of the Pharaohs” Cincinnati Museum Center, 1301 Western Avenue   Cincinnati, OH Through August 18, 2019 Step into a time when civilization grew along the Nile, pyramids dotted the skyline and people believed gods walked among us…… From the mythic Nile to the mighty Ohio, “Egypt: The Time of Pharaohs” made its U.S. […]

The Laughter of the Unconscious

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in June/July 2019

The Laughter of the Unconscious

It was 1957 when “nudity for nudity’s sake” in cinema became a point for deliberation: the court case, Excelsior Pictures v. New York Board of Regents, hinged whether the display of onscreen nudity in Garden of Eden (dir. Max Nosseck), a “ludicrous nudist colony picture,” was legally obscene. Garden of Eden was distributed by Excelsior […]

Yvonne van Eijden at Askew Gallery

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in June/July 2019

Yvonne van Eijden at Askew Gallery

Yvonne van Eijden Yvonne van Eijden was born June 6,1956 in Oisterwijk, the Netherlands. She received her art education at the Free Academy, The Hague, The Netherlands, and at Three Schools of Art, Toronto, Canada. She came to the USA in 2000 and developed a very strong connection with the land and its people.  Yvonne […]

Off Ludlow Gallery: A Pop Up on Ormond Street in Clifton

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in June/July 2019

Off Ludlow Gallery:  A Pop Up on Ormond Street in Clifton

On the corner of Ludlow Ave. and Ormond Street is Gaslight Bar and Grill and down the street, there used to be the Clifton Post Office. Now, the Post Office has turned into Off Ludlow Gallery, a pop-up gallery and small space of 592-square- feet for artists to display their work as well as host […]

Isabella Hammad’s “The Parisian”

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in June/July 2019

Isabella Hammad’s “The Parisian”, is yet another debut novel this year of astonishing power and grace.  Set partly in France and mostly in Palestine before the implementation of The Balfour Declaration, which created The State of Israel and presumably a Palestinian state, Hammad’s created, in her narrator Midhat Kamal, a truly memorable partly Baudelaireian Parisian […]

Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in June/July 2019

Ocean Vuong is a young Vietnamese-American, whose first collection of poetry was widely acclaimed, and whose first novel, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, deserves the same praise for this debut novel, which is often painfully moving, poignant, and often even raw.  Written as a letter to his mother, whom he calls “Ma”, who also doesn’t […]

Nell Freudenberger’s “Lost and Wanted”

June 30th, 2019  |  by  |  published in June/July 2019

I wish I could figure out who the intended audience for Nell Freudenberger’s very bad novel “Lost and Wanted” is supposed to be, but am unable to do so.  Perhaps it’s some kind of millennial fairy tale, quasi-feminist academic parable or diversity handbook or some such.  Freudenberger has written several first rate novels to date, […]

May Issue of Aeqai Online

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in Announcements

The May issue of Aeqai has just posted.  It’s a shorter, abridged issue this month; we’re only publishing those reviews that are from the Greater Cincinnati area, skipping our national correspondents/critics this month, since I’ve been laid up with pneumonia for over six weeks.  But we’ve got some great columns/features/reviews this month, anyway. Chris Carter […]

The Consistency of Memory: Stewart Goldman’s "The Hanging Figures" at the Skirball Museum

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in *

The Consistency of Memory: Stewart Goldman’s "The Hanging Figures" at the Skirball Museum

Stewart Goldman taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati for over thirty years. An enduring presence in the Ohio art world, he has curated shows on printmaking and the visual aesthetics of opera, lectured on the long-term influence of the Renaissance, and headed up the Cincinnati Sculpture Council. He has frequently exhibited his work in […]

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man at Cincinnati Art Museum

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in *

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man at Cincinnati Art Museum

Part One opened April 26; Part Two opens June 7 and continues through September 2. Tuesday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Thursdays, 11 a.m.–8 p.m. “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man” took over the Cincinnati Art Museum starting April 26 and it will continue until September 2, 2019. According to Marian Goodell the ultimate goal of […]

How Shall the World be Served?: “Life in the Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Masterpieces from the Dordrecht Museum” at the Columbus Museum of Art, February 1-June 16, 2019

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in *

How Shall the World be Served?: “Life in the Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Masterpieces from the Dordrecht Museum” at the Columbus Museum of Art, February 1-June 16, 2019

Well, despite what the show’s title might suggest, it’s not a blockbuster Rembrandt show. As the exhibition catalogue delicately notes, “we cannot be sure Rembrandt ever visited Dordrecht,” one of the oldest cities in all of the Netherlands and the fifth largest in its province after Rotterdam, The Hague, and Leiden. The show definitely will […]

“Rise & Shine”, A Group Exhibit at Wash Park Art

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in *, May 2019

"Rise & Shine", A Group Exhibit at Wash Park Art

An interesting exhibit of the curated work of a number of artists is a good reason to drop into Holly Spraul’s Wash Park Art gallery this summer. Nicole Trimble is continuing her series on women (how can one forget “Judy Slays”, Trimble’s update on the biblical story of Judith and Holofernes). Trimble’s piece in this […]

Profile of Nancy Nordloh Neville

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in *

Profile of Nancy Nordloh Neville

“I do enjoy showing my work,” Nancy Nordloh Neville told me. “It’s my life on review.  You remember how and where you were when you painted it.  You remember if the rain came before you were finished, if you made friends with the neighbors’ dog, or if you forgot an important supply.” A plein air […]

Fotofolio – Lloyd Greene

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in May 2019

Fotofolio - Lloyd Greene

“Saturday Night Rodeo” Lloyd’ statement: Pretty people and powerful animals provide a good start for many stories. Rodeo is an American activity, born from our colorful southwest and the circus. It is a sport with triumph and failures, beauty and pain. Rodeo is firmly entrenched as an American an institution and sport—there is a “Rodeo […]

#Project?

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in May 2019

#Project? If there was ever a most Instagram-worthy collection award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the newest H&M collaboration with fashion designer Giambattista Valli would certainly fit the bill. The Italian designer, whose atelier is based in Paris and whose ready to wear and couture collections are a staple of every Paris […]

The Art Climb: A Signature Gateway from the Streets to the Cincinnati Art Museum

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in May 2019

The Art Climb: A Signature Gateway from the Streets to the Cincinnati Art Museum

Take the climb to art.  A new staircase developed by the Cincinnati Art Museum will take visitors from the intersection of Eden Park Drive and Gilbert Ave. to the front entrance of the museum. This represents the museum’s emphasis on engagement with the community.  Not only can visitors climb the stairs to the museum, they […]

Namwali Serpell’s “The Old Drift”

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in May 2019

A slew of great novels has appeared in the past two months, all long, and all first-rate.  But first among equals is “The Old Drift”, a first novel by Zambian writer Namwali Serpell. Be prepared to read a masterpiece of incredible complexity, a family saga crossing four generations, in which the countries of both Zambia […]

Julie Orringer’s “The Flight Portfolio”

June 1st, 2019  |  by  |  published in May 2019

“The Flight Portfolio”, by Julie Orringer, is another splendid, first-rate new novel, astonishing in its details and analysis of character and place.  Based upon the real career of the American Varian Fry, a Harvard-educated man who forms the Emergency Rescue Committee in New York, whose mission was to help well-known artists and writers trapped by […]