Since many of our readers very much enjoyed our April issue, where we asked our writers to pick one work of art anywhere in the world and tell us why it’s important, we decided to do a variation on that idea for our May issue, as museums and galleries are still mostly closed. For May, […]
Archive for May, 2020
Her Star Is Still with Us: Hildegarde of Bingen, Mystic, Artist, Composer, and Advisor to Kings
May 23rd, 2020 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in *, May 2020
This first image shows Hildegarde receiving Divine Inspiration and sharing it with the monk Volmar. She was famous throughout central Europe in the late Middle Ages, advisor to kings; venerable abbess, composer and musician, artist and mystic. She is called the ‘Sibyl of the Rhine.’ Hildegard of Bingen was as Sir Roger Penrose is to […]
Escape from the Convent School Tower: On Remedios Varo’s 1960-61 Triptych
May 23rd, 2020 | by Annabel Osberg | published in *, May 2020
Mother Superior and her creepy bearded henchman have come to retrieve the septet of uniformed captives from their human beehive. It is time for the girls to go to work. As always, mysterious hypnotic forces compel them to mount their bicycles, starry-eyed, and follow their captors towards the tower. The tails of their habits become […]
The Places You’ll Go: The Art of Walking
May 23rd, 2020 | by Susan Byrnes | published in *, May 2020
During this time of the pandemic, in addition to reading, what I have been doing a lot of is walking. Every day, sometimes going two or even three times, just for the purpose of getting out of the house, getting some space to think or reflect. A change of scenery at a slow pace. An […]
Another Online Visit: A Blue Thought in a Blue Shade: Anna Atkins and Cyanotype Photograms
May 23rd, 2020 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *, May 2020
A few years ago, way back when art could still be encountered in person, Emily Bauman, Photography Curatorial Assistant at the CAM, wrote an online note about the experience of being able to handle and see up close a cyanotype by Anna Atkins, the figure who is generally credited with being the first woman photographer […]
Art Acquisitions
May 23rd, 2020 | by Laura Hobson | published in *, May 2020
What goes into acquiring art institutionally? Aeqai takes a look at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Skirball Museum at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. Cynthia Amneus, curator, fashion arts and textiles at CAM, is an expert in acquisitions which can be gifts or purchases. Sometimes, a curator will receive a call […]
Celebrating the Modern Woman: Isabel Bishop 1902-1988
May 23rd, 2020 | by Marlene Steele | published in May 2020
Isabel Bishop, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, spent her childhood in Detroit, before moving to New York City to study illustration at the New York School of Applied Design for Women. For many years she had a studio on Union Square at 14th Street, and the Square inspired Bishop with much human activity, which often became […]
Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019)
May 23rd, 2020 | by Sara Vance | published in May 2020
I was asked to write this article on one of my favorite women artists. Without hesitation, I knew it would be about the late, great Carolee Schneemann. Carolee activated the female nude with a multidisciplinary practice that spanned sixty years including painting, assemblage, performance and film. She received her B.A. in poetry and philosophy from […]
Fotofolio – Lisa Britton
May 23rd, 2020 | by Kent Krugh | published in May 2020
“Lisa Britton Retrospective: 1988-1999” Lisa’s statement and bio: What causes one to be truly amazed and delighted? For me it is light itself, and how it can reveal a vision of loveliness and meaning. In all of these images light reveals an idea, a dream, a landscape, a moment which felt sacred in some way. […]
Tala Madani and her Théâtre de la Cruauté in Projections
May 23rd, 2020 | by Megan Bickel | published in May 2020
At a whopping eight feet wide and predominately a Mars Black that tempers into the Payne’s Gray realm, Projections (2015) presents itself (similarly to all of Madani’s paintings, animations, drawings and music) as a viscus and intuitive—quick or even hasty— figurative narrative depicting male figures participating in some sort of tragic comedy. Carbon Black lines […]
Camille Claudel’s Les Causeuses: The Subject of Lack and the Leaning Tree of Destiny
May 23rd, 2020 | by Ekin Erkan | published in May 2020
Unfortunately, albeit perhaps tethered to imposed historical responsibility, most introductions to Camille Claudel and her oeuvre are steeped in biographical detail that inevitably draws in her partner Rodin’s shadow. I am afraid that I, too, have lapsed into entertaining this impulse if only to make it an object of critique. Although “Rodin’s mistress,” “Rodin’s assistant” […]
On Chantal Akerman’s Biopolitical Rebellion
May 23rd, 2020 | by Josh Beckelhimer | published in May 2020
The work of Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman has received no scarcity of praise. Akerman is considered one of the more influential feminist filmmakers to emerge from Europe in the 70s and her film Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles is particularly iconic. I’ve always found Akerman’s acclaim fascinating because she exists sort of […]
The Double Standard and The Drawing Room within Perrotin A Quick Examination of Genesis Belanger & Emily Mae Smith
May 23rd, 2020 | by Megan Bickel | published in May 2020
I’m going to discuss one image—with works from two female-identifying artists. The image is taken by an anonymous photographer that documented the two-person exhibition A Strange Relative at Perrotin New York in late 2018. The exhibition, a two-person dialogue between Brooklyn-based ceramicist Genesis Belanger and painter Emily Mae Smith is described by Perrotin as two […]
A Look Back
May 23rd, 2020 | by Jenny Perusek | published in May 2020
In the midst of a global pandemic, when the stream of constant news is at it loudest, it is the perfect opportunity for quiet reflection. I’m sure a great philosopher said that somewhere before, but the message is certainly loud and clear given recent events. As highlighted in last month’s column, “The New Fashion Industry”, […]
“The Exhibition of Persephone Q” by Jessi Jezeweska Stevens
May 23rd, 2020 | by Daniel Brown | published in May 2020
“The Exhibition of Persephone Q”, by Jessi Jezeweska Stevens, is her debut novel and it is commandingly brilliant. The dystopian novel has rather taken over in fiction, particularly fiction by millennials, an overmaligned generation whose voices are just beginning to fill our bookstores. While we’re used to reading fiction about the wandering, lost single white […]
“Simon The Fiddler” by Paulette Jiles
May 23rd, 2020 | by Daniel Brown | published in May 2020
Paulette Jiles’ new novel, “Simon The Fiddler”, is both charming and a wonderful story; the writer offers us some fascinating history of the State of Texas right after the end of The Civil War, when the novel takes place. It feels, in many ways, like a fairy tale, which is part of the wonder of […]
“The Mountains Sing” by Nguyen Han Que Mai
May 23rd, 2020 | by Daniel Brown | published in May 2020
“The Mountains Sing”, by Nguyen Han Que Mai, is the first novel I’ve ever read about a Vietnamese family and its vicissitudes over four generations of war, reeducation, landgrabbing by peasants from the middle classes, the French and American wars. For the record, the American war is basically just a piece of this book, almost […]
