August 23rd, 2020 | by Steve Kemple | published in *, Summer 2020
Francis Bacon’s last painting is mostly raw canvas. It depicts a single form: a ghostly bull bridging the blackness of an open doorway. A bit like one of those optical illusions where a shape simultaneously pushes forward and recedes, the bull alternates between presence and absence; charge and rest. Study for a Bull (1991) derives […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Karen Chambers | published in *, Summer 2020
Each year the nonprofit Clifton Cultural Arts Center sponsors a juried exhibition. The first-place winner receives a Golden Ticket, redeemable for a solo exhibition. Last year Ct King nabbed it and cashed it in for “Ct King: Dangerous Little Strangers.” This year’s Golden Ticket is not as shiny as in the past because of the COVID-19 pandemic. King’s […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Marlene Steele | published in *, Summer 2020
“I believe truly great art serves as a trigger into something deeper within all of us” Joseph Lorusso Nostalgic romance is alive and well at Miller Gallery in Hyde Park in the contemporary figurative work of Joseph Lorusso. Born of Italian descent in Chicago in 1966, Lorusso has been exposed to art from an early […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in *, Summer 2020
Before the pyramid builders in Egypt began their staggering achievements, in our Americas, ancient people were erecting pyramids that rose splendidly and improbably above the formidable rainforests of Central America and Mexico. Like the Egyptians, the ancient Maya civilization had an elaborate pictographic language. Little known too, is the fact that it was the Maya […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Deb Kittner Johnson | published in Summer 2020
Masks. I am not wearing mine while typing this critique in my safe space at home. Yet, they are placed for immediate use on the table near my front door, inside my briefcase and purse, on the console of my car and my desk at work. Sound familiar? Perhaps yours are hanging from the rearview […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Tim Brinkhof | published in Summer 2020
Over the past few weeks small galleries have opened while major museums remain closed. This is a blessing as well as a curse for the artists who get to exhibit their work again. On the one hand, they are sure to receive undivided attention from buyers and admirers eager to see what they came up […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Laura Hobson | published in Summer 2020
“It’s complicated,” said David Linnenberg, chief administrative officer, Cincinnati Art Museum, of the physical plant and other departments which he manages. Temperature has to be 70 degrees plus or minus and humidity has to be maintained at 45 degrees plus or minus 5 in order to keep artwork in compliance with industry standards. Those sponsoring […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Daniel Brown | published in Summer 2020
Everyone has tried to cope, in their own ways, with the surrealist world that COVID-19 has brought us; many people have had too much time on their hands while others are being torn in too many directions at the same time. Since I am someone with a compromised immune system, I’ve been home much of […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Daniel Brown | published in Summer 2020
Catherine Lacey’s relatively slim novel “Pew” is also one of this year’s most fascinating, and most important, novels. In a relatively small Midwestern, all white city, the character who will be named “Pew” by those who find her/him sleeping in a church pew, appears out of nowhere. “Pew” mostly doesn’t speak, or when they do, […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Daniel Brown | published in Summer 2020
As I’ve mentioned before in reviewing novels this year, the newly independent woman finding herself in New York has become a genre unto itself; the best example this year is “The Exhibition of Persephone Q”; the two women writers who’ve helped to establish this genre are the superbly gifted Mary Gaitskill and the always fascinating Ottessa […]
August 23rd, 2020 | by Daniel Brown | published in Summer 2020
As I age, I find very new novels written about ageing, or about adults in the latter phases of their lives (Penelope Lively’s Booker-award winning novel “Moon Tiger” was one of the first of this genre, though written decades ago; recent fiction by Margaret Drabble enters this territory as well). Roddy Doyle’s newest novel “Love”, […]
