Disney-Britton

MOSAIC By Menachem Wecker From The Creation of the Animals, 1550-1553, oil on canvas, by Jacopo Tintoretto. National Gallery of Art. Standing in the largest room of the recent exhibition Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, I was tempted to judge this Old Master, known for his dramatic staging and intense light, by the company of his sitters. In one enormous painting from c. 1575, Alvise Mocenigo, the doge—that is, highest official—of Venice and his family peer out at us while behind them are the Madonna and Child: the Holy Family itself. A few years before Tintoretto created this picture, which suggests that the doge’s wealth and power have won his family an audience with divinity, Mocenigo had advocated the expulsion of the Jews from Venice. [ More ]

THE HINDU By Soumitra Da A migrant labourer carrying her belongings. Photo: Special arrangement The gopurams or pyramidal towers of South Indian temples bristle with thousands of figures of deities. Rural deities or grama devatas , occasionally stark naked, are the guardians of villages in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. G. Ravinder Reddy strips these figures of their divinity and turns them into icons of working women of our times, transformed in his imagination into empowered goddesses who can hold their own, irrespective of class and social status. Seven such mainly polyester resin fiberglass heads of goddesses of various sizes, mostly voluminous, are on display at Rasa, Reddy’s first one-man exhibition in Kolkata. It is curated by Anupa Mehta. [ More ]

THE PEOPLE'S WORLD By Jenny Farrell Between 1929 and 1931, Dix created his main work, “The War.” Almost 80 years after the outbreak of World War II, it is worth remembering two German artists whose work was dedicated to the fight against fascism and war. They are the painters Otto Dix and George Grosz, who died fifty and sixty years ago respectively this month. Between 1929 and 1931, Dix created his main work, “The War.” (See main photo, above.) It was a triptych in an old masterly painting technique and form originating in Christian art: Three painted panels attached together and more commonly used as an altarpiece depicting the crucifixion in the center panel, with associated figures or scenes in the wings. Dix’s triptych is an urgent warning of the horrors of annihilation.[ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Sean Scully "Opulent Ascension", 2019
 Felt on wood 10.4 x 3.6 x 3.6 m Poignant and poetic, Sean Scully is a master abstract artist invested in making the spiritual available. His newest installation, “ HUMAN " was conceived for a Venetian abbey and will be on display through October. HUMAN is devoted to the ongoing tension between our heart’s striving in a world of beauty and struggle, and our soul’s yearning for eternal transcendence. The installation includes Scully’s sculpture “Opulent Ascension" which directs our gaze heavenwards like Jacob’s Ladder. “HUMAN” at the abbey makes Sean Scully, our artist of the week .

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Hilarie M. Sheets Louise and Leonard Riggio at their Bridgehampton home with “Untitled” (1986) by Isamu Noguchi. A 300-ton steel sculpture by Richard Serra snakes across the lawn of Leonard and Louise Riggio’s Tudor-style mansion in Bridgehampton, N.Y. “The Serra has become a landmark here,” Mr. Riggio, executive chairman of Barnes & Noble, said of the Minimalist serpentine structure clearly visible from the road. When people wander onto the grounds to peer up close, he will often come out and invite them to look out back at some two dozen other sculptures integrated into the 12-acre landscape by artists including Isamu Noguchi, Donald Judd, Maya Lin, Walter De Maria and Louise Nevelson — much to the dismay of his wife, who has concerns about privacy. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton A Subtle Reminder, 2018–2019 Oil on canvas, 48 x 38 inches Naudline Pierre's paintings are of spiritual mystery and personal mythology. The spectrum of colors are like William Blake goes to the Caribbean. She paints scenes of female embrace, the protection of angels, and empowerment, and at age 30, her paintings are in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the CC Foundation in Shanghai . She holds an MFA from the New York Academy of Art and was recently named an artist-in-residence at the Harlem Studio Museum . That makes Naudline Pierre , our artist of the week .

NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS By Ian Johnson Kingdom of Shambhala and the Final Battle, Mongolia, nineteenth century One of the hallmarks of the past few decades has been the rise of religious-based nationalism in, for example, India, the United States, and the Middle East. And it has become routine in discussing these areas to make a link between politics and religion—be it Hinduism, Christianity, or Islam. Buddhism, though, continues to flummox us. For many, Buddhism is “a religion of peace” and its adaptation for political purposes, even to inspire violence, feels flat-out wrong. That makes the current exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art, “Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism,” an especially welcome landmark, the first in-depth exploration of the topic. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Mark Brown The fourth-century sculptural heads were discovered stuffed in wooden crates at Heathrow airport in 2002. Photograph: Trustees of the British Museum Fourth-century Buddhist terracotta heads probably hacked off by the Taliban and found stuffed in poorly made wooden crates at Heathrow are to be returned to Afghanistan where they will be star museum exhibits. The British Museum gave details on Monday of one of the most significant repatriation cases it has dealt with relating to the illegal looting of artefacts from Afghanistan and Iraq. Nine sculptural heads and a torso were intercepted at Heathrow in 2002 after a flight from Peshawar in Pakistan. After a long legal process, they were sent to the British Museum last year to be analysed, conserved and catalogued. [ More ]

NEW YORK TIMES By Siddhartha Mitter Naudline Pierre's "Lead Me Gently Home" (2019); Oil on canvas; 96 x 120 inches (triptych) The alumni list of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s artist-in-residence program reads like a who’s who of the contemporary black canon.... And the program is breaking new ground of its own, with the announcement on Wednesday of its 2019-20 cohort, the most experimental in many years. Two of the three artists work in performance. And one works partly in cyberspace. The third artist is the painter Naudline Pierre , 30, based in Brooklyn, whose mystical style draws on medieval and Renaissance religious art, William Blake-style esoterica and Caribbean influences. [ More ]

CNN By Dylan Miettinen and Kendall Trammell, CNN The vandalized billboard has been replaced. A billboard advertising an Islamic art exhibit at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa was vandalized Tuesday, according to the museum's director. The billboard, which has since been replaced, featured a piece of ceramic pottery and text that read, "1,200 years of Islamic Art." Someone wrote "HOME GROWN TERROR!" in black spray paint on the billboard and the one below it. The Tulsa Police Department has not responded to a request for comment. Museum Director Scott Stulen said he has seen an outpouring of community support since the incident. [ More ]

TULSA PEOPLE By Tim Landes Starting Sunday, June 23, visitors to the Philbrook Museum of Art will have the opportunity to see what museum officials describe as the largest exhibit of Islamic art in state history. "Wondrous Worlds: Art & Islam through Time & Place" features more than 150 works spanning over 1,200 years. The exhibit, which runs through Oct. 6, highlights aspects of faith, culture, and daily lives of Muslims across the globe and throughout time. Works include textiles, clothing, furniture, metalwork, paintings, photography and calligraphy. [ More ]

DECCAN CHRONICLES Raja Ravi Varma's  placement of the dominant character is always on the left   In the year 1894, the aristocratic Malayali painter, Raja Ravi Varma beloved in equal measure by the British overlords and the common man, ushered in a new phase of Indian art. This was the new age: art had reached the common man. Having enjoyed the patronage of the exceedingly wealthy House of Travancore, Varma acted on the advice of then Dewan T. Madhava Rao, to start a lithographic printing press in Ghatkopar. The press produced oleographs - the remarkable pantheon of Indian gods and goddesses churned out by the hundred. [ More ]

JEWISH TELEGRAPH AGENCY By Marcy Oster Torah scrolls sat on a dusty shelf in an office in the Martinus Library in Mainz for some 50 years.(Courtesy of Martinus Library) JERUSALEM (JTA) — When Leor Jacobi visited a Catholic library in the German city of Mainz to examine its Judaica collection, he was surprised when library officials showed him three centuries-old Hebrew scrolls that had been sitting on a dusty shelf for some 50 years. Jacobi, a doctoral candidate in Jewish art at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, visited Mainz in March. He was there as a guest of the Johannes Gutenberg University to study the particular Mainz version of the Yom Kippur prayer book. Mainz is known as Magentza in Yiddish. [ More ]

THE TABLET By Pat Lipsky ‘Self-Portrait in a Shroud (Group Portrait),’ 1942, oil on canvas (Berlinische Galerie – Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York) A couple of weeks ago I visited the Neue Galerie to see The Self-Portrait  (Ended June 2019). I knew there were some small etched self-portraits by Rembrandt from 1629-30 and, another favorite, the marvelous Max Beckmann “Self-Portrait with a Horn.” After going through the exhibition, on its final wall I saw them—three self-portraits by Felix Nussbaum. Coincidentally, at the same time I was reading Timothy Snyder’s important and disturbing book, Black Earth. Looking at Nussbaum’s three self-portraits the other day I saw the horror—dispossession and depersonalization leading to mass murder—that I’d just been reading about. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Robin Pogrebin Joel Grey in his loft in front of a Richard Tuttle “rag,” “Lake” (1967). On floor: “The Kiss,” from the new book of Mr. Grey’s photographs, “The Flower Whisperer.” NEW YORK---Yes, Joel Grey is mainly an actor and director, perhaps forever best known for his indelible portrayal of the M.C. in the musical “Cabaret” and, most recently for directing the acclaimed Yiddish version of “Fiddler on the Roof.” But Mr. Grey has also steadily — and more quietly — built something of a side career as a photographer over the last 16 years, with his work featured in books, gallery shows and even in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mr. Grey, 87, also likes to be around artists and has befriended several — namely David Hockney , Jim Dine and R.B. Kitaj — who have encouraged his artwork and sold him some of their own. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Kehinde Wiley’s "Portrait of Moerai Matuanui" (2019); Huile sur lin/ Oil on linen; 72 x 60 3/8 in. at Galerie Templon in Paris, France through July 20, 2019 We’re back from our fantasy island trip to Key West , to finally discover the big news of the solo show, “ Tahiti: Kehinde Wiley ” in Paris. It’s Kehinde Wiley’s response to Paul Gaugin’s fantasy island escape to Tahiti, and his erotic depictions of their  trans women  known as Māhū  spiritual leaders  (S ee   “ Pape Moe "). Gauguin knew Tahiti was right for him, but he painted for Christian colonizers, and Kehinde delves more deeply into Gaugin’s fantasy. That’s why “ Portrait of Moerai Matuanui ” makes Kehinde Wiley, our artist of the week... again .

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Robert H. Colescott’s “Knowledge of the Past is Key to the Future.” Collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields At the end of our nine-day exploration of the Deep South, in Alabama and Florida, we read about   Robert H. Colescott's  (1929-2009) garish portrait of a lynching on display back home. Inspired by the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, this victim is half black and half white to remind us that racial terror affects both whites and blacks. We return to Indianapolis today focused on America’s two great sins: capitalism and racism, as explored in NUVO , and witnessed daily. "Knowledge of the Past is Key to the Future" makes Robert Colescott our artist of the week.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Ernest Disney-Britton

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Ernest Disney-Britton The next morning, we left Key West for lunch at Boondocks in Little Torch Key with my high school best friend, David Sweet. I noted the thatched-roofed outdoor restaurant as we drove south yesterday and the street sign that read, "The Keys Will Rise Again." It's a take on the racist confederate phrase but in this case, speaks to recovery from the hurricane of two years past. Sweet's son is 9 years old, and his name is Jacob. Ernest called him Benjamin, but Sweet diplomatically corrected the mistake without correcting me. Well played. I was not embarrassed. It was classic David Sweet. His wife is lovely, and they both love to talk, almost as much as my husband!

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Ernest Disney-Britton It's 4th of July, and finally time for a Fireworks party in Key West given by the parents of our realtor Reagan Butler. It took six hours in heavy traffic to get here. We stayed on Duval Street, in the heart of the entertainment district, not by choice but by necessity as it was the only room available on July 4th. The room was clean, the air conditioner was adequate, and in contrast to last night's dream sleep on a Casper mattress at Dave's house, this mattress only slightly bearable. It was hot. Seriously, it was like breathing fire, but locals didn't seem to notice while I withered and melted. We made our three key stops: Kermit's Key Lime pie, Alexander's Guesthouse for the cocktail hour, and a drag bar on Duval Street with unexpected discoveries. My foot is throbbing. It's time for ice and sleep.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Ernest Disney-Britton Following an early morning photo-op with Dr. Angela Corley on campus, we drove 3.5 hours past sugar cane fields and five-foot-wide canals, as we completed the journey to Palm Beach to visit Dave Lawrence, and his partner Jim. Corley had us thinking about gators, lizards, pythons, and boas. She is obsessed. Before reaching Dave, we stopped to see my cousin Tiffany Britton at her new job at United Technologies (or maybe the CIA). Dave's offices at the Palm Beach County Cultural Council are far more to my liking. It's a former art deco movie theatre with a mural on the backside. We had seafood at Bennies on the beachfront for dinner; drinks at their backyard pool, and we drove by Mara-largo. The latter is big but not as impressive as I'd expected.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Ernest Disney-Britton Entrance to Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Meyer's Florida We explored Fort Meyers and Santa Belle Island on this 90-degree day that began with Greg's unfortunate choice of beginning with a two-mile run. We toured the beautiful campus of Florida Gulf Coast University . Nestled inside a nature reserve, it's unlike any college campus that I've visited before. Downtown Fort Meyers is a quaint vacation destination that has been popular with Midwesterners going back to Henry Ford. There is even a pub themed in his honor where the wait staff wears gas station worker shirts, and the napkins are oil rags with a rubber hose clamp as the napkin holder. That evening, we took a 50-minute drive through Santa Belle Island to visit Captiva, and had Key Lime pie at Tween Waters Inn , sandwiched between the harbor and the Gulf.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Ernest Disney-Britton Our final stop in Montgomery was to take a picture by Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, MLK's church. Then we headed off for a 9-hour drive to Fort Meyer’s, FL. We arrived at the home of Dr. Angela Corley at about 6 pm, just in time for dinner. We spent an hour unloading and catching up. She’s as hysterical as ever! That night, she took us out to seafood dinner, and we had our first of four Key Lime pies for dessert. The conversation with her was fun. We’ve missed her wit, storytelling, and spirit so much. She even gave us her King-size bed for sleeping, and she slept on her twin in the guest room. She's always been such a great host.