Disney-Britton

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Michael Paulson The cast of “Six” on Broadway: From left are Anna Uzele as Catherine Parr; Brittney Mack as Anna of Cleves; Adrianna Hicks as Catherine of Aragon; Abby Mueller as Jane Seymour; Andrea Macasaet as Anne Boleyn and Samantha Pauly as Katherine Howard. Bryan Derballa for The New York Times Spoiler alert: Things generally haven’t gone well for women who married King Henry VIII. Until now. “ Six ,” a slyly saucy pop musical about the ill-starred queens, has already stormed stages in Britain, North America, Australia and even on cruise ships. Embraced by a youthful fan base for its catchy (and social-media-amplified) score, it has been fast-tracked to Broadway, where it is previewing to full houses at the 1,027-seat Brooks Atkinson Theater before opening March 12. The show, just 80 minutes long, has a simple conceit — They’re Tudor queens! And they’re pop stars!“Six” is the remarkably recent brainchild of two remarkably young theater-lovers: Toby M...

JEWISH EXPONENT By Sophie Panzer A page from Charlotte von Rosthchild’s 1842 illustrated Passover Haggadah. (Courtesy of Ardon Bar-Hama) The Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization revived an old Jewish tradition on Feb. 23, hosting a salon focusing on the diversity of Jewish culture. That ties in with the library’s role of collecting and translating primary sources from Jewish history in encyclopedic volumes. “The Posen Library seeks to change how English-speaking Jews understand Jewish culture and civilization,” said Deborah Dash Moore, professor of history and professor of Judaic studies at the University of Michigan, the project’s editor-in-chief who hosted the event. “It’s not just religious, it’s a mix of sacred and secular. It’s not just the domain of men, women played a very influential role. It’s written in dozens of languages. This anthology is meant to open people’s minds.” [ Mor...

BBC | CULTURE By Rahul Verma Family of Gulam Khan, Six Recruits, Fraser Album, c. 1815, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institute). Ghulam Ali Khan was a the court painter for Mughal emperors Akbar II and Bahadur Shah II They were simply labelled ‘Company Painting’ and ‘Company School’; but some artworks assigned to a niche bureaucratic category are now being recognised as masterpieces. Paintings commissioned by patrons of the East India Company during the late 18th and early 19th Centuries are currently on show in an exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London. Forgotten Masters – Indian Painting for the East India Company focuses on artists who were previously neglected. According to its curator, historian William Dalrymple, they should be celebrated as “major artists of the greatest capabilities”. [ More ]

JERSEY CITY TIMES By Tris McCall “DM624161212” by Pat Lay If you’ve ever had a computer spill its guts to you, you know what a shattering experience it can be. The surfaces of video cards and chipboards are great riddles in titanium, wire, and plastic. Dots and twisting parallel lines, bright colors and silent black rectangles: It’s all in there, hidden behind the screen you may be looking at right now. Run electricity through it, and the magic begins. But unless you’re an engineer, there’s very little chance that you understand the meanings of the markings on the chips and drives. They’re as inscrutable — and as beautiful — as hieroglyphics or cuneiform characters carved into rocks.Many visual artists have been struck by the accidental aesthetic of electronic components. Few, however, have taken that interest quite as far as Pat Lay. Visiting “Exquisite Logic,” her show at the Dvora Pop-up Gallery in the Powerhouse Arts District, is a bit like stepping into a mainframe. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By Jason Fargo Van Eyck’s “Madonna at the Fountain,” dated 1439, is one of the many works on view at the MSK. Gael Turine for The New York Times GHENT, Belgium — God is in the details, they assure you; but some art is so jam-packed with details, each hair so fine, each fold so painstaking, that it surpasses even the divine. Nearly six centuries ago, here in the northwest corner of Europe, the painter Jan van Eyck used a brand-new technology — oil paint — to pioneer an art of such precision that it almost negated its religious function, and went past inspiring prayer to become something eternal itself. Still today, for secular audiences, his diamond-hard paintings can appear to come from another world. If Van Eyck’s innovations are hard to see in the cathedral, all the more reason to grab the chance to see the outer panels at the MSK (Museum of Fine Arts). [ More ]

KPBS NEWS By Julia Dixon Evans Above: A mixed media paper and thread work by border artist Griselda Rosas Griselda Rosas is, it seems, suddenly everywhere. And so is her work. The San Diego Art Prize finalist's broad repertoire — from large hanging sculptures suspended from ropes to mixed media pieces she embroiders at her kitchen table after her son goes to sleep — is specifically inspired and informed by place. The origins of the materials she uses and where they've traveled to seem as important to her as the shapes they take in her works. At Lux Art Institute, the fiber and textile art of current artists-in-residence Chiachio and Giannone is an evocative match for Rosas's work. She is displaying an exhibition of her mixed media embroidery as the Featured Regional Artist alongside the residency now through March 14, with a reception and artist talk on March 6. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Will Heinrich David B. Frye’s “Hillbillies Board the Arc Each With Their Golden Bull,” 2020 at Spring/Break Art Fair. David B. Frye The opening of The Art Show on Thursday kicks off a carnival of New York art fairs that won’t stop until March 9. The city will host at least 10, offering hundreds of booths of modern and contemporary art, from blue chip to brand-new, and even a sampling of antiquarian books. The more you see in a given day, the better the odds you’ll discover something to love — and even if you don’t, sensory overload has a thrill of its own. Now that NADA is a “gallery open” instead of a fair proper, Spring/Break stands alone as the week’s cool-kid party — young, exciting and a little chaotic. This year its 100 or so emerging galleries and independent curators, all of them bringing projects on the theme of “excess,” will be rubbing shoulders across two floors of Ralph Lauren’s former headquarters on Madison Avenue, between 58th and 59th St...

MIDDLE EAST EYE By Vittoria Volgare Detaille A writer and visual artist, Shurooq Amin's work is often seen as provocative (Courtesy of Shurooq Amin) It came as little surprise to Kuwaiti artist Shurooq Amin that her latest exhibition was shut down by the authorities just a week after it opened. Her work has always sparked controversy; her 2012 show, It's A Man's World , was closed down just three hours after its launch. Amin's most recent defiant display, Like Russian Dolls We Nest in Previous Selves , was inaugurated on 8 January. It was planned to run for a month at the Contemporary Art Platform (CAP) , one of the most progressive art centres in Kuwait. But a week after opening, the exhibition was dramatically shut down and her work ordered to be removed. Though authorities released no official statement , CAP said they were told they hadn't obtained "a prior licence from the concerned authorities" and that there were "claims that the exhibit...

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By Jason Farago Kehinde Wiley’s ‘‘Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps’’ (2005), left, and Jacques-Louis David’s ‘‘Bonaparte Crossing the Alps’’ (1801) shown in a composite photo of the exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.  Photographs by Emily Andrews for The New York Times A French masterpiece has come to New York for the first time ever, and has been greeted with a curious silence. It’s Jacques-Louis David’s “Bonaparte Crossing the Alps,” from 1801, and you know it even if you’ve never seen it in person, so enduring is its propaganda. Until May, you’ll find it in a little-trafficked gallery on the fourth floor of the Brooklyn Museum — and it is not alone. In a face-off between two visions of the political power of art, the museum has hung another equestrian portrait: “Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps,” by Kehinde Wiley , which pictures a young black man in the same pose, the bicorne replaced by a bandanna, the riding boots swapped for Tim...

THE GUARDIAN  By Andrew Frost Keith Looby painting, Resurrection (1964). Keith Looby, now 80 years old, is one of Australia’s most significant painters, with an individual, iconoclastic style, a one-time teenage prodigy who would go on to win the Sulman, Blake and Archibald prizes, create and sell significant amounts of work, and have key paintings in the collections of Australia’s national galleries.And yet, as one talking head opines, Looby was his own worst enemy. Looby has had ressentiment all his life, and the cause of his debilitating hatred is the art world and pretty much everyone in it. Looby feuded with institutions such as the Art Gallery of NSW and its director, the late Edmund Capon; with other artists, including his famous enmity directed towards painter Tim Storrier; and with dealers, collectors and gallerists. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Meara Sharma Samson’s recent work plays on ceremony and spirituality while also subverting stereotypical African imagery. Stephanie Veldman In the South African artist Cinga Samson’s “Ivory” series of paintings — five lush, ethereal, figurative canvases made in 2018 — a young black man in jeans and an ornate gold-colored jacket stands in the middle of the 4-by-3 foot compositions, reveling amid tropical ferns, twisting vines and bird-of-paradise plants against a moody backdrop of rocks and sea. In each painting, the setting is surreal but the figure’s stance is coolly elegant; his eyes, pupil-less white orbs, suggest an inner reverie. Seemingly unconcerned with the viewer, he projects a strong presence, at once inviting and enigmatic, joyful and antagonistic. This is a world that belongs, unequivocally, to him. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Walking Fish - Part of the Soul Fish Collection We keep coming back. We first flew to Key West, Florida, in 2008 for our honeymoon, and it's been a love affair ever since. This week, we'll finish our fifth trip, and five artists defined it. Adam Noel Collier's "Two Buds" at a Duval Street art gallery; Kreg D. Kelly's whimsical paintings at Effusion Gallery ; Anna Sweet's beach waves at her  Anna Sweet Art Gallery ; and  Adam Russell  and  Kelly Lever's  clay works at  Key West Pottery . We bought two little fishes, one for $90 and one for $350, and that's why Adam Russell and Kelly Lever are our artists of the week .

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Abdi Latif Dahir In a lengthy series of satirical paintings, the Kenyan artist Michael Soi has depicted China as the latest in a series of imperialistic powers eager to plunder Africa’s natural resources — and corrupt African leaders as eager to play along. Khadija Farah for The New York Times NAIROBI, Kenya — In the painting, one of 100 on the same theme, China’s president, Xi Jinping, appears as he has in all the previous ones: a larger-than-life figure who commands attention because of the goodies he has brought with him. Decked in a flowing white garment, Mr. Xi is surrounded by a crowd of black men — some with bald heads, others with unkempt beards — all reaching out for the dollars leaking out of a briefcase. The work of a Kenyan artist and painter, Michael Soi , the collection “China Loves Africa” questions the guiding principles of Beijing’s engagement in Africa, scrutinizes the role of leaders on both sides in shaping the relationship and examines t...

THE WASHINGTON POST By Philip Kennicott Darren Walker at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit in 2015. Walker was named a member of the National Gallery of Art board in September. (Daphne Doerr/Ford Foundation) Late in 2014, the city of Detroit emerged from a bankruptcy that had threatened to destroy what little was left of its social bonds.A “grand bargain” mediated by a U.S. District Court judge saved the city, including most of the promised pensions and all of the museum’s art. Central to making that grand bargain work was Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. In the five years since that crisis, Walker has emerged as one of the country’s preeminent voices for the arts, and social justice, and for new strategies to ameliorate inequality. And in September, the National Gallery of Art announced that Walker would be joining its board, one of the smallest and most exclusive governing bodies in the art world, with only nine members, four of them ex officio positio...

HEROIC HOLLYWOOD By Eammon Jacobs This new concept design of Christian Bale as Mephisto for Chris Hemsworth’s Thor: Love and Thunder proves just how great the star could look as the character. An awesome new concept design for Chris Hemsworth’s Thor: Love and Thunder shows off what Christian Bale could look like as the iconic Marvel Comics villain Mephisto.With Christian Bale’s Thor: Love and Thunder role being kept under lock and key, a new concept design imagines the former Batman actor as the Marvel villain Mephisto for the highly-anticipated Chris Hemsworth movie. In the comics, Mephisto takes great pleasure in striking up deals with heroes only for them to have some kind of downside that they have to deal with afterwards. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES  Show Us Your Walls By Max Lakin The artist KAWS (Brian Donnelly) with pieces from his personal art collection in his Williamsburg studio. From left, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s “No. 866, March 23, 1960” (1960) and Ed Ruscha “Bail Jumper” (1990). Cole Wilson for The New York Times As KAWS, Brian Donnelly creates cartoon-colored reworkings of well-known pop culture characters rendered slightly askew through recurring motifs — cauliflower ears and XXs for eyes — that give the effect of a dream half-remembered. His popularity, based on the raft of toys, fashion collaborations and multimillion dollar auction results, hovers somewhere near the mesosphere. That Mr. Donnelly, who got his start writing graffiti in his native Jersey City, has recently joined the American Museum of Folk Art’s board may sound incongruous for someone routinely designated (and euphemistically maligned) as a street artist. But in fact he collects the work of self-taught and outsider Ame...

TRICYCLE MAGAZINE By Benjamin Bogin, Portraits by Celeste Sloman Photograph by Celeste Sloman "I feel like I’m wearing a mask made out of dead meat,” Devendra said, gesturing toward his face with outstretched fingers pulling down as if tugging at the mask with invisible strings. “Aren’t we all?” I asked. We were talking about the photoshoot Tricycle had arranged in New York, the previous stop on his tour, and I wondered if Devendra Banhart—musician, artist, poet, and Tibetan Buddhist practitioner—was echoing the sentiment of Milarepa’s famous line: “This thing we call a corpse, so fearful to behold, is already right here—our own body.” For Devendra the desire to practice arose from a growing recognition of the link between fixation on the self and unhappiness. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Religious tattoos of college students are more likely than non-religious ones to face inward, perhaps as encouragement to live out one’s beliefs, Baylor University professor says WACO, Texas (Feb. 12, 2020) – With more than a quarter of U.S. adults now having tattoos — and nearly half of millennials sporting them — only a handful of studies have focused on religious tattoos. But a new study by researchers at Baylor University and Texas Tech University analyzes faith-centered tattoos and is the first to use visual images of them. The study, published in the journal Visual Studies, analyzed 752 photos of tattoos taken at a Christian university in the United States and found that nearly 20% of those were overtly religious in content. “The embrace of tattoos in the United States reflects a generational shift toward greater individualism and self-expression,” said lead author Kevin D. Dougherty, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology at Baylor University. [ More ]

BUDDHIST DOOR By Guoying Stacy Zhang Rage, the Flower Thrower by Banksy, Jerusalem. From the8percent.com In the midst of widespread protests in Hong Kong in October 2019, the city was imbued with feelings of anxiety, fear, and anger. Fire, violence, and destruction were constantly shown on media platforms to a degree that even the most fainthearted would feel numb to the spectacle. Nevertheless, a couple of friends and I managed to cross the border between Hong Kong and mainland China and find ourselves in a nice bar in the city of Shenzhen. It was a breath of fresh air, away from the tear gas and rage. My friends and I soon noticed that this place had a special liking for the British street artist and political activist Banksy. This is where I find an analogy between Banksy’s work and Buddhist art. Both recognize human suffering yet they artistically transform the suffering to inspire. Behind the grandeur, composure, and gold of Buddhist art, there is heartbreak, loss, and gri...

BBC.COM By Fisun Güner When Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece was revealed after years of restoration, many were shocked by the strange appearance of the Mystic Lamb European artists of the past often depicted exotic animals in a way we now know to be wildly inaccurate. Since most would not have had the benefit of direct observation but were usually reliant only on a written description, accompanied by a sketchy illustration that may itself have been anatomically wide of the mark, this is far from surprising. Albrecht Dürer’s rhinoceros of 1515, depicting the creature as if its thick hide were a suit of armour, comes to mind.... But a lamb, surely, of which plenty could be found gambolling through the fields of medieval Europe, can’t have presented any such mysteries, especially for an artist as observant, as none had been before him, of the tiniest material detail as the 15th-Century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck. [ More ]

ASIAN IMAGE The founders of IslamicArtPrints.com - who are artists themselves - saw a need for an online hub of cultural excellence which champions both the traditional styles of Islamic art, as well as its more modern counterparts, in front of a global audience. A brand new online platform, IslamicArtPrints.com is bringing together artists from all over the world to sell prints of their most treasured collections. Islamic art features paintings, embroidery, calligraphy and ceramics. The portal also aims to provide its artists with a steady income – meaning they spend less time worrying about finances, and more time creating breathtaking art. Adddionally, Islamic Art Prints have teamed up with a global network of printers in order to reduce the carbon footprint of global shipping. This is a space for new and emerging artists, who have a specific interest or focus in Islamic Art, to begin their journey into the industry. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By Zoë Lescaze “The Baayfalls,” by Ms. Casteel, is on view above the High Line through 2020. Credit...Timothy Schenck, via the High Line When the artist Jordan Casteel arrived on campus as a college freshman, her mother marched her into the dining hall — not for a meal, but to greet the kitchen staff. They had met the president and dean, but these were the people, her mother explained, who would truly be taking care of her. Ms. Casteel recalls being shy, but her mother was right: The first person she approached, a baker named Betty, became a surrogate parent. This particular alchemy, the kind that begins with a nervous hello and transforms strangers into family, lies at the core of Ms. Casteel’s practice. Her first institutional show in New York — an exhibition of nearly 40 canvases spanning seven years — opens at the New Museum on Feb. 19. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Laura Cumming Barbara Palmer (née Villiers), Duchess of Cleveland with her son, probably Charles FitzRoy, as the Virgin and Child, c1664 by Peter Lely. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery London/Courtesy of Tate Charles II, otherwise known as the “Merry Monarch”, was 6ft 2in in his stockings but taller still in the royal wig. He is tossing his wigged head with such melodrama, in the stone bust that opens this show, you can almost feel the heavy swing of the curls. The positioning is perfect. For this wig is an emblem of everything you are about to see in Tate Britain’s lavish blockbuster – from diamond-encrusted miniatures to soaring murals and blazing candelabra: room after room of outrageous pomp and theatricality. There are 40 paintings here, some coining enthralling new forms (Michael Armitage in particular), but others rebarbatively eye-poking or spurious. It feels, at times, like the kind of show Charles Saatchi used to put on – and, come to think of it,...

FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE By Ian Volmer The multimedia artist Gabi von Seltmann's "Reconstruction" projects an image of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw, destroyed by the city's Nazi occupiers in 1943, onto the facade of the office tower that currently occupies the site. Scheduled to appear next in April, the work also features the single Hebrew word ליבע: “love.” MARTA KUŚMIERZ In Poland, on the former site of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw—the largest house of worship for what was, until World War II, the largest Jewish population in the world—there now rises a tall azure skyscraper. Known simply as Blekitny Wiezowiec (“Blue Skyscraper”), the building with its all-glass facade has lately served as a kind of screen for a unique public art project. Twice in the last two years, most recently in April 2019, the artist Gabi von Seltmann has projected an image of the synagogue, long ago destroyed by the Nazis, onto the contemporary skyscraper: a grayish translucent ghos...

MOCRA NEWS An installation view of Surface to Source at MOCRA in 2020. For his first show curated as Director of the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art in Saint Louis,   David Brinker delves into the collection, bringing out works that haven’t been shown in a number of years and juxtaposing them with perennial favorites. The works from the collection are joined by several works on loan. Meanwhile, the removal of a number of temporary walls opens up new vistas in the gallery. Works in the exhibition reflect and refract the dual themes of surface and source. Of special note in Surface to Source is the work of Susan Schwalb. One of the world’s foremost practitioners of the art of silverpoint, Schwalb has created a number of series of work based on Jewish themes. [ More ]

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES By Kimberley Winston Salma Arastu, who incorporates Islamic calligraphy in her painting, photographed in her Berkeley studio.(Jana Asenbrennerova) BERKELEY — Given her family history, Salma Arastu may be one of the last people you’d expect to be helping to modernize Islamic calligraphy. Her Hindu parents fled their home in Pakistan, resettling in India during the nightmare of mob violence between Muslims and Hindus when the two countries gained independence from Britain in 1947. Arastu was born in India a few years later. But unable to cope with what had happened, her father, a doctor, died soon after of a heart attack that his family attributes to the stress of the move. So Arastu’s journey to becoming a Muslim holds special weight. After graduating from art school in India, she overcame her family’s resistance and converted to Islam when she married her husband, an architect. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Michelle Marti: "This cool piece of art by Pakistani American artist Anila Quayyum Agha has been on display at my son’s school this week thanks to Arts for Learning" While we dined with best friends Mick & Vivian on Valentine's Day this week, kids at Indianapolis Public Schools delighted in the light of Anila Quayyum Agha's sculpture "Intersections." Named by ArtNews as one of the top  100 artworks of the last decade , the artist installed the massive work in a K-8 school gymnasium. In 2014, "Intersections," earned the ArtPrize Grand Prize, and you voted Agha as the Alpha & Omega Prize honoree of that year. The installation at The Center for Inquiry School 84 makes Anila Quayyum Agha , our artist of the week.

THE FINANCIAL TIMES By Georgina Adam Agnes Gund in New York © Photographed for the FT by Joshua Aronson It is not often that one gets to talk to a legend in their lifetime. So I was rather overawed when, one bleak January evening, I called Agnes Gund in New York. Yet few art collectors have such formidable reputations. Now 81, Gund started collecting art when she was young. Two years ago, Gund surprised the art market when she sold one of her most valuable possessions, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1962 “ Masterpiece ”, to the billionaire investor Steve Cohen for $165m. Her plan was, if anything, even more surprising: she used $100m from that sale to set up the Art for Justice Fund , along with the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES  Show Us Your Walls By Jori Finkel Arthur Lewis and Hau Nguyen at home in Los Angeles. Behind them, from left, are Samuel Levi Jones’s “Remnants of Fabrication” (2017), a sculpture made of materials that include pulped medical reference books; “Hair Portrait #2” (2012), by Mickalene Thomas; and “Enough About You” (2016), by Titus Kaphar. Mickalene Thomas/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Brian Guido for The New York Times LOS ANGELES — Many contemporary art collectors have an adviser. Arthur Lewis is lucky enough to have a mentor, instead. A decade ago, Mr. Lewis, then a merchandising executive at the Gap, and his partner, Hau Nguyen, who owns hair salons, invited the collector Joy Simmons to their home here, where they had art by popular provocateurs like Jeff Koons and Paul McCarthy. She was not impressed. “Joy told us we have to take everything off our walls and start all over again,” Mr. Lewis said. “I’m really grateful for what she said,” he a...

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By Salamishah Tillet The playwright Charles Fuller, center, is flanked by Douglas Turner Ward, at left, and David Alan Grier, at right, during the opening night curtain call for “A Soldier’s Play.” Charles Fuller is more surprised than anyone that his most celebrated play has finally made it to Broadway. After winning an Obie Award for “Zooman and the Sign” in 1980, he became only the second African-American awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for “A Soldier’s Play” in 1982. He went on to write screenplays, a young adult novella and other dramas (most recently “One Night,” in 2015). Now 80, he is the first to admit that they were mainly for black audiences, and as a result, Broadway and the attention that comes with it was not what he was aiming for, much less needed. But there he was in a theater district hotel suite after flying in from Toronto for opening night, both straining to hear and eagerly trying to answer rapid-fire questions about “ A Sold...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Judith Schaechter, Murdered Animal Stained Glass Lightbox 28 x 28 x 3 in | 71.1 x 71.1 x 7.6 cm 2019 After 17 years in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan,  Claire Oliver Gallery  opened a new gallery space in Harlem on January 18 with an inaugural exhibition of artworks by Judith Schaechter . The exhibition,  Almost Better Angels is from a chapter in Robert Sapolsky’s book Behave. The author concludes that human beings have guarded reasons for optimism when it comes to our biological nature driving our destiny. In these days of mass media’s ‘apocalypse-du-jour’, most artists have questioned their artistic motives and inspirations and have looked for a way to contribute to positive change. Judith Schaechter is among these enthusiastic voices. [ More ]

INDYMAVEN.COM  By Bekah Pollard In looking through Vasquez’s Instagram, you can see one piece, in particular, that she’ll be showcasing in the exhibit, and showing in public for the last time, “La Virgin Morena”. Imagine a gallery full of portraits of strong women. Imagine these portraits are huge—at least ten feet by five feet. Imagine these portraits are all precisely made out of delicate cut paper. Indianapolis-based artist Beatriz Vasquez creates just that. Vasquez is a papel picado artist, creating her work using the Mexican folk art tradition of cut paper. Vasquez traveled to Matamonos in 2009 to spark this reinvention and to connect with her family and study Mexican crafts. Here she rediscovered papel picado and decided to dedicate her art practice to the medium. Traditionally, papel picado is done using chisels and mallets to cut layers of colorful tissue paper. Using this technique as her inspiration, Vasquez has made it her own. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Add captionJudith Schaechter, The Battle of Carnival and Lent, (detail) 2010-2011. Stained-glass panel, 56 x 56 in. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, NY, Marion Stratton Gould Fund, Rosemary B. and James C. MacKenzie Fund, Joseph T. Simon Fund, R. T. Miller Fund and Bequest of Clara Trowbridge Wolfard by exchange, and funds from deaccessioning. The Path to Paradise is the first survey and major scholarly assessment of this groundbreaking artist’s 37-year career. Organized by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, the exhibition will be on view in Rochester from February 16 through May 24, 2020, after which it will travel to two additional venues in the United States. Drawn from both private and institutional collections, The Path to Paradise will feature approximately 45 of Judith Schaechter’s stained-glass panels along with a selection of related drawings and process materials. [ More ]

SOTHEBY'S By Lucia Fortune-Ely Andy Warhol's "Crosses" (1982)  On the 1st of April 1987 almost two thousand people congregated at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City for a memorial service. Among them were such famous figures as Liza Minnelli, Grace Jones and Yoko Ono, as well as all the most celebrated contemporary artists of the time including David Hockney , Roy Lichtenstein , Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat . Only the acclaimed ‘Pope of Pop’, Andy Warhol , could attract such a crowd. This spring memorial service, in the city as synonymous with Warhol as Pop Art itself, focused on the private spirituality and faith of the artist most often associated with the popularity of his artworks. The portentous and religious imagery of his late work flirted with styles and symbolism from Eastern and Western Catholic art history, and carefully reframed them within the context of Pop. [ More ]

THE YORK TIMES  By Vivian Yee For Desert X, the artist RashedAl Shashai installed “A Concise Passage” in the sandstone canyons of an ancient oasis in Saudi Arabia. Rashed AlShashai and Desert X Al Ula; Lance Gerber AL ULA, Saudi Arabia — The Coachella art crowd had arrived in the Saudi desert, and chic caftans in head-turning colors outnumbered abayas on the sand. At a buffet ornamented with cantaloupes carved in the shape of flowers, waiters tended a fresh-squeezed juice station and rows of dainty canapés. Across the gold-and-russet sandstone canyon, the brawny rock formations sprouted contemporary art: an iridescent spaceshiplike sculpture, a glinting metal tunnel, a scattering of brightly painted spheres. These were the fruits of Desert X AlUla, a partnership between Desert X, a California-based art biennial that had staged two previous exhibitions in the Coachella Valley, and the Saudi government, which had coaxed Desert X to mount a show in its own western desert at the...

COLLIVE Art & Soul: Artist Yossi Bitton , who gained a love for art, while living in the Artist Colony of Tzfas, speaks about his work ahead of an exhibition of his art to be presented this Sunday at the Leviim Jewish Art Gallery in Crown Heights. COLlive.com presents Art & Soul featuring renowned and up and coming visual artists who specialize in Jewish and Chassidic scenes and themes and showcase their works. The feature is presented in cooperation with the Leviim Jewish Art Gallery in Crown Heights. Yossi Bitton was born in 1956 and raised in the holy city of Tzfas, the epicenter of artistic and spiritual culture in Israel. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Beatriz Vásquez poses in front of her oversized cut-paper portraits during Friday night's solo show opening at the Arts Council of Indianapolis. Image courtesy of the artist's Instagram account. We emerged from the emotional uplift of the kick-off to Art & Soul and went into Krash Krew's birthday celebration for  Keesha Dixon , a standing ovation for  Okara Imani , a tribute to Nina Simone by  Manon Voice ; and a gallery opening for Beatriz Vásquez . Today, we engrave their names onto our Sacred Heart. A  Sacred Heart  is a Christian symbol of God's boundless and passionate love, a symbol that, when displayed in a home, includes the engraved names of dear ones. That's why  Beatriz Vásquez's   cut paper sacred heart is our art of the week.

SOTHEBY'S Jorge M. Perez with Kara Walker's "Securing a Motherland Should Have Been Sufficient" (2016)  Billionaire real estate developer and philanthropist Jorge M Pérez has erected gleaming towers in cities throughout the world, and his name is attached to the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the flagship contemporary art museum in his adopted hometown. But at the moment, his pride and joy is a squat two-story warehouse building called El Espacio 23, in a little-known industrial area of the city. An experimental arts center inaugurated in December, it is the culmination of a great American success story – one which began overseas. Pérez’s career as an art collector was born out of a desire to stay connected to his homeland. “After I finished school when I decided to stay in the US, I had a lot of nostalgia for Latin America and was looking for my roots,” he says. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS "Sacred Heart" by Beatriz Vásquez Indianapolis-based Beatriz Vásquez' Mexican heritage is firmly entrenched in her art practice. Her imagery of flowing colorfully patterned clothing and cultural symbols coupled with her use of the traditional Mexican technique of papel picado (cut paper) reflect the rich history of her family and her childhood growing up in the border town of Brownsville, Texas. Those memories and narratives converge tonight in the Arts Council of Indianapolis Gallery 924 . For "Feminine Bloodlines," Vásquez has created larger than life figures to visualize and create space for an empowered and strong female presence in the 21st century. The exhibition runs through March 27, 2020.

MODERN TOKYO TIMES By Lee Jay Walker Taira no Tadamori (1096-1153) was a famous and notable samurai who was loyal to the Taira clan. In Japanese art and folklore, he is depicted favorably based on his many attributes that were so important in this period of Japanese history. Therefore, despite the passages of time, the legacy of Tadamori remains intact based on art, folklore, literature, and important historical documents. In the world of folklore and art Tadamori is deemed fearless beyond the norms of life. Hence, he didn’t flinch in the art of war, irrespective of natural clan fighting, fighting Buddhist warrior monks, or tackling pirates. Equally, in the mysterious world of Japanese folklore Tadamori did not fear the unseen world of sinister spirits and dangerous ghosts. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Kipp Normand's Snake Oil premieres this month! Part world’s fair exhibit, huckster wagon, dime museum, and midway arcade; Snake Oil at the Tube Factory is a multifaceted installation that challenges the viewer to re-examine the ideas of American Exceptionalism. Inspired by the Dada traditions of assemblage, collage, construction, and performance, Indianapolis-based Kipp Normand distills four centuries of history to illustrate the deep-seated American penchant for fantastical thinking. Part world’s fair exhibit, huckster wagon, dime museum, and midway arcade; Snake Oil is a multifaceted installation that challenges the viewer to re-examine the ideas of American Exceptionalism. [ More ]

ARTNET NEWS By Sarah Cascone The Italian Embassy Culture Centre's booth at the India Art Fair. Photo by Aparna Jain, via Twitter. Political tensions rising across Delhi bubbled to the surface on the last day of the India Art Fair on Sunday, as police shut down a live community artwork installed that afternoon at the booth of the Italian Embassy Culture Centre by Post-Art Project, an art studio founded by Gargi Chandola and Yaman Navlakha . The censored piece contained no overt references to the porposed Citizen Amendment Act, according to the artists. “It was about celebrating the power of women in India,” Chandola told Artnet News in an Instagram message, noting that it featured the work of roughly a dozen artists representing differing backgrounds, including the Hindu and Muslim faiths, as well as the LGTBQ community. [ More ]

JEWISH EXPONENT By Eric Schucht Artwork by Nathan Hilu (Courtesy of Rita Poley) In a 2012 profile, Tablet referred to Nathan Hilu as perhaps “the most significant Jewish outsider artist you’ve never heard of.” And now, due to the chance introduction of an eccentric art collector to a museum director, an exhibit of his work is coming to Philadelphia for the first time. “Hilu Through the Eyes of a Collector” will be on display at the Temple Judea Museum from Jan. 17 to March 6. The museum is located inside Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park and operates 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sundays. [ More ]

THE YORK TIMES By Alissa J. Rubin An anti-government protester painted a mural on Sadoun Street in downtown Baghdad. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times BAGHDAD — Hollow-cheeked and shivering slightly in jeans he had outgrown, Abdullah stood in an unfinished parking garage, transfixed in front of a mural whose meaning he was eager to decode for a visitor. Drawn in charcoal in a socialist-realist style, the mural, more than 12 feet long, showed a group of men walking forward and carrying their fallen friends in their arms. The men depicted were unmistakably Everyman laborers, with rough clothes and strained faces. Abdullah, 18 — is now an unofficial art guide to one of the most unlikely galleries imaginable: a 15-story shell of a structure, known locally by all as the Turkish Restaurant building, that looks over the Tigris River. It is the self-declared stronghold of Iraqis who oppose the country’s current leadership. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Mea Culpa-Lady of Sorrows Photographer Kelvin Burzon's solo exhibition, "Noli Me Tangere: Lamentations" opens on Friday, February 7 through Friday, April 10, 2020, in the Eric Dean Gallery of Wabash College in Indiana. Burzon is the 2017 winner of the  Alpha & Omega Prize for Contemporary Religious Art. Noli Me Tangere, “touch me not” or “don’t thread on me,” (Latin) is a series of photographs that examine the intersection of homosexuality and religion. Rooted in the artist’s Filipino Roman Catholic upbringing, the genesis of the series can be charged to the signing of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act  in 2015.  [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Louis Carreon's "Trap supper x" "After a tumultuous life of substance addiction followed by a sobering prison sentence for drug trafficking," today, California born Louis Carreon has found a Christian voice authentically his own. Using the Old Masters as a frame of reference, he fuses African and South American tribal and folk motifs with tattooed and scared markings of street art modernism to tell his multi-faceted spiritual journey towards reinvention. This week, we read about his journey in V Magazine , and that's why Louis Carreon is our religious artist of the week.

THE NEW YORK TIMES  Show Us Your Walls By Shivani Vora David Grutman alongside an untitled 2016 Lego installation by Dante Dentoni that stretches the length of a hallway in his family’s home. Scott McIntyre for The New York Times MIAMI BEACH — To say that the art in David and Isabela Grutman’s home bombards the senses is an understatement. Over the last 15 years, Mr. Grutman, 45, a restaurateur and club owner, has amassed a sizable collection of head-turning pieces. Many are sculptures, but paintings, street art and installations in bold colors also figure in it. “I’ve always really been into emerging art, but now that I’m older, I also like to buy artists that are more established,” said Mr. Grutman, who owns Papi Steak and LIV in Miami Beach and Swan (with Pharrell Williams) in Miami. “But I never buy works for investment purposes. They have to resonate with me.” Mr. Grutman said he connected with art from the 1980s and ’90s, when he grew up. [ More ]