Why Norman Rockwell Matters

ARTSY
By Alexxa Gotthardt

Norman Rockwell. Photo via Bettmann/Getty Images.

What kind of art has the power to charm millions of Americans? It’d be a good question to pose to Norman Rockwell, that famed painter of quaint, funny scenes depicting mid-20th-century American life. His works were reproduced ceaselessly on magazine covers in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s—and their appeal was immense. By the 1940s, Time magazine had already christened Rockwell as “probably the best-loved U.S. artist alive,” while the New York Times had affectionately compared his paintings to Mark Twain’s novels. On the other hand, the fine art world’s burgeoning band of critics, led by Clement Greenberg, derided his work as too sentimental, saccharine, and commercial.[More]

Bill Viola / Michelangelo: Life Death Rebirth Review – An Uneasy Dialogue

THE GUARDIAN
By Tim Adams

‘Divine muscular energy’: Michelangelo’s The Risen Christ, c1532-3. Right: Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall), 2005 by Bill Viola. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019; Bill Viola Studio

Eer since Bill Viola first pitched up in Florence as a 23-year-old film technician in 1974, there has been a certain inevitability that 45 years on he would end up here, sharing a mostly hushed and dimly lit Royal Academy with Michelangelo. Viola was in Italy back then working in a studio patronised by some of the pioneers of video art – including Nam June Paik and Bruce Nauman – but he was also encountering for the first time the work of Renaissance painters face-to-face in the city’s churches, an experience that he later described as something like “total immersion” for him. Along the way the two experiences – fresco and video, altarpiece and flatscreen – seemed to have fused in his imagination. Viola saw the possibility of recreating those 500-year-old visions of eternal truths for a contemporary audience – not in marble or paint or charcoal, but on screen. [More]

Bill Viola: The Road to St Paul’s — Can Video Art Rise to Sacred Surroundings?

FINANCIAL TIMES
By Suzi Feay

Bill Viola’s ‘Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire,Water)’ in St Paul’s

You can’t help thinking that if Christopher Wren had wanted two permanent video installations in chapels next to the high altar in St Paul’s, he would have arranged to be born 300 years later. Why video? John Moses, the former dean of St Paul’s who commissioned the work, brushes off centuries of religious art with the words “If you have a painting, you stop for 15 seconds then pass on.” Speak for yourself, your worship! This contemporary form requires a greater degree of involvement from the viewer than the traditional ones, he explains. But [Bill] Viola is not just respectful of the Renaissance tradition, he is steeped in it, and this film demonstrates that his work really can bear the comparison. [More]

Top Five Museum Acquisitions of the Month

THE ART NEWSPAPER

Our pick of the most significant new gifts and purchases to enter museum collections worldwide, from Dalí’s lobster telephone to a bumper gift of indigenous art. [More]

Musea Brugge. Bruges Panel painting by the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula. Musea Brugge has acquired Saint Veronica with the Sudarium (around 1500), an oil on oak panel painting by the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula.

An Italian Scholar Says He Has Identified Leonardo da Vinci’s Only Known Sculpture. Others Are Skeptical

ARTNET NEWS
By Henri Neuendorf,

A scholar says this work, known as The Virgin with the Laughing Child (ca. 1465), is by Leonardo da Vinci. Photo: courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

An Italian scholar says a terracotta statuette in the collection of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is by Leonardo da Vinci, even though the museum isn’t convinced. According to The Art Newspaper, art history professor Francesco Caglioti of the University of Naples Federico II attributed the sculpture, known as The Virgin with the Laughing Child (ca. 1465), to the 15th-century master in an interview with an Italian newspaper. If he’s correct, it would be the only known sculpture by the Renaissance polymath in existence. The work is scheduled to go on view as part of the first retrospective of Leonardo’s mentor, Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488) at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence next month. The show travels to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in September. [More]

The Story of Chaney Lively for Indianapolis Black History Month

NUVO
By Laura McPhee

Portrait of Chaney Lively, T.J. Reynolds (2019)

Indianapolis was literally uncharted territory when chosen as the state capitol in 1820. With the exception of a few hardy settlers and a handful of Native Americans who refused to be chased off by the federal government, it was uninhabited wilderness. A Scotsman named Alexander Ralston was hired as surveyor in 1821 and tasked with laying out the new city—a plan that became known as the Mile Square. A lifelong bachelor with no known family, he came with a clerk and a housekeeper described as “a mulatto woman named Chaney Lively.” Chaney was 21-years-old when she arrived in the city and a free woman of color—the first to call Indianapolis home. [More]

Are Female Old Masters an Untapped Market or a Marketing Ploy? Experts Are Divided, But Buyers Don’t Seem to Care

ARTNET NEWS
By Judd Tully

Victoria Beckham with Artemisia Gentileschi's Saint Sebastian Tended By Irene at the exhibition for "The Female Triumphant" at Sotheby's New York. Photo courtesy of Tom Newton.

It’s rare for an Old Master auction to receive coverage in Vogue and InStyle magazines. But this year’s Masters Week sales in New York, held in the freezing final days of January, generated more buzz than usual thanks to an unlikely celebrity endorsement from fashion diva Victoria Beckham, who promoted a selection of 21 works by 14 female artists. Did the stunt pay off? Might it help lure a younger crowd—particularly those interested in sifting through art history for overlooked talents—to the Old Master category? So far, it’s hard to say. The group of pictures—presented under the banner “the Female Triumphant”—realized $14.6 million, just overshooting pre-sale estimate of $8.9 million to $13.2 million. [More]

Dallas Museum of Art Announces 2018 Acquisition And Program Highlights

ARTDAILY

Derick Baegert, The Descent from the Cross, c. 1480-1490 (detail), Dallas Museum of Art, Marguerite and Robert Hoffman Fund in memory of Dr. William B. Jordan.

DALLAS, TX.- The Dallas Museum of Art continued to strengthen and expand its exhibitions and educational programming, bilingual offerings, and curatorial team in 2018 with the appointment of new leadership across departments, the development of expanded education initiatives, and the acquisition of major works across its collections. In support of the DMA’s commitment to engaging the community through programs anchored by its collections, three new curators and a new director of education joined the Museum in 2018, and the Museum expanded its off-site and bilingual program offerings. [More]

Islam and the Art of the Cross, Evan Kuehn Reviews Navid Kermani

LOS ANGELES BOOK REVIEW
By Evan Kuehn

David Kermani describes his book, Wonder Beyond Belief: On Christianity, as “freely associated meditations” on Christian art. Wonder Beyond Belief is an exercise in aesthetic reflection as a viable mode of negotiating religious discourse and distance. What Kermani provides is more than simply a model for dialogue between faiths, although he does do this. In his engagement with Christian visual art, we encounter a model for aesthetic judgment that also does justice to the everyday piety of religious believers, who may not engage with sacred art as works of genius, but do potentially invest a religious significance in these works that is open to recognition and question by the tourist. This approach recommends itself in large part because it is unassuming. [More]

Examining the Underbelly of US Culture: Gun Violence, White Supremacy, and Greed

HYPERALLERGIC
By Julia Friedman

Sandow Birk, “The Triumph of Fear”(2017) acrylic on canvas; 46 x 54 inches

Sandow Birk’s exhibition at PPOW Gallery, Triumph of Hate, examines dark strains in the culture and politics of the United States, including Trump, gun violence, white supremacy, and greed. Birk’s body of work is unusual in that its explicit politics don’t read as overly didactic — a difficult line to walk successfully. Triumph of Hate is comprised of three distinct bodies of work: a series of satirical prints about Trumpian exploits, graphically violent paintings examining recent events, and a triptych of woodblock prints representing the battle of good versus evil throughout American history. [More]

To Divinity And Beyond: Questions Over Ukraine Space Church's Future

ARTDAILY

A guide waits for visitors at the space museum located in Saint Paraskeva church in Pereyaslav-Khemlnytsky, a small town some 80 kilometers southeast of Kiev on January 11, 2019. ALEKSEY FILIPPOV / AFP.

PEREYASLAV-KHMELNYTSKY (AFP).- Inside a traditional Orthodox church topped with a gold cross, instead of icons, visitors can see a lunar rover and the helmet of the first man in space Yuri Gagarin. The wooden church in central Ukraine is one of thousands of buildings that were repurposed or simply destroyed during an anti-religion campaign in the Soviet era. But now some believers are asking whether it's time for the blue and grey painted structure to be returned to the Church, especially as Ukraine is undergoing a religious revival. Last month the country created its own Orthodox Church in a historic break with the Russian Orthodox Church. [More]

What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week: Shaker Dancing

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly’s “Off Kilter,” from the series “When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved.”Creditvia Ryan Lee Gallery

Dance and movement are increasingly infiltrating museum and gallery spaces, and they do so in Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly’s “When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved” at Ryan Lee, which takes its inspiration from the Shakers, a Christian sect founded in 18th-century England. In the 22-minute video, spread over three screens, this movement can be fluid or jerky, collective or solitary, taking place on a wooden floor or under a tree. Through Feb. 16. Ryan Lee, 515 West 26th Street, Manhattan; 212-397-0742, ryanleegallery.com. [More]

Michael Cook's "Mysteries" On View Through March Until 29th March 2019

MANGER GALLERY

"Sister Death" by Michael Cook

Mysteries is a selection of paintings highlighting the enigmatic, dream-like and narrative elements in my work, with human figures and animals inhabiting imaginative landscapes, all suggesting something beyond our sight or understanding. Works on display include Noli me Tangere, first shown at Southwell Minster; The Teller of All Our Stories, a painting on wood created for a Unity Vigil; and Sister Death, a large painted folding wooden screen. Mysteries Until 29th March 2019 Open weekends 15th/16th February & 23rd/24th March 10am - 4pm The Manger Gallery, Kings Newton, Melbourne, Derbyshire DE73 8DD 

60 Years On, Alvin Ailey’s Dancers Take The Stage — And Prove Why The Company is Unlike Any Other

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Sarah L. Kaufman

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premiered Rennie Harris’s “Lazarus” at the Kennedy Center. (Paul Kolnik)

Sometimes, the less said, the better. Even when kicking off a triumphant occasion, such as the 60th anniversary of a modern-dance company, which is, by the way, a monumental mile-marker in the economically stressed field of dance. On Tuesday night at the Kennedy Center, Alvin Ailey Artistic Director Robert Battle kept his opening remarks blissfully simple. At the D.C. premiere of a work he’d commissioned to celebrate six decades as a primarily African American dance company, Battle spoke of the late company founder Ailey as “a black man who had a vision 60 years ago, and here we are, living in his wake.” And with that, he left any further commentary to the art. A brilliant move. [More]

Oklahoma City Museum of Art Acquires Portrait by Kehinde Wiley and Still Life by Jan van Kessel the Elder

ARTDAILY

Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977). Jacob de Graeff, 2018. Oil on canvas. Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Museum purchase with funds from the Carolyn A. Hill Collections Endowment and the Pauline Morrison Ledbetter Collections Endowment, 2018.103. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles California. Photo: Jean-Paul Torno, courtesy of Saint Louis Art Museum © Kehinde Wiley.

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA.- OKCMOA has acquired two significant works of art that are different, yet complementary. Together, “Jacob de Graeff” by Kehinde Wiley (2018) and “Still Life with Fruits, Flowers, Game and Fish (Vase of flowers, furred and feathered game, fruit cups with a guinea pig and a parrot)” by Jan van Kessel the Elder (mid-17th century) represent the diversity of the Museum’s permanent collection. “Jacob de Graeff” will be displayed beginning March 1. After conservation, “Still Life with Fruits, Flowers, Game and Fish” will be shown later this spring. “Wiley’s ‘Jacob de Graeff’ adds a significant work by one of America’s most prominent young artists,” said E. Michael Whittington, president and CEO. [More]

Multimedia Installation Reveals The Complex History of Earth's Mountain Ranges

ARTDAILY

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1526-1569), The Tower of Babel, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- Throughout recorded history, mountains have risen from the land and exerted influence on human life. As their physical forms have shifted over time, so too have the narratives defining their cultural significance. Now a source of fascination and wonder, mountains were once considered threats to humanity, sites of catastrophe, and a means of divine punishment. They have always occupied the cultural imagination, but their history has been complex. Mountains and the Rise of Landscape reveals our common understanding of mountains as a human, discursive construction, one that has been shaped and redefined over millennia. [More]

Freeman's Announces Highlights From the European Art & Old Masters: 500 Years Sale

ARTDAILY

Master of the Embroidered Foliage (Netherlandish, Active Brussels, Late 15th Century), “Nursing Madonna.” Estimate: $150,000-250,000.

PHILADELPHIA, PA.- On Wednesday, February 27, Freeman’s will hold European Art & Old Masters: 500 Years, a finely curated auction of fine art dating from the late 15th century through the early part of the 20th. A rare depiction of Madonna and Child by the Master of the Embroidered Foliage is among the sale’s highlights. “Nursing Madonna” (Lot 5, estimate: $150,000-200,000), depicts the Virgin Mary breastfeeding the Infant Jesus, and is one of 10 works attributed to the Master; most are held in important museum collections such as the Louvre, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Minneapolis Institute of Art. [More]

Art & Soul Performers Pay Tribute to Historic African-American Journeys

THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR

By David Lindquist, Indianapolis Star

Pianist Joshua Thompson is a featured artist for this year's "Art & Soul" celebration at Indianapolis Artsgarden. (Photo: Andrea D. Smith photo)

“Black Migrations and Urban Realities” serves as the theme of this year’s Art & Soul performances at the Indianapolis Artsgarden. The “Black Migrations” concept resonates with visual artist Shamira Wilson, who cites Jacob Lawrence — painter of 60 works in the 1940s that illustrated the movement of millions of people from the rural South to the urban North — as an influence. Dancer Lalah Hazelwood said her work is rooted in the traditions of Africa and the Caribbean, while classical pianist Joshua Thompson mentioned the importance of gospel, blues and jazz music that emerged from the South. [More]

James Baldwin: Pessimist, Optimist, Hero

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

Beauford Delaney’s “Dark Rapture (James Baldwin),” from 1941. The portrait of the young writer is a highlight of a group exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery.

Two years ago, Mr. Als produced a kind of rough draft version of it called “James Baldwin/Jim Brown and the Children” for the Artist’s Institute at Hunter College. At Zwirner Gallery, he streamlines his material and zeros in on Baldwin himself. For a few years, Baldwin did, indeed, preach in Harlem; a recording of him singing “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” plays in the gallery. The new family was situated downtown, and one of the first members Baldwin met — in 1940, when he was 16 or 17 — was the painter Beauford Delaney (1901-1979). Baldwin remained close to Delaney to the end of the older man’s life, by which time the care-taking roles had been reversed. [More]

Celebrating Black History Month With 23rd Annual Art & Soul

WISH TV

"Reliquary" by Shamira Wilson was inspired by his year’s theme, Black Migrations and Urban Realities

The Arts Council of Indianapolis will celebrate Black History Month with a series of free, daily performances and not-to-be-missed events at the Indianapolis Artsgarden. This is the 23rd year of the celebration, known as Art & Soul, which will run from February 2 – 28. Shamira Wilson, featured artist at this year's celebration, previews this year's festivities, including an African drum procession, a youth choral performance, Indianapolis Living Legends: Men in the Fire and Sandy Lomax, singing of the Black National Anthem, an inspirational dance performance by Kenyetta Dance Company, and performances by this year’s four featured artists: Allison Victoria (voice), Lalah Hazelwood (dance), Joshua Thompson (piano) and Shamira Wilson (visual).[More]