Women artists channeling the magic of the feminine occult

THE HUFFINGTON POST
By Priscilla Frank

Chitra Ganesh, “Girl, Water, Globe,” 2016, light jet print

KENTUCKY---Although universal belief in feminine spirituality is no longer the norm, the spirit of the goddess creator lives on ― particularly through the vision and practice of feminist artists. An exhibition titled “Sisters of the Moon: Art & the Feminine Dimension,” now on view at the Louisville KMAC Museum in Kentucky, features the work of women artists who, in some way, have incorporated the eternal ideas of nature, spirituality, femininity and the occult into their work. Chitra Ganesh’s artworks are a vibrant tangle of comic books and Bollywood, science fiction and Buddhist mythology, 1960s psychedelia and Grimm’s fairy tales. [link]

The lost history of South Africa's /Xam people

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
By Paul Steyn

Thousands of years ago, a person sat in a shallow rock shelter in the remote Cape Fold mountains at the southern tip of Africa, and painted what he had seen.

AFRICA---The San people of southern Africa are the oldest continuous population of people on earth. The Sam did not write and record their seminal history using words and books. Instead, they painted their expressions on the rocks, caves and shelters of the sandstone mountains that curl round the southwestern tip of Africa. Writers and poets have dubbed these mountains “The Louvre of Africa” because of the magnificent gallery of artistic heritage. To me, exploring these expressions is as important as reading about Nelson Mandela, Jan Smuts, and the story of South Africa, or visiting Robben Island, or the Apartheid museum. Of the many and diverse peoples in South Africa, the San (more accurately known as /Xam) is probably the least appreciated or understood. [link]

In the days before election, right-wing media label Democratic artist's dinner party as Satanic Ritual

ARTNET NEWS
By Alyssa Buffenstein

Marina Abramovic in Sao Paulo, Brazil on April 8, 2015. Courtesy of NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images.

Those who pledged over $10,000 in support of the Marina Abramović Institute were invited to “Spirit Cooking with Marina Abramović,” an event whose description advertised “A dinner night with Marina during which she will teach you and other backers at this level how to cook a series of traditional soups, which you will all enjoy together. “Spirit Cooking,” Abramović told Artnews on Friday, was just a “funny name” for a “normal dinner” with about 10 guests, including Tony Podesta. His Clinton-affiliated brother, however, did not make an appearance—and neither did blood, semen, nor breast milk as suggested by alt-right conspiracy theorists. [link]

Denver's Holy Moly-Religious Commentary in Contemporary Art

NORTH DENVER TRIBUNE

DENVER, CO---Niza Knoll Gallery is bringing back the popular Holy Moly-Religious Commentary in Contemporary Art Juried Exhibition. Just like the call for entries exhibit launched in 2014, artists are invited to create original, compelling art that departs from traditional religious iconography and explores what religion means to them. Is it real, fantasy, calming, confusing, corrupt? What do you think? How do you feel? How do you interpret it? The selected works will be exhibited from December 16, 2016 through January 28, 2017 at 915 Santa Fe Drive. Deadline for entries is November 26th. Entries are accepted only through CaFÉ (callforentry.org). [link]

Getty Museum Explores the Curious Blend of Science and Spirituality Known as Alchemy

ARTDAILY

Mercury ca. 1570–1580 Johann Gregor van der Schardt (Netherlandish, ca. 1530–after 1581) Bronze Lent by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 95.SB.8.

CALIFORNIA---Long shrouded in secrecy, alchemy was once considered the highest of arts. Straddling art, science, and natural philosophy, alchemy has proven key to both the materiality and creative expression embedded in artistic output, from ancient sculpture and the decorative arts to medieval illumination, and masterpieces in paint, print, and a panoply of media from the European Renaissance to the present day. Drawing primarily from the collections of the Getty Research Institute as well as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the exhibition The Art of Alchemy examines the impact of alchemy around the world on artistic practice and its expression in visual culture from antiquity to the present. [link]

Orlando Furioso’s Imaginative Universe 500 Years Later

APOLLO MAGAZINE
By Susan Moore

Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue , 1502, Andrea Mantegna. Musee du Louvre, Paris

Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto lays claim to being one of the most influential works of European literature, not least due to the artistic response it provoked – from the Tiepolo frescoes in the Villa Valmarana to the celebrated illustrations of Gustave Doré. Rather than examine this critical history, Guido Beltramini and Adolfo Tura’s exhibition at the Palazzo dei Diamanti, marking the 500th anniversary of the publication of Ariosto’s epic poem in Ferrara in 1516, instead delves into the poet’s imaginative universe. The show’s premise and subtitle is ‘Cosa vedeva Ariosto quando chiudeva gli occhi’ (what Ariosto saw when he closed his eyes). Its evocation of the fantastical realms that the poet created for his chivalric romance is achieved through an examination of the very real world of Ariosto, and the literary and visual sources that fired his imagination. [link]

Ben Smith's "Prophet" and "Suppliant" in Georgia's State Art Collection

NEW GEORGIANA ENCYCLOPEDIA
By Laura Diaz

Suppliant (date unknown) by Ben Smith is part of Georgia's State Art Collection. Print (woodcut), 56 1/4 x 41 inches

GEORGIA---Ben Smith, an Atlanta-based artist best known for creating massive woodblock prints, was born in 1941. The subjects of his work are often shamans, wizards, and other ceremonial figures, dressed in lavish robes or antique suits of armor, interacting with mythological creatures. Smith teaches at both the Chastain Arts Center and the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. His woodblock prints Enlightened Figure, Prophet (1964), and Suppliant (date unknown) are part of Georgia's State Art Collection. [link]

Journeying Beyond Western Time in Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Art

HYPERALLERGIC
By Carey Dunne

Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, “Two Women Dreaming” (1990)

MASSACHUSETTS--- In 1971, at a remote government settlement in Australia’s Northern Territory called Papunya, a group of elderly Aboriginal men painted designs from ancestral creation stories onto a school wall in cheap, bright acrylics. They did so at the urging of Geoffrey Bardon, a white schoolteacher, who’d seen these designs in sand drawings and body art. They pictured tribal totems, like the Honey Ant, and other images from ancestral creation myths known as “the Dreaming.” This indigenous art, of course, had existed in various forms for most of the 40,000 years of Aboriginal life in Australia — it’s the oldest unbroken art tradition in the world. It just wasn’t visible or marketable to the contemporary Western art industry. [link]

Surfaces Seen and Unseen: African Art at Princeton University

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

Urhobo artist, Mask, 1800–10. Wood, pigment, metal, 69.2 × 26.7 × 15.2 cm. Promised Museum Acquisition from the Holly and David Ross Collection.

NEW JERSEY---How ritual additions to the surfaces of African sculptures alter an object’s appearance and power over time is the focus of a fascinating new exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum. These surface accumulations—such as layers of organic materials that have cultural and spiritual value, or encrustations that reveal the additions made by multiple hands—offer insight into the history and life of the object. Surfaces Seen and Unseen: African Art at Princeton presents some 20 exceptional works of African art from the Princeton University Art Museum, including newly acquired works from the Holly and David Ross Collection as well as gifts and loans from important private collections.

Papuan Tribe Preserves Ancient Rite of Mummification

YAHOO NEWS
By Adek Berry

Tribe chief Eli Mabel (C) holds mummified remains of his ancestor, Agat Mamete Mabel, in the village of Wogi, in Wamena, the long-isolated home of the Dani tribe high in the Papuan central highlands (AFP Photo/Adek Berry)

INDONESIA---Cradling the centuries-old remains of his mummified ancestor, tribe leader Eli Mabel lays bare an ancient tradition that has all but vanished among the Dani people in the Papuan central highlands. The tiny, blackened, shrunken figure he carries was Agat Mamete Mabel, the chieftain that ruled over this remote village in Indonesian Papua some 250 years ago. Honoured upon death with a custom reserved only for important elders and local heroes among the Dani people -- he was embalmed and preserved with smoke and animal oil. Christian missionaries and Muslim preachers encouraged the tribespeople to bury the corpses, and the tradition has faded as the centuries drifted by. But Mabel is determined to retain the ancient rites and rituals for future generations. [link]

Egypt: Faith after the Pharaohs, British Museum, review: 'ambitious'

THE TELEGRAPH
By Alastair Sooke

Basalt bust of Germanicus Roman, about AD 14-20 Probably made in Egypt

UNITED KINGDOM---Midway through the British Museum’s new exhibition, "Egypt: Faith After the Pharaohs," we encounter an object that epitomises what the show is about. It is a basalt bust of Germanicus (Augustus’s great-nephew, and a beloved general of the early Roman Empire), which was probably carved after he visited Egypt shortly before his death in Antioch in AD 19. Long after the Julio-Claudians had lost control of Egypt, somebody set about the bust by hacking off its nose as well as chunks of its right ear. With a few strokes of a chisel, this champion of a bygone pagan era was branded, for eternity, as a slave of God. [link]

Stonehenge yields 6,300 years of secrets

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Kenneth Chang

UNITED KINGDOM---Stonehenge has captivated generation after generation. About 6,300 years ago, a tree here toppled over. For the ancients in this part of southern England, it created a prime real estate opportunity — next to a spring and near attractive hunting grounds. Last month, in the latest excavation at a site known as Blick Mead, Mr. Jacques and his team dug a trench 40 feet long, 23 feet wide and 5 feet deep, examining this structure and its surroundings. They found a hearth with chunks of heat-cracked flint, pieces of bone, flakes of flint used for arrowheads and cutting tools, and ocher pods that may have been used as a pigment. [link]