Posts Tagged ‘MFA Boston’

John Singer Sargent

Tuesday, June 29th, 1999

He was the pre­em­i­nent por­trait painter of his day, and he gave it all up to paint land­scapes. His pri­vate life is a mys­tery. His brush­work is still daz­zling. JOHN SINGER SARGENT seems to have walked out of the pages of a nov­el by Hen­ry James, who wrote of him: “Yes, I have always thought of Sar­gent as a great painter. He would be greater still if he had done one or two lit­tle things he hasn’t—but he will do.”

Read the full article »

Winslow Homer

Saturday, March 2nd, 1996

WINSLOW HOMER spent most of his life fish­ing and paint­ing, reel­ing in the deep, unfath­omable mys­tery of the sea. His pic­tures often show some­body gaz­ing out to sea, con­cen­trat­ing on some­thing no one else can see. Maybe it’s the light on the water, or the wind in the sails, or a boat com­ing home to shore, or just the flick­er of a dream.

Read the full article »

Judy Kensley McKie

Saturday, December 2nd, 1995

Work­ing in bronze, that most ancient and endur­ing of mate­ri­als, JUDY MCK­IE’s work reveals the pow­er of art to con­sole and heal. Her Bird Foun­tain has the silent, soar­ing pres­ence of great mourn­ing mon­u­ments. “The water makes you feel calm and peaceful,” she says. “It’s nour­ish­ing. A life force.”

Read the full article »

Pleasures of Paris

Friday, September 6th, 1991

in a moment, the door will swing back shut, and the cafe will dis­ap­pear, and then the street singer will van­ish, into the street, into the night, nev­er to be seen again. Only here, in this paint­ing, where she is for­ev­er caught in the gold­en net of the Paris night at the moment when she stepped out through the swing­ing door, onto the street, and into our dreams.

Read the full article »

John Singer Sargent’s EL JALEO

Wednesday, August 28th, 1991

In a dark, smoky room, a soli­tary dancer rais­es up her arm in a tense, ecsta­t­ic move­ment of inspi­ra­tion; her oth­er hand clutch­es the skirt of her dress — a flash of white light gleam­ing in the dark. You can almost hear the rhyth­mic weep­ing of the gui­tars; you can almost feel beat­ing of the dancer’s tumul­tuous heart.

Read the full article »

Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun

Friday, July 19th, 1991
Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun

Madame Vigee-Lebrun rev­o­lu­tion­ized the por­trait. She despised the pow­der and stiff clothes that women wore; she let their hair down, and draped them in soft, flow­ing shawls and paint­ed them look­ing soft, dreamy, nat­ur­al, alive. Her paint­ings helped to cre­ate a new look, a new style, a new atti­tude to life in pre-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paris.

Read the full article »

12th Annual Boston Drawing Show

Saturday, April 13th, 1991

GERRY BERG­STEIN’s draw­ings show scrib­bles, scrawls, cross­ings-out, angry re-work­ings, mark­ings of strug­gle and doubt. From this chaos of marks on paper emerge lumi­nous lit­tle still lives, marked by the process of decay: visions of a world in flux, where every­thing is chang­ing, grow­ing, liv­ing, dying, and being reborn. 

Read the full article »

The Future of Art

Friday, March 1st, 1991

It is art that acknowl­edges the strug­gle of its own mak­ing, and con­veys a sense of life as com­posed of frag­ments, where not every­thing is leg­i­ble, and some things are irrev­o­ca­bly ruined or lost. The past haunts and enrich­es the present. Mem­o­ry and imag­i­na­tion are inter­twined. It is a mir­ror of the soul.

Read the full article »

The Sound Artist: Hans Peter Kuhn

Monday, February 18th, 1991

“Sound art is more open and much clos­er to life than music. Music is a fil­tered expe­ri­ence. I’m not a com­pos­er. I don’t want the emo­tion­al view bound or direct­ed in any one direc­tion. I want to keep it open. I’m always try­ing things out. I hear some­thing and I can pick it up and react in min­utes. I’m inter­est­ed in every­thing that makes a noise.”

Read the full article »

Robert Wilson’s Vision

Thursday, January 17th, 1991

ROBERT WILSON’S VISION is struc­tured like a jour­ney — a jour­ney that moves from morn­ing to night — from white to black — from the past to the future — from birth to death. A jour­ney that has no begin­ning and no end, but all takes place in a time­less, end­less present.

Read the full article »

The Unique Print

Sunday, December 9th, 1990

In mono­type, there is no fixed image on the print­ing sur­face. The artist paints or draws on a print­ing plate, makes changes, and prints again; the final proof is an accu­mu­la­tion of all the changes that have been made. Pale, fad­ed images of past impres­sions often cling to mono­types like shad­ows; they are called “ghosts.”

Read the full article »

Barbizon

Monday, October 1st, 1990

Bar­bi­zon was a place and a style — and also a feeling—a mood—a time of day — dusk, when the forms of things soft­en and the edges blur, and a kind of hush falls over the world. The earth is solemn, soft, and ten­der, like a bed—and some­times like a grave. 

Read the full article »

Pierre Bonnard: Prints

Saturday, September 1st, 1990

BON­NARD’s art is an art of nuance and sug­ges­tion. His friend, the Sym­bol­ist poet Paul Ver­laine, wrote:
“You must have music first of all,
and for that a rhythm uneven is best,
vague in the air and soluble
with noth­ing heavy and noth­ing at rest.”

Read the full article »

Martin Puryear

Monday, July 9th, 1990

His fal­cons are ele­gant objects, yet they are also birds of prey. They are chained to a perch, dream­ing of flight; per­fect­ly at rest, yet poised to spread their wings and reach for the sky. His art con­veys a sense of scrap­ing away and dis­card­ing every­thing that is not essen­tial — of trav­el­ling light, like a nomad, and soar­ing high, like a bird.

Read the full article »

Robert Rauschenberg

Tuesday, May 22nd, 1990

Great art cheats death of its vic­to­ry by trans­form­ing mem­o­ry’s frag­ile frag­ments into some­thing last­ing, pre­cious, and incor­rupt­ible. The ghost­ly white porch is a win­dow to a world beyond flesh and paint — a world with­out sor­row or sub­stance, col­or or weight. It is cool, pale, and white as a bone.

Read the full article »

Shaker Spirit Drawings

Tuesday, May 1st, 1990

In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, women in Shak­er com­mu­ni­ties record­ed their visions of heav­en­ly gar­dens in “spir­it” or “gift” draw­ings — sim­ple gifts that speak to the heart. The words, writ­ten in tiny, spi­dery hand­writ­ing, are fad­ed and almost illeg­i­ble, but the lit­tle birds and hearts and flow­ers make the feel­ings clear. 

Read the full article »

Monet in the ’90’s: The Series Paintings

Monday, April 30th, 1990

In paint­ing after paint­ing, the earth moves and the water swoons and the sky tum­bles and all the blues and pinks and pur­ples and reds and oranges dis­solve into one. Earth and water come togeth­er, again and again, and explode in a sym­pho­ny of light and col­or and air.

Read the full article »

Textile Masterpieces

Thursday, February 8th, 1990

Rugs and blan­kets, shrouds and shawls: tex­tiles touched the lives of the peo­ple who lived with them. Slum­ber­ing in store­rooms, rolled up and pro­tect­ed from light, these tex­tile mas­ter­pieces have kept their vibrant col­ors and some­thing of their human warmth. Now, unfurled, they look like mag­ic car­pets, poised to rise.

Read the full article »

The Grand Tour

Sunday, January 28th, 1990

Light as a whis­per, these ele­gant images, in the del­i­cate style known as ROCOCO, con­vey the “sweet­ness of life” before the Rev­o­lu­tion. Some­thing of the warmth of the artist’s hand still lingers in all the lit­tle jabs and touch­es of chalk or ink that make up these deli­cious lit­tle 18th cen­tu­ry draw­ings and prints.

Read the full article »

Weston’s Weston: Portraits and Nudes

Sunday, January 21st, 1990

WEST­ON’s por­traits of friends and lovers are so intense that their souls seem to flick­er through their sen­si­tive faces and expres­sive hands. But West­on’s Nudes are seen in name­less frag­ments, as cool and smooth as mar­ble. You see their bod­ies, but their faces are turned away. 

Read the full article »

American Screenprints

Tuesday, September 26th, 1989

Many of the most mem­o­rable images of the six­ties were silkscreen prints: Andy Warhol’s soup­cans, Mar­i­lyns, and Jack­ies, Roy Licht­en­stein­s’s day-glo brush­strokes on Ben-Day dots, Sis­ter Cori­ta’s Flower Pow­er mes­sages, Robert Indi­ana’s LOVE, and Ed Ruscha’s daz­zling 1966 Stan­dard Sta­tion, radi­ant and gleam­ing in the Cal­i­for­nia light.

Read the full article »

Imperial Taste

Monday, July 24th, 1989

In the 12th cen­tu­ry, the Emper­or Quian­long, who was a also a poet, said, “I want col­or”. He got col­or: exquis­ite pale blues and greens that seem to float on the sur­face of the bowls’ smooth sur­faces like clouds; pur­ple splash­es called “the sky at dusk”; and a pale cobalt blue that seems dis­tilled from a serene and cloud­less sum­mer sky.

Read the full article »

Mary Cassatt

Friday, July 14th, 1989

In many of the prints, a wom­an’s face is par­tial­ly obscured, either because of the way she has turned her head, or because she is hold­ing some­thing in front of her face ‑‑ a hand, a let­ter, a child. This con­veys a sense of mys­tery, a feel­ing that there are secret mean­ings and moments of tragedy and what Vir­ginia Woolf called “ecsta­sy” — hid­den in the tex­ture of a wom­an’s dai­ly life.

Read the full article »

Radio Days

Sunday, October 13th, 1985

Some­thing mag­i­cal hap­pened when the micro­phone was turned on: all my doubts dis­ap­peared. I devel­oped the habit of read­ing every­thing out loud, so my writ­ing became more nat­ur­al and tuned into my voice. I had a huge audi­ence. For the first time in my life, peo­ple were lis­ten­ing to what I had to say, and I loved it.

Read the full article »

Kush: Lost Kingdom of the Nile

Tuesday, December 1st, 1981

Red Sea shells and pol­ished stones from the pyra­mid tomb of Queen Khen­sa — “great of charm, great of praise, pos­ses­sor of grace, sweet of love” — and oth­er trea­sures from KUSH, Lost King­dom of the Nile. A med­i­ta­tion on Art, Time, and the ancient river.

Read the full article »