Each year at this time I make the trip to my childhood home and stare at a refrigerator full of holiday cards from distant relatives and old family friends. Many of these cards include an annual photo, each year the same people in the same configuration, in front of the same fireplace, or a new vacation location. In the spirit of the season, here are fifteen artworld family photos.

Merry Christmas from the Impressionists

1. Above is the painting A Studio in the Batignolles by Henri Fantin-Latour. This image depicts a bunch of the French Impressionists, including Manet, Renoir, Monet, and the critic Emile Zola. An oil painting of an artist’s friends and colleagues that probably took weeks to complete really makes you appreciate the immediacy of Instagram.

Let It Snow, the Futurists

2. This is a Futurist banquet in Tunis with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, author of the Futurist Manifesto, front and center. (image via)

Winter Greetings, The Ashcan School

3. Here we have the Ashcan School artists at the painter John French Sloan’s Philadelphia Studio in 1898. The original “Philadelphia Five,” included the great American artists George Bellows and Edward Hopper, among others. (image via)

Spreading Holiday Cheer, the Stieglitz’s

4. Meanwhile, over in New York is the Steiglitz Circle. This is an early photo, so Alfred is in there, but not Georgia O’Keeffe or Arthur Dove.  (image via)

Peace, Love & Joy from Weimar

5. This is a photograph from the Meeting of the Contstructivists and Dadaists in Weimar, 1922. Pictured here are some of the movements’ heavy hitters like Theo van Doesburg in the middle with his makeshift hat, El Lissitsky, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, and Hans Richter. (image via)

Happy Holidays from The Bauhaus

6. Here are members of the Bauhaus on the roof of their building, 1926.From left: Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stölzl, Oskar Schlemmer.(image via)

Seasons Greetings from The Surrealists

7. And here are the Surrealists – among them, Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, and Man Ray.

Feliz Navidad!

8. While Frida and Diego have a variety of options to choose from for their annual holiday greeting card, we need at least three people to fit in our group theme. Here they are with architect Albert Khan. (image via)

Celebrate The Season with The Irascibles!

9. Can you imagine what their Christmas party would have been like? Everyone drunk, night ending with fist fights and arguing over representation. From left, rear: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottleib, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne;(next row) Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst (w. bow tie), Jackson Pollock (in striped jacket), James Brooks, Clyfford Still (leaning on knee), Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin; (in foreground) Theodoros Stamos (on bench), Barnett Newman (on stool), Mark Rothko (with glasses). (image via)

Merry Fuckin’ X-Mas from The Factory

10. This Richard Avedon portrait of the Warhol Factory, “Andy Warhol and members of The Factory, New York, October 30, 1969”, would actually be a really amazing thing to see on your mom’s ‘fridge. In addition to some beautiful feathered 1970’s hair and a whole lotta D, this photo features the fabulous Warhol Superstars Viva, Candy Darling, and Brigid Berlin. (image via)

Happy New Year from the Castelli Family

11. This is an invitation to the birthday party of legendary galleriest Leo Castelli by Hans Namuth in 1985 with Castelli and  his artists: Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Flavin, Joseph Kosuth, Richard Serra, Lawrence Weiner, Nassos Daphnis, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Salvatore Scarpitta, Richard Artschwager, Mia Westerlund Roosen, Cletus Johnson, Keith Sonnier, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward Ruscha, James Rosenquist, and Robert Barry.(image via)

Christmas Greetings from Mr. Chow’s

12. Here is another group shot that includes man-about-town Andy Warhol. The staged group photo seemed to be a popular format in the late 80s. (image via)

Fort Greene Felicitations

13. This image which features artists from music and film as well as art such as Lorna Simpson and Spike Lee. You can see these people featured in the documentary Brooklyn Boheme, which is available on Netflix. (image via)

Holiday Greetings from Christie’s

14. While flipping through a recent Art in America print issue, I clocked this double page spread which is not a cover photo for a feature on the auction house, but an advertisement. An advertisement for what, exactly? Well I’m not quite sure other than that these Christie’s staff are serious, they have names, and they sure seem to like hanging around on installation equipment. It mostly bums me out, thinking about the art handlers who had to unpack, move, place, and then re-crate those big Basquiat and Mark Grotjahn paintings in the background for this casual photoshoot. (image – author scan from Art In America November 2013)

Warm Winter Wishes from Work of Art!

15. And finally, everyone’s favorite bunch of reality artists – the cast of Work of Art Season 1. Just kidding! (image via)

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New York City – Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Mike Kelley’s body of work is raw, unsettling, and complex. Unfortunately, the retrospective currently on view at MoMA/PS1 is none of those things. Perhaps this exhibition would have been well situated at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center about 10 years ago, when the facilities were a little less polished and the galleries weren’t packed with the brunch & stroller crowd (despite, or maybe because of, the adult content warning that greets visitors at the entrance). This highly anticipated exhibition has received top marks from all of the critics, which is not to say that it is a bad show – just not the one that I wanted to see.

(image via)

The ground floor galleries are largely dedicated to a collection of works dealing with Kandor, the capital city of Superman’s home planet Krypton. A storyline in the comic involves the villain Brainiac capturing the city, shrinking it, and containing it in a bell jar. Kelley’s work attempts to arrive at a definitive depiction through sculptures, animations, and videos. These works are visually dramatic but conceptually obscure. The video Superman Recites Selections from ‘The Bell Jar’ and Other Works by Sylvia Plath offers a bright reprieve. It features a hunk in a dimestore costume against a black backdrop doing just as the title indicates. This weird conflation of American literary cultures is more immediately felt than the obscurity of the sculptures. It takes some time to uncover, but there is a connection to Kelley’s work on The Uncanny through repetition of images, subject matter from the collective unconscious, and anxiety embodied in the disaster and confinement of the shrunken city. The artist’s deep delve into the subject is fascinating, but if you didn’t make it past that first group of galleries, you would have thought Mike Kelley was some kind of pop-architect.

Similarly to the focus on Kandor, the main gallery on the third floor is dedicated exclusively to the Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction series. This room features numerous loud and confusing multi-media installations. Found images that might be photographs from yearbooks or community newsletters are re-enacted or are the starting point for videos and sculptures. Meant to exorcise repressed childhood trauma, the resultant works are equal parts humorous and horrifying.

There are so many different moments and fixations in the artist’s career – collaborations with contemporaries like Paul McCarthy and Tony Oursler, performances, the astronaut John Glenn, Detroit, stuffed animals – that it is impossible to summarize everything in one blog post. However it would be remiss of me not to mention one piece that exists in the collective unconscious of a certain generation, which is the group of photographs that became the cover of Sonic Youth’s album Dirty.

 (image via)

The piece is a grid of photographic portraits of stuffed animals and at the center, the artist just as lonely, frayed, and pitifully adorable as the other little discarded weirdos. I usually shirk away from imposing too much on an artist’s interior life, but just as we anthropomorphize the creatures in the photos, the artist’s face is a blank canvas on which to project our own readings.

Disappointingly, there is no fulcrum to the show, no hard earned climax, and not a clear understanding of this artist. With the artist’s suicide in 2012, what might have been a mid-career retrospective suddenly became a definitive exhibition of Kelley’s gesamtkunstwerk. A subway ad touts the show as “the first comprehensive retrospective”, which I’m not sure is a fact that warrants positive marketing. Maybe the curators could have used a little more time to wrap their heads around Kelley’s career. The work itself is muscular and bears the evidence of the artist as an incredible influence on other generations. This exhibition, however, might be a rare instance where the artist serves the institution with credibility, rather than the other way around.

Go see it though. Kelley deserves your attention and there is so much to see and think about in his work. Kelley is the kind of artist whose work marinates and reveals itself over time, and warrants repeat viewings. The ultimate tribute to Kelley would be to restage the retrospective in its entirety in ten years time, the way he did with his 1992 ICA London exhibition The Uncanny at Tate Liverpool in 2004. By 2023 we may have had time enough to begin our comprehension.

On view until February 2, 2014 at MoMA/P.S.1

Written by Rose Edward

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Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey – October 11, 2013–March 9, 2014 – At the Brooklyn Museum

Wangechi Mutu‘s new show, A Fantastic Journey, is currently up, and it is beyond a feast for the eyes. One could search her name, and find a plethora of digital photographs of her collages, but to say you’ve really seen Mutu’s work, you need to see it in person. The saturation and dissipation of paint, with all the intricate combinations of pasted photographs, is hard to completely see on a computer screen.

For those who are not familiar with her collage work, she renders the black female form with application of intensely innovative surface quality techniques, all along challenging those who use the term “exotic” to categorize a black woman. Perhaps the title, “A Fantastic Journey” comes from the visual voyage the viewer takes as they stumble across the hidden creatures, and varied patterns lying within a figure that has so many colors, that it brings a new meaning to the word, “colored woman.”

She demonstrates a mastery of balance between ambience and rich, detailed content. The hidden treasures found within her work range from decontextualized elements of animal heads and limbs cut out from magazines, combined with violent red splatter reminiscent of blood massacres, to pornographic images, and machinery parts, all of which compose most often in her works, a slender female warrior.

Viewing these images from a fine artist perspective, she nails all they needs to make visually pleasing and evocative imagery within her collages. Nothing less than extraordinary intuitive placement, each pattern synergistically flows from one to the next. If an art student is running short of what mark to make next, it is urgent to see this show, because Mutu knows how to experiment with color and juxtaposition.

When and if you see Wangechi Mutu’s show at the Brooklyn Museum, on the fourth floor, I strongly suggest you actually appreciate it, and pause at each collage, considering the painstaking details, the sophisticated color choices, and those suggestions of gender, war, race, colonialism, global consumption, and science-fiction. Don’t breeze past them, because you will regret not being attentive to the wide range of visual language she has developed at and since her education at Cooper Union and Yale. Each of her collages has its own unique hook to allure the viewer into its clusters of warm polka dots, and black mold ornamentations curving to the contours of the figure, or the figure’s bulbous lips and wide nose.

Her collages were her strongest work. Mutu is known for her collages, but this show was also an opportunity for her to demonstrate her strength in video installation, and sculpture. Her video work touches upon how “wild” and “untamed” her black female characters are, as one of her videos displays the artist, herself, eating cake without utensils in a fancy white dress, in some outdoors environment. Her other video, which immerses you within its cinema-like presence, displays a woman with a giant attachment of mechanized, industrial forms, oozing, smoking, eating bats. Her video work recalls the attention to detail and conglomeration of content that her collage work does, but it also moves on-screen.

She also installed trees made of multi-colored carpet throughout the exhibition space, and in another room (photo not included), she hung black plastic bags in tied hemp string from the ceiling. Her sculptures omitted the knowledge of color, tonality, and heavy-subject-matter-infused photographs. Her sculptures are simple, exploring the wrinkles the materials make. Her sculptures didn’t exploit the colors that people often associate with exotic fruits and flowers, but rather stuck with browns, grays, and earthy hues.

Wangechi demonstrates her vast imagination, and attention to detail so vividly in her fiery, colorful collages, I was hoping to literally walk into one of her worlds, being able to touch the different textured forms, smell the body odor of one of her figures, or hell, even eat some exotic fruit off the branches of her installed trees. Her installations are shadowed by her collage work. Mutu seems to work liberally, without restraint in her collages, and she challenged herself with her sculptures. My hopes were not let down by seeing this show, but I wonder if in the future, her installation and immersive sculptural work will truly compete with the seductive nature of her collages and 2 dimensional work. She is certainly in her element on flat surfaces, but it seems apparent that she could further push her installation work.

I have no doubt that this artist will continue to grow, and share her incredible gift with the world, especially through her 2-d work, but I’m still waiting for her sculptural work to grab me like her collages do.

Written and photographed by Andrew Kaminski

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NEW YORK, NY – Wednesday, September 18- Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

7:00 pm Muse Fuse: Ann Fensterstock | Storefront Bushwick – 324 Ten Eyck St., Bklyn,NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm The Inaugural Rub Out | Christine Cha | Kraine Gallery & KGB Bar – 85 E. 4th St., NYC
8:00 pm – 11pm Lädy Millard “Luxury”| Con Artist Gallery – 119 Ludlow St, NYC

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

4:00 pm – 10pm Photoville | Pier 5 Brooklyn Bridge Park –360 Furman Street, Brooklyn, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Herb Jackson | Claire Oliver Gallery – 513 W. 26th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Roxa Smith | Conde Nast Building – 4 Times Square, NYC
6:00 pm – 10pm Members Only | CultureFix – 119 Ludlow St, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Edward Burtynsky | Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery – 505 w. 24th St., NYC
6:00 pm Greenpoint Film Festival | Opening Screenings & Panel $ – 67 West St. Greenpoint, Bklyn
6:00 pm – 8pm Jonathan Callan | Josee Bienvenu Gallery – 529 W. 20th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm David Herman | People/Places II | Denise Bibro Fine Art – 529 W. 20th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm David Kassman | Lost | Winston Wächter Fine Art –  530 W. 25th St., NYC
7:00 pm Openings | Faith Based Group Show | Church of St. Paul the Apostle – 405 W. 59th St., NYC
9:00 pm – Midnight Red Bull Curates | Canvas Cooler Project | The 1896– 215 Ingraham St., Bklyn, NYC

Friday, September 20th, 2013

11:00 am – 6pm Behind Closed Doors $ | Brooklyn Museum – 200 Eastern Parkway, Bklynt, NYC
2:00 pm – 7pm The NY Art Book Fair | MoMA PS1– 22-25 Jackson Ave, Long Island City, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm In The Good Name of the Company | See | Exhibition Space – 26-19 Jackson Ave, Long Island City, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Fountain Art Fair Chicago | Mana Contemporary – 2233 S. Throop St., Chicago, IL
7:00 pm – 9pm Augustin Doublet | Skin of the City | fuchs projects – 56 Bogart St, Bushwick, Bklyn, NYC

Saturday, September 21st, 2013

6:00 pm – 8pm Rosalind Nashashibi | Murray Guy– 453 W. 17th St., NYC
12:00 pm – 12am Galerie Project | $ | Light Space Studios – 1115 Flushing Ave., Greenpoint, Bklyn
7:00 pm – 10pm You Are My Sunshine | Group Show | Associated Gallery -The Active Space 566 Johnson Ave., Bklyn

Sunday, September 22nd, 2013

More coming soon

Monday, September 23rd, 2013

More coming soon

Tuesday, September 24th, 2013

More coming soon

The post Your NYC Art Week: Sept. 18th – 24th appeared first on Artiholics.

NEW YORK, NY – Wednesday, September 11- Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Tuesday, September 10th, 2013

10:00 am – 5:15 pm Janet Cardiff | The Cloisters – Fort Tryon Park, NYC
5:00 pm – 7 pm Degrees of Separation | SVA Gallery – 209 E. 23rd St., NYC
5:00 pm – 8 pm Kerry James Marshall | Jack Shainman Gallery– 524 W. 24th St., NYC
5:00 pm – 8 pm Hayv Kahraman | Jack Shainman Gallery– 513 W. 20th St., NYC

Wednesday, September 11th, 2013

6:00 pm – 8pm Pond, Mirror, Kaleidoscope | Visual Arts Gallery – 601 W. 26th. St., NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Josh Smith | Luhring Augustine – 25 Knickerbocker Ave, Bklyn, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Lucas Grogan & Andrea Mary Marshall | Garis & Hahn – 263 Bowery, NYC
>6:00 pm – 8pm Nina Könnemann | Ludlow 38 – 38 Ludlow St., NYC

Thursday, September 12th, 2013

2:00 pm  Cathrine Opie Artist Talk| NYU Fales Library – 70 Washington Sq. S., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Jonas Wood | Anton Kern Gallery – 532 W. 20th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Evening With Bob & David | Town Hall – 123 W.43rd St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Joel Grey | Max Kozloff | William John Kennedy | Steven Kasher Gallery – 521 W.23rd. St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm David Ellis | Joshua Liner Gallery – 540 W. 28th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Lucas Michael | Danziger Gallery – 527 W. 23rd St. NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Susan Derges | Danziger Gallery – 527 W. 23rd St. NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Show #15: Four Lives | Field Projects – 526 W. 26th St. #807, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm The Creator Series | Bar Catalonia – 206 W. 41st St. NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Susie MacMurray | Inaugural Show| Danese Corey – 511 W. 22nd St. NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Harriet Bart | Driscoll | Babcock – 525 W. 25th St. NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Andreas Blank | Benrimon Contemporary – 514 W. 24th St., 2E, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Antoinette Wysock l| Blank Space– 511 W.25th St.,#204, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Decline & Fall of The Art World Part II | Freight + Volume – 530 W. 24th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Josh Smith | Luhring Augustine – 531 W. 24th St., NYC

Friday, September 13th, 2013

10:00 am – 5pm Rethinking Landscape with Le Corbusier | MoMA – 11 W. 53rd St., NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Superstitious 13 Group Show | Gspot – 66 Greenpoint Ave., NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Greenpoint Gallery Night |Greenpoint Brookyn, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Greenpoint Now Art Show | The Yard – 33 Nassau Ave, Greenpoint, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Ugly Art Room | The Yard – 33 Nassau Ave, Greenpoint, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm “WHITE WASH” Group Show | Brian Morris Gallery – 163 Chrystie St., NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm #ThrowbackThursday | Calico – 67 W. St. #206, Bklyn, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Skewville | Mighty Tanaka Gallery – 111 Front St., Dumbo, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Charlotte Becket, Emmy Mikelson, Robert Egert – 464 Seneca Ave, Ridgewood, QNS, NYC
7:00 pm – 10pm Paul Gagner | Centotto – 250 Moore St., #108, Bushwick, NYC
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm Sonic Front | Front Room Gallery – 147 Roebling St., Bklyn, NYC

Saturday, September 14th, 2013

7:00 pm – 10pm COLLIDE- Group Show | Harbor Gallery – 17-17 Troutman, Ridgewood, NYC
7:00 pm – 10pm Dave Hardy | Regina Rex – 17-17 Troutman, Ridgewood, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm All-over or Nothing | Parallel Art Space – 17-17 Troutman, Ridgewood, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Bad As I Wanna Be | Ortega Y Gasset Projects – 17-17 Troutman, Ridgewood, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Jane Fox Hipple | Dodge Gallery – 15 Rivington St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm A PINCH OF SAFFRON… (group show) | Dodge Gallery – 15 Rivington St., NYC
7:00 pm -10pm Don Pablo Pedro | English Kills – 114 Forest St., Bushwick, NYC

Sunday, September 15th, 2013

1:00 pm – 5pm MICA THEN/NOW | Ethan Cohen Fine Arts – 211 Fishkill Ave, Beacon, NY
3:00 pm – 7pm Brooklyn Acts | Performance | The Living Gallery– 1094 Broadway, Bklyn, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Jordan Tate | Denny Gallery -261 Broome St., NYC

Monday, September 16th, 2013

7:00 pm   Tom Sito Lecture & Book Signing | SVA Theatre – 333 W. 23rd St., NYC

Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

6:00 pm – 9pm listings to come…

The post Your NYC Art Week: Sept. 11th – 17th appeared first on Artiholics.

NEW YORK, NY – Wednesday, September 4- Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Thursday, September 5th, 2013

6:00 pm – 9pm James Charles | Art Now NY– 548 W. 28th St.2nd Fl., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Kaoru Okura & Jerry Madson | Caelum Gallery – 508 W. 26th St. #315, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Barbara Takenaga | DC Moore Gallery – 535 W. 22nd St. NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Daniel Borlandelli & Juxtaposition (Group Show) | Deniese Bibro  – 529 W. 20th St.#4W, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Fall Group Show | Arcilesi | Homberg Fine Art –  111 Front St., Dumbo, Bklyn, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Sungsic Moon | DOOSAN Gallery New York – 533 W. 25th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Vicki Sher | frosch & portmann – 53 Stanton St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Luca Dellaverson | Tilton Gallery – 8 E. 76th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Lisa Levy | Littlefield – 622 Degraw St., Bklyn, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Present Memory | Christopher Henry Gallery – 127 Elizabeth St.,NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm A2A: Annuals To Art $ | Art Directors Club – 106 W. 59th St., NYC
7:00 pm – 12am Lexi Bella & Amanda de Souza | reBar – 147 Front St., Bklyn, NYC
8:00 pm – 11pm BK vs. Dali | Sacred Gallery NYC – 424 Broadway, 2nd Fl., NYC

Friday, September 6th, 2013

6:00 pm – 8pm Greg Haberny | Lyons Wier Gallery – 542 W.24th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 10pm Brian Galderisi | et al projects – 56 Bogart, NYC
6:00 pm – 10pm BYO Art | The Living Gallery – 1094 Broadway, Bklyn, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm James Cullinane | Robert Henry Contemporary – 56 Bogart St., Bklyn, NYC
6:30 pm – 9pm “Station to Station” – $25| Riverfront Studios -420 Kent Ave, Bklyn., NYC
7:00 pm – 9pm Liz Sweibel | NURTUREart Gallery – 56 Bogart St.,Bklyn , NYC
7:00 pm – 9pm Amy Hill | Front Room Gallery – 147 Roebling St., NYC

Saturday, September 7th, 2013

11:00 am – 6pm Governors Island Art Fair | Governors Island, NYC (Every Sat-Sun. in SEPT.)
3:00 pm – 9pm WARM UP 2013 (Final)| MoMA PS1 Courtyard – 22-25 Jackson Ave, LIC, NYC
5:00 pm – 7pm Carmen Papalia | Cue Art – 137 W. 25th St., NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm MATERIAL Group Show | Storefront – 324 Ten Eyck St., Bklyn, NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Matthew Mahler | Sardine – 286 Stanhope St.,Bklyn, NYC
7:00 pm – 9pm Blek le Rat | Jonathan LeVine Gallery – 529 W. 20th St., NYC
8:00 pm – 9:30pm Free Screening “Drivers Wanted” Doc.| 55 Stan – Long Island City, NYC

Sunday, September 8th, 2013

4:00 pm – 8pm Cara Phillips | Station Independent Projects – 164 Suffolk St., NYC
4:00 pm – 8pm Brian Leo | S & J Projects – 191 Henry St., NYC
4:00 pm – 8pm Vicki Sher | frosch & portmann – 53 Stanton St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Will Rogan | Laurel Gitlen – 122 Norfolk St., NYC
8:00 pm – 10pm Gaslight Anthem – Performance $ | The Paramount – Huntington, NY
6:00 pm – 8pm Ron Gorchov & Group Show | Lesley Heller Workspace – 54 Orchard St, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Session One | Pocket Utopia – 191 Henry St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Joan Lurie & Beth Dary | Muriel Guépin Gallery – 83 Orchard St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Jeila Gueramian | Allegra LaViola Gallery – 179 E. Broadway, NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Johns Lichtenstein Stella | MARC STRAUS – 299 Grand St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Jeff Talman | MARC STRAUS – 299 Grand St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Antonio Santin | MARC STRAUS – 299 Grand St., NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Tomaz Hipólito | Rooster Gallery – 190 Orchard St., NYC
6:00 pm – 8pm Morten Schelde | Munch Gallery – 245 Broome St., NYC
6:00 pm – 9pm Viking Rappers | NOoSPHERE Arts – 251 E.Houston, NYC
6:30 pm – 8pm Looks Of The L.E.S. | Fashion Show | Lower East Side – Orchard btwn. Broome & Grand

Monday, September 9th, 2013

12:00 am – 1am Zombie Boy | Live Performance | Webster Hall – 125 E.11th St, NYC

Tuesday, September 10th, 2013

10:00 am – 5:15 pm Janet Cardiff | The Cloisters – Fort Tryon Park, NYC
5:00 pm – 7 pm Degrees of Separation | SVA Gallery – 209 E. 23rd St., NYC
5:00 pm – 8 pm Kerry James Marshall | Jack Shainman Gallery– 524 W. 24th St., NYC
5:00 pm – 8 pm Hayv Kahraman | Jack Shainman Gallery– 513 W. 20th St., NYC

The post Your NYC Art Week: Sept. 4th – 10th appeared first on Artiholics.

NEW YORK, NY – Wednesday, August 14- Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Wednesday, August 14th 

6:00 pm – 9 pm Coterie: Collective Pop-Up Exhibition | Munch Gallery – 245 Broome St., NYC

7:00 pm – 9 pm Drink & Draw NUDE MODEL | The Living Gallery – 1094 Broadway, BKLYN

7:00 pm – 10 pm BURGER JOINT ART SHOW II | Burger Joint – 33 W.8th St. NYC

Thursday, August 15th

5:30 pm – 8 pm MoMA Nights with Tristan Perich & Meehan Perkins Duo | MoMA – 11 W. 53rd St.,NYC

6:30 pm – 8 pm Robert Szot 3 Speeches | Opening Reception | Muriel Guépin Gallery – 83 Orchard St.,NYC

7:00 pm – 9 pm Ego vs. Empathy by Qinza Najm | Opening Reception | SMV Gallery Space – 145 W 46th St.,NYC

Friday, August 16th

6:00 pm – 8 pm Yoko Takeuchi “Power of the Earth” | Opening Reception | AG Gallery – 107A N 3rd.,BKLYN

Saturday, August 17th

8:00 pm – 11 pm The Timeless Event | Opening Reception | Vector Gallery – 40 Clinton St.,NYC, NY

Sunday, August 18th

1:00 pm – 6 pm Doppler | Closing Brunch | Parallel Art Space – 17-17 Troutman St. #220, Ridgewood

Monday, August 19th

10:00 pm – 5:30 pm Julia Margaret Cameron | Opening  | The Met – 1000 Fifth Ave.

Tuesday, August 20th

5:00 pm – 10 pm Short Cuts Film Festival Semi-Finals | Screening | SVA Theater – 333 W. 23rd St.,NYC

Entry is free for all events with RSVP to diversity@nbcuni.com. Seating is limited and on a first come, first served basis.

Wednesday, August 21st

Events to come…

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I always thought my institutional education ended when I got my BFA from The School of Visual Arts, and that unless Columbia or some other institution of higher learning decided to email me with an offer of a full tuition scholarship to their MFA painting program (Yale, Columbia, UCLA, Bard, Carnegie Mellon, RISD, California Institute of the arts, CUNY – Hunter College, MICA, Pratt, VCU, SVA, Cooper Union, Art Institute of Chicago, Cranbrook, Oberlin College… email me) then my school days were over.  When Katie Kapler from CourseHorse contacted me last month as a fan of ArtSucks and offered to send me to a few art classes my first thought was: “This is as close to a full tuition as I’m gonna get this week, so wtf, why not?!”

The selection of adult art classes they offer in New York City is huge.  I decided I was gonna take two classes. I wanted to take one “hands on” workshop class where I would get a little dirty, and learn a new art skill. I also wanted to take one informational class where there would be an instructor who would dump knowledge on you, and you would be able to interact and hopefully get more informed about the subject, with a group of your peers.

Let’s start where I started, the “hands on class.”

The first class I chose was called DIY Printmaking.  One of the valuable skills I always feel like I missed picking up in my undergrad was silk screening (a class they also offer) and the ability to make small self pulled prints, and xerox transfers.  The class was happening at Brooklyn Central, a small art studio in a multi-studio underground complex in Dumbo, Brooklyn.  I made the stupid mistake of trying to drive there.  Although the class was starting at 6:30 and I was only a 30 minute drive away, leaving an hour to get there isn’t enough time when you factor in NYC rush hour traffic, so I ended up arriving five minutes late, luckily there was still one other student who arrived a few minutes later than me  so the class hadn’t started yet.  Best bet is to take the subway.

The class was taught by the lovely Caitlin Wheeler, who is a visual artist and veteran printmaker.

The website suggested some materials you could bring to class “If you have images that you would like to experiment with during class, we encourage you to bring them! You may bring B&W photocopies in addition to laser prints or magazine/newspaper cutouts. Believe it or not, photocopies from old Xerox machines work best! If you plan on transferring text, you will need a reverse copy of your image.”  I wanted to approach these classes as a novice would, to give an accurate experience of what it would be like to go blindly into an adult art class with just a pencil in hand.

As it turns out they are prepared for this having stacks and stacks of photocopied black and white images for you to choose from if you didn’t bring copies of your own art.  They also had a nice selection of materials to print on including wood, canvas board, and fabric.  Gel Medium Regular Gell (Gloss or Matt) is the key ingredient to most acrylic transfers.

The sponge brush and the common kitchen spoon are also key tools in print making.  The spoon, as I learned, is used in every level of printmaking.  The first thing we learned was acrylic xerox transfers.

After learning how to get this reversed photocopy image onto the wooden board I used a damp natural sponge (colored sponges leave color residue on your print) to moisten the paper.

Then using my finger I started pushing away the damp paper, and like magic the ink from the photocopy had transferred from the xerox onto the board.  This is nothing shy of magic.

The class was lead by example, first the instructor would explain the materials, and how they work, and then would demonstrate the steps it takes to make the transfer .

Caitlin demonstrates what happens if you use a colored sponge.

After we see it done correctly, we all have a try.  After you make one,  can continue making them throughout the class, as each one takes time to dry, you are learning new techniques while your earlier pieces are drying.

You can see the strange guy in the Fez is now fully transferred onto wood.

Next I transferred this silhouette of a tree onto canvas board.  I wanted to see how well all of the fine line work would transfer, and it all transferred perfectly.

The more advanced form of DIY printmaking is an form of lithography that involves xeroxes.  This is really amazing. She started by creating a field of lithographic oil paint.

The idea would be to transfer the solid black and white image onto paper, using the red paint.

Gum Arabic keeps the color from sticking to anything but the black ink.  Rolling layers of paint onto the ink builds up a dense, even coat.

The process is pretty tricky.

In the last step the original black ink from the photocopy remains on the paper, while the lithographic colored ink transfers to the new paper.  This is really a fascinating process, and a fun class to take.

I got to experiment with it, using some other images.  Caitlin took these photos for me.

There is a first time for everything.   After I was done I took a few shots of the other students trying their hand at it.

This artist brought her own drawings.

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A lot of people made some new friends.  I talked a bit with the other students afterwords.  Only a few of them were artists who like me wanted to see how this applied to their work.  One person was given the opportunity to take the class as a gift (you can buy classes for your co-workers, friends or family) and a few of the others had made New Years Resolutions to get out and learn new things, and now that the weather was nice they were starting to take various classes and make good on their resolutions.

I met Justin William Lin, the Founder of Brooklyn Central as I was headed out the door.

A few weeks later I got to attend my second CourseHorse class called BREAKING INTO ART WORLDS at Brooklyn Arts Space in Gowanus.  Unlike the printmaking class, this was a class of mostly artists in their mid-thirties, all women (myself and the instructor excluded).  A lot of them were working in commercial art,  design, web, or a different medium, or had just gotten their MFA and were looking to make the leap into the fine art world.

The course was lead by painter and art writer Jason Stopa.  At the beginning of class before everyone had arrived Jason was asking what everyone had done that day.  Oddly enough this class happened to be the day after I had broken the story on ArtSucks about Kenny Scharf being arrested so I was in the middle of a crazy shitstorm of other press linking to my site, quoting me, and crediting me as the source, so it was a chaotic day.  He told me he had actually read the article that morning on ArtSucks, so that was wild.

This was an interesting class as it broke down the various politics and networking venues that exist in the art world.  It also focused on each individual in the class and what we hoped to achieve in life, in five years. What is realistic, and what we would need to do to achieve the goals within the current system.

We talked about grants, group shows, solo shows, studio visits…  It was a very lively and interactive discussion with people asking questions, taking notes, and bringing up their own hard learned life lessons.

We talked about art residencies, lectures, subsidized studios, internships.   When the conversation shifted into talking about the art fairs, he read off a list of the fairs, and I had to add a few to his list just from memory…and I also interjected (probably like a jerk) that if anyone has any questions about the art fairs I have attended nearly all of the NY fairs in a press capacity for the past 4 years, so ask away.

Some of my fellow art bloggers may be pleased to know that your blogs are reputable press venues which are actually taught in classes.  Aside from the major art publications, the Art Blogs mentioned by the instructor as art blogs to pay attention to were Hyperallergic,  WhiteHot, TwoCoatsofPaint (Sharon Butler mentioned by name), and Art F City (Paddy Johnson mentioned by name). I had to consistently mentally tell myself to back off and stop chiming in throughout the class. But I did manage to squeeze in some valuable insights from a seasoned art blogger’s perspective.

He also mentioned the Bushwick Open Studios, 56 Bogart, and 1717 Troutman (which I had to correct him, as being in Ridgewood not Bushwick).

This was a very informative class for someone, as the title suggests, wanting to break into the art world.  If you are new to NY and need a B12 shot in the ass as to how things work, I recommend this class.

My problem is that every time I get into a conversation with people about the inner-workings of the NY Art World (Art World(s) with an s really, because there are 4 or more of them that only rarely overlap) I realize how much I actually know about it.  Just by going to shows, art fairs, meeting artists, art writers, reading, researching, painting, blogging etc.  It’s always kind of shocking to me to know that I could really be teaching a class like this if I wanted to, and that being in the field is the best form of research.

After the class I got to talk to several of the artists and take their pictures.

Artist Laurie Sumiye had recently finished a sculptural installation with the natural grasses that once grew on Manhattan Island before we covered it over with buildings and concrete.  She mainly does web and tablet app design and is moving to Portland and wanted to brush up on the fine art world before she got there.

Artist Maya Hardin is a printmaker who does metal etchings.  She is carried represented by one printing press but was wanting to see about the possibilities of showing in a solo gallery setting, and having her prints represented internationally.

Artist Ashli Sisk just got her MFA from Montclair State and moved to Manhattan.  She had two solo shows in the past few years and is looking forward to participating in a lot of group shows and wanted to see where to take her career next.  She is also working towards completing a new body of work.

Artist Melissa Capasso focused on her art career, and wants to see what to do in the next year to achieve her goals.

French artist Veronique Gambier was looking to learn about the New York art world, and how it differs from the art world in France.

Artist Myra Kooy was looking for a way to take her success in crafting into fine art in some sort of interactive music, art, and performance “happening.”

Photographer and make-up artist Rina Dweck recently completed a self-portrait 365 day experiment where she did 365 different extreme make-up designs on her own face and documented them with iPhone selfies for an entire year [Project Face].

In closing I’d like to thank CourseHorse for hooking me up with these fun experiences, and I recommend taking a class or two.  You may think you are in your 30s and your classroom days are long behind you, but it does feel good to throw on your smock and college thinking cap from time to time.  Get you out of your studio and meeting other creative people looking to pick up new skills, or learn the things you want to learn.  And it can never hurt to make a few new creative friends.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

P.S.
(If anyone else wants to contact me with cool art classes, art trips, or adventures: here’s my email address)

P.P.S.
I’ll add all these artists to ArtistInRepose.com later, I gotta run to this art awards ceremony thing…ttfn.

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