Tag Archives: Contemporary Art

Hinnemo and Negroponte Featured at Keyes Art

Work by Virva Hinnemo and George Negroponte is currently being shown alongside John Battle at Keyes Art in Sag Harbor. The exhibit, Eyewitness, is on view to the public October 9 – November 28, 2021.

Eyewitness is an exhibit meant to confirm that Modernism is alive and well: art-making immersed in a visual and pictorial language, aspiring to convey meaning with ancient tools. Embedded in these works is a struggle to clarify purpose and the urge to ignore the cheeky posturing of the zeitgeist of the 1960s.

~George Negroponte October 2021

Eyewitness

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 9th, 6-8pm
Open from October 9th – November 28, 2021

Keyes Art Gallery
45 Main Street
At the American Hotel
Sag Harbor, NY

Pictured above: Virva Hinnemo, View from a Tent, 2021, oil on linen.

View more on JulieKeyesArt.com

View on AnitaRogersGallery.com

Jan Cunningham in ‘150 Years of Women at Yale’

Work by Jan Cunningham is currently on view in the exhibition ‘On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale’ at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven on view September 10, 2021 – January 9, 2022.

On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale showcases and celebrates the remarkable achievements of an impressive roster of women artists who have graduated from Yale University. Presented on the occasion of two major milestones—the 50th anniversary of coeducation at Yale College and the 150th anniversary of the first women students at the University, who came to study at the Yale School of the Fine Arts when it opened in 1869—the exhibition features works drawn entirely from the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery that span a variety of media, such as paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, photography, and video.

The title of the exhibition references the phrase used in the landmark 1972 US federal law Title IX – which declared that no one could be discriminated against “on the basis of sex” in any education program receiving federal financial assistance, and which forced the School of Art to hire full-time female faculty beginning that year. Amid the rise of feminist movements – from women’s suffrage at the turn of the 20th century, to the ERA movement of the mid-20th century, to the #MeToo movement of today – this exhibition asserts the crucial role that women have played in pushing creative boundaries at Yale, and in the art world at large.

The Gallery is open Friday 5 pm – 8 pm, and Saturday and Sunday 10 am – 6 pm. You may reserve your ticket for the day: https://artgallery.yale.edu/hours-and-directions.

Pictured above: Jan Cunningham, Via Flavia Gioia, Priano, Italy 11 November 2012. On view in On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale.

View more on Yale University Art Gallery

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Mark Webber at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art

Artist Mark Webber to be featured in the exhibition, Paste and Cut: Contemporary Sculpture in Plaster, on view at the Lauren Rogers Museum in Laurel, Mississippi August 31 – November 7, 2021.

Visitors to the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art are greeted in a lobby richly decorated with golden oak paneling and cork floors. They may not notice that the ornamentation continues above, with a ceiling featuring beautiful plaster work.  The design was suggested by Charles J. Watson of the Chicago interior decorating firm Watson and Walton, created by Frederick Mottas, and executed by the French-American master craftsman Léon Herman. It features low relief depictions of flora, fauna, and celestial bodies.  In honor of this enchanting adornment, and in a continuation of a series of exhibitions that celebrate how artists are breathing new life into techniques and forms found in centuries-old art and design, the Museum presents this exhibition of works in plaster by contemporary artists Amy Kann, Jedediah Morfit, and Mark Webber. Their works show the effectiveness of utilizing the medium in traditional, conceptual, and abstract forms.

Read the further details about the exhibition on AnitaRogersGallery.com

Sag Harbor Express Interviews Virva Hinnemo

By Annette Hinkle

Virva Hinnemo (b. 1976), an artist  in the Parrish exhibition “Affinities for Abstraction,” was born in Finland and now lives and works in Springs.

Q: As a female Abstract painter, did you face hurdles in what was initially a very male-dominated field?

I think this is a difficult question to answer. Yes, in some ways, the issue of being a woman painter has always been “there” for me. In school, the boys/men muscled their way. Many women students found a way to turn their womanhood into their artistic subject. I never wanted to hit the viewer over the head with that kind of a subject. I ask a lot from those who look at my work. My husband would call it “the long, slow look.”

I was always aware that I had stepped into a male-dominated world, and as a very young painter, I was conscious of not wanting to “paint like a girl.” A young painter does think some silly things: “Why can’t I paint like Guston? I don’t want my work to be pretty.”

Read the full interview on AnitaRogersGallery.com

Mark Webber: Material Guy

Mark Webber: Material Guy

Making sculptural works from an array of mixed media

by Kelly Velocci

Mark Webber Anita Rogers Gallery Hamptons Cottages and Gardens
Mark Webber practices two very different kinds of work. His vocation: custom cabinetry fabricated for high-end Hamptons homes. His avocation: sculptures made with Hydrocal, a plaster-like material, and a mélange of found objects from construction sites and other sources. Although these two endeavors are vastly disparate, both are rooted in the art of fabrication. “There’s a craftsmanship aspect to cabinetmaking, whereas sculpture requires you to be more creative,” says Webber, a Connecticut native and longtime resident of Sag Harbor. “Sculpture does not have an inherent purpose, like a cabinet does. I have to think about different things when I’m making either one.”

Webber graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from SUNY Purchase in 1980, but soon shifted his focus to cabinetmaking to make a living. Around five years ago, however, he decided to “acknowledge my creativity again” and began experimenting with sculpture. He started working on wooden forms before transitioning to plaster and, more recently, Hydrocal, which he casts or shapes with hand tools, such as spatulas and knives. “All those years as a cabinetmaker gave me a solid base from which to start making sculpture,” Webber says. “It was like my springboard back into fine arts.” He has lately been pushing the boundaries of his pieces further, incorporating found objects— steel scraps, bricks, rubber—in order to bring a sense of tension and balance or create “an interesting compositional relationship.”

 

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William Scott: Abstracting and Appreciating the Everyday

William Scott: Abstracting and Appreciating the Everyday

by Chloë Ashby

 

William Scott: Abstracting and Appreciating the Everyday

Five Pears 1976
William Scott (1913–1989)
British Council Collection

 

Art UK:

To some art critics, the twentieth-century British artist William Scott’s kitchen-table still lifes are too timid – as Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times, they can be seen as ‘abstract paintings for people who don’t like abstraction’. Others, myself included, find them enticingly reduced and for the most part easily readable, which is part of their charm.

Scott’s compositions are striking in their simplicity, and somehow both pleasurable and puritan, sensuous and serene. A few boiled eggs, a couple of ripe pears, fresh mackerel on a plate, pots and pans, a bunch of grapes: these are his humble subjects. As he once said, ‘I find beauty in plainness’.

Born in Scotland in 1913 and brought up in Northern Ireland, Scott’s surroundings were grey and barren, his upbringing strictly Presbyterian. The objects he painted in an often-sombre palette were, he said, ‘the symbols of the life I knew best’.

After his father died trying to save some folk from a burning building, the local council raised funds to send the 15-year-old to Belfast College of Art. From there, he won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where he bunked up with the poet Dylan Thomas and two other Welshmen and married fellow student Mary Lucas. In the Second World War, he was a cartographer, and in its wake, he was a pioneer of British abstraction.

 

Read the full article on ArtUK.org

Discussion Between Anita Rogers and Robert Szot

On June 4, 2020, gallery owner Anita Rogers and painter Robert Szot sat down on Instagram Live to discuss art-making during quarantine, the gallery/artist relationship and the pandemic’s effect on the art world.

The Lyman Allyn Art Museum Acquires Work by Jan Cunningham

We are pleased to announce that the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT has added a drawing (right) by Jan Cunningham to their permanent collection.

ABOUT LYMAN ALLYN ART MUSEUM:

The Lyman Allyn Art Museum is located in New London, Connecticut and was founded in 1926 by Lyman Allyn’s daughter Harriet Upson Allyn. The collection includes European and non-Western art as well as American fine and decorative art, 17th-century European works on paper, 19th-century American paintings, and contemporary art. The museum also conducts educational programs.

Lyman Allyn’s permanent collection consists of approximately 10,000 objects. Much of this collection was developed by the Museum’s first Director Winslow Ames, who acquired works dating from the 16th through the 19th centuries. It includes works by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, as well as works by Frederic Leighton, François Boucher, Nicholas Poussin, Gustave Courbet, Charles LeBrun, and Tiepolo. Featured artists include Rembrandt Peale, Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, Thomas Cole, Frederick Edwin Church, and Albert Bierstadt.[

ABOUT THE WORK:

Jan Cunningham

Untitled (abstraction)
2000
Charcoal and thread on paper
7.5″ x 7.5″

Visit the museum’s website

Gordon Moore Featured in Hyperallergic

Artists Quarantine With Their Art Collections

Gordon Moore in Lauren Henkin’s Collection

BY STEPHEN MAINE

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Continuing my inquiry into the ways that artists look at the work they live with, I’ve been asking the following questions: In the context of rampant disease, do you look at your personal collection differently now, and which works in particular? Is there one that especially resonates with you at this weird, frightening moment? And does it take on new meaning?

Lauren Henkin (Rockland, Maine): I first saw Gordon Moore’s work in an exhibition at Betty Cuningham Gallery in 2014. The show included paintings and photo emulsion drawings. Both were compelling, but the drawings struck a chord. There is a lushness to the grounds — beautifully printed photographs toned in warm yellows and grays — which, combined with marks of ink and gouache, suggest a velvet canvas scorched by electricity. It was as if the artist had formed a wire sculpture and then tracked its slow progress of shadow-making across a concrete surface, his hand creating furcated markings of time passing.

Quarantine has forced on me a strange relationship to time. One moment is filled with reflection and pause; the next, a casual glint of thought tossed into the wind. Mon-day, Tues-day, Wednes-day are no more. All that remain are day and night.

One of Gordon’s drawings hangs on the wall beside my desk. I see it whenever l look up from my computer. Throughout the day, I can see how light engages the work. In the morning, the sun buoys the light areas of the drawing. At night, the dark tones recede deeper into space.

The drawing has replaced my clock. It’s a beautiful and needed reminder that time can be measured not by seconds, hours, or days but by marks, tone, and depth.

To view the full article, visit anitarogersgallery.com or Hyperallergic.

Jack Martin Rogers: Drawing – Digital Catalog Now Available

Anita Rogers Gallery is proud to present a selection of works on paper by British artist Jack Martin Rogers (1943-2001). Anita Rogers, the owner of the gallery, is the daughter of the artist and now owns seventy-five percent of his estate. This will be the artist’s second major solo exhibition in the U.S. and the first to highlight the artist’s creative process and the centrality of drawing in his practice. The show will debut online in April 2020 and continue in the gallery when we are able to reopen.

The collection features a selection of preparatory drawings, never before seen by the public, that reveal Rogers’ immense dedication to observation and detail. The artist studied anatomy and fine art at the Birmingham School of Art in the UK, often dissecting and sketching bodies of the deceased to learn how to better illustrate the human form. While in school, his meticulous methods took root and they remained at the heart of his work for the rest of his life.

In conjunction with the show, the gallery has released a digital catalog highlighting over thirty works by the artist, the majority of which have never before been seen by the public. Download the digital catalog here.

Email us to pre-order your print copy ($20).

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