The Modern Art Notes Podcast

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features photographer Marco Breuer, whose latest work is on view now at Chelsea’s Von Lintel Gallery. Breuer’s manipulations of photographic paper create fantastic, often surprising abstractions.

His most recent museum exhibition was last year’s“Marco Breuer: Line of Sight,” which was organized by Julian Cox at the de Young in San Francisco.His work is in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, MoMA, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Harvard Art Museums and SFMOMA.

The program’s lead guest is New York-based artist Mickalene Thomas. An exhibition of Thomas’s recent paintings, “Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe,” is on view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art through August 19.

Thomas’s work is in the collections of numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. 

To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Images of artworks discussed on the program are here.

Image: Marco Breuer, Untitled (detail), 2012.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features New York-based artist Mickalene Thomas. An exhibition of Thomas’s recent paintings, “Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe,” is on view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art through August 19.

Thomas’s work is in the collections of numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. 

Photographer Marco Breuer, whose latest work is on view now at Chelsea’s Von Lintel Gallery, is the second guest. Breuer’s manipulations of photographic paper create fantastic, often surprising abstractions.

His most recent museum exhibition was last year’s“Marco Breuer: Line of Sight,” which was organized by Julian Cox at the de Young in San Francisco.His work is in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, MoMA, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Harvard Art Museums and SFMOMA.

To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Images of artworks discussed on the program are here.

Image: Mickalene Thomas, Din, Une Très Belle Négresse #2 (detail), 2012.

Artist Jennifer Steinkamp makes some of the most fascinating digital animations I’ve ever seen. One of her most recent pieces, The Vanquished (2011, above), a projection commissioned last year for Prospect.2 in New Orleans, shows the swaying branches of a tree that is cycling through the seasons. Previously exhibited in Louisiana, Santa Fe and in South Korea, The Vanquished just went on view at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Anderson Gallery. (VCU has one of America’s top art schools, ergo…) 

When Steinkamp was on Episode Two of The Modern Art Notes Podcast, she and I discussed The Vanquished at length, including how it was motivated by a certain Auguste Rodin sculpture. Listen to the show here, download it to your PC/mobile device to find out more, and then click here to see the Rodin in question!

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features three critics discussing their impressions of the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Guests include: 

Christopher Knight, a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the art critic of the Los Angeles Times; Tom Freudenheim, the former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Worcester Art Museum and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal; James Russell, the architecture critic for Bloomberg.

Among the points raised on this week’s show: Freudenheim predicts that scholars will soon dig into the Barnes’s collection of Old Masters, with many possible re-attributions ahead. 

Knight reviewed the show here for the LAT. Russell reviewed the building here for Bloomberg. I wrote about the new Barnes here on MAN.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here.

Image: Frans Hals, Portrait of a Man Holding a Watch (detail), 1643. 

This is the last weekend in Chicago for the exhibition “This Will Have Been,” an show that looks at how artists responded to the crises of the 1980s. The exhibition, curated by Helen Molesworth, pays special attention to how feminism motivated American artists to make sociopolitically engaged work. 

I haven’t seen the show, but I’ve read the outstanding catalogue. It seems to me that the key work in the show is Lari Pittman’s The Veneer of Order (1985, above, click to enlarge). Pittman and I discussed that painting and how his art is motivated by the politics of personhood on a really great show that first aired back in March. Don’t miss it — I think it’s one of the best MAN Podcast artist interviews! 

“This Will Have Been” will travel next to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where it opens on June 30.

You may download the program directly to your PC/mobile device here. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast on iTunes here.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features three critics discussing their impressions of the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Guests include: 

Christopher Knight, a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the art critic of the Los Angeles Times; Tom Freudenheim, the former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Worcester Art Museum and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal; James Russell, the architecture critic for Bloomberg.

Discussed at length: The Chaim Soutines at the Barnes, easily the best place in America to see a range of Soutine’s work.

Knight reviewed the show here for the LAT. Russell reviewed the building here for Bloomberg. I wrote about the new Barnes here on MAN.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here.

Image: Chaim Soutine, The White Hat (detail), ca. 1923.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features three critics discussing their impressions of the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Joining me are: 

Christopher Knight, a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the art critic of the Los Angeles Times; Tom Freudenheim, the former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Worcester Art Museum and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal; James Russell, the architecture critic for Bloomberg.

Knight reviewed the show here for the LAT. Russell reviewed the building here for Bloomberg. I wrote about the new Barnes here on MAN.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here.

Image: Henri Matisse, Le Bonheur de vivre, 1905-06.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features three critics discussing their impressions of the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Joining me are: 

Christopher Knight, a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the art critic of the Los Angeles Times; Tom Freudenheim, the former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Worcester Art Museum and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal; James Russell, the architecture critic for Bloomberg.

Knight reviewed the show here for the LAT. Russell reviewed the building here for Bloomberg. I wrote about the new Barnes here on MAN.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here.

This is Drowning Girl (1963), one of Roy Lichtenstein’s first comic-strip-referencing paintings. Lichtenstein, a fan and student of art history, said that the painting was inspired by Hokusai’s famed woodcut The Great Wave Off of Kanagawa (1829-32).

The painting is included in the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago. This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features the exhibition’s curator, James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years. 

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl, 1963. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

This is a detail from Cold Shoulder (1963), Roy Lichtenstein’s first painting to refer to a comic strip. According to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the painting’s home:

The artist’s son, actor Mitchell Lichtenstein, claims a bit of credit for his father’s very first comic-style painting.

“One day, when I was about five and my brother David was seven, we told our father that he wasn’t a real artist, because he didn’t paint anything people could recognize. To please us, he reproduced this comic strip image, and something clicked. In that moment Roy realized a new personal style.”

The painting is included in the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago. This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features the exhibition’s curator, James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years. 

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Cold Shoulder (detail), 1963. Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Click here to see a JPEG of the entire painting.

It’s Roy Lichtenstein week at the Art Institute of Chicago — and on The Modern Art Notes Podcast! This week’s program features James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Lichtenstein retrospective. Rondeau co-organized the exhibition with Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Sheena Wagstaff. The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam! (detail), 1963. Collection of Tate, London. Click here to see the full image.

You can’t talk about Roy Lichtenstein without talking about art history. Here’s one of Roy Lichtenstein’s riffs on Henri Matisse, complete with goldfish, drawings, an arabesque, a cityscape and a semi-still-life on a tabletop. (Click on the image or here to see the entire painting.) I’ve opened photo-replying on this post: If you think you know Matisse paintings/drawings that informed this Lichtenstein painting, Still Life with Goldfish (1974) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reply with a JPEG!

It’s Roy Lichtenstein week on The Modern Art Notes Podcast! This week’s program features James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Lichtenstein retrospective. It opens to the public tomorrow. The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years. 

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Still Life with Goldfish, 1974. Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

It’s Roy Lichtenstein week at the Art Institute of Chicago — and on The Modern Art Notes Podcast! This week’s program features James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Lichtenstein retrospective. Rondeau co-organized the exhibition with Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Sheena Wagstaff. The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years.

Rouen Cathedral V (1969), a detail of which Tumblr is showing above, is informed by Claude Monet’s paintings of Rouen Cathedral, which have their own spiffy, JPEG-laden Wikipedia page.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Rouen Cathedral V (detail), 1969. Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Click here to see the full image.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art curator Keith Davis on his exhibition “Timothy H. O’Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs,” which is on view in Kansas City through September 2. O’Sullivan is one of the pioneers of American photography and took many of his most important pictures while exploring and chronicling the West with Clarence King. Don’t miss the exhibition catalogue, which is one of this year’s top books on American art. 

This remarkable picture features a group of Shoshone. Note that O’Sullivan (and perhaps survey leader Clarence King) have posed the Shoshone with an American flag, a reference to the American conquest of Western lands and tribes. Note also O’Sullivan himself — or at least his shadow — in the lower-left. A 2,500-pixel-wide version with much more detail is available here, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website. It’s well-worth the click!

On the first segment of this week’s program, I talk with James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Roy Lichtenstein retrospective. Rondeau co-organized the exhibition with Sheena Wagstaff, the head of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Shoshoni, 1867-72. Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Mo., Library of Congress, Washington and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (from which this image comes). 

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art curator Keith Davis on his exhibition “Timothy H. O’Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs,” which is on view in Kansas City through September 2. O’Sullivan is one of the pioneers of American photography and took many of his most important pictures while exploring and chronicling the West with Clarence King. Don’t miss the exhibition catalogue, which is one of this year’s top books on American art. 

On the first segment of this week’s program, I talk with James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Roy Lichtenstein retrospective. Rondeau co-organized the exhibition with Sheena Wagstaff, the head of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Sand Dunes, Carson Desert, Nevada, 1867. Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Mo.

It’s Roy Lichtenstein week at the Art Institute of Chicago — and on The Modern Art Notes Podcast! This week’s program features James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Lichtenstein retrospective. Rondeau co-organized the exhibition with Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Sheena Wagstaff.

The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years. Currently in member previews, the show opens at the AIC on May 22 before traveling to the National Gallery of Art, the Tate Modern and to the Centre Pompidou.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape in Fog, 1996. Click on the image to enlarge it.

It’s Roy Lichtenstein week at the Art Institute of Chicago — and on The Modern Art Notes Podcast! This week’s program features James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Lichtenstein retrospective. Rondeau co-organized the exhibition with Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Sheena Wagstaff.

The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years. Currently in member previews, the show opens at the AIC on May 22 before traveling to the National Gallery of Art, the Tate Modern and to the Centre Pompidou.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Look Mickey!, 1961. Collection of the National Gallery of Art. Click on the image to enlarge it.

It’s Roy Lichtenstein week at the Art Institute of Chicago — and on The Modern Art Notes Podcast! This week’s program features James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Lichtenstein retrospective. Rondeau co-organized the exhibition with Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Sheena Wagstaff.

“The big influence is Picasso,” Roy Lichtenstein said in 1996, the year before he died. And for most of Lichtenstein’s career — especially the early years — Picasso was. But by 1969, when he started his mirror paintings, Lichtenstein seems to have begun thinking about Matisse. Come 1973, when Lichtenstein made Artist’s Studio No. 1 (Look Mickey!), he seems to have completely bought into Matisse.

Artist’s Studio No. 1 (Look Mickey!) (click image above to enlarge) is a riff on Matisse’s famed ‘studio’ paintings, in which Matisse would paint his own previous works lying around a room, often his studio. This Lichtenstein is richly informed by Matisse’s The Red Studio (1911). Note that Lichtenstein placed the stretcher-revealing rear of a painting (a riff on not just Matisse, but on Lichtenstein’s own 1968 Stretcher paintings) in roughly the same part of the canvas Matisse does. The paintings on the rear wall are in roughly the same places Matisse put them. That jug that appears in so many Matisses. And so on. 

The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years. Currently in member previews, the show opens at the AIC on May 22 before traveling to the National Gallery of Art, the Tate Modern and to the Centre Pompidou.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Artist’s Studio No. 1 (Look Mickey!), 1973. Collection of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art curator Keith Davis on his exhibition “Timothy H. O’Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs,” which is on view in Kansas City through September 2. O’Sullivan is one of the pioneers of American photography and took many of his most important pictures while exploring and chronicling the West with Clarence King. Don’t miss the exhibition catalogue, which is one of this year’s top books on American art. 

On the first segment of this week’s program, I talk with James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Roy Lichtenstein retrospective. Rondeau co-organized the exhibition with Sheena Wagstaff, the head of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years. Currently in member previews, the show opens at the AIC on May 22 before traveling to the National Gallery of Art, the Tate Modern and to the Centre Pompidou.

To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To download the program directly to your PC/mobile device, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. Click here to see images of art discussed on the show.

Image: Timothy O’Sullivan, Pyramid and Domes, Pyramid Lake, Nevada, 1867. Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Mo., Library of Congress, Washington.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features James Rondeau, the head of the contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, talking about his new Roy Lichtenstein retrospective. Rondeau co-organized the exhibition with Sheena Wagstaff, the head of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exhibition is the first career-length survey of Lichtenstein’s art and the first retrospective of the artist in 18 years. Currently in member previews, the show opens at the AIC on May 22 before traveling to the National Gallery of Art, the Tate Modern and to the Centre Pompidou.

In the second segment, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art curator Keith Davis tells us about “Timothy H. O’Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs,” which is on view in Kansas City through September 2.

Image: Roy Lichtenstein, Brushstroke and Spatter, 1966.