The Modern Art Notes Podcast

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features three...

modernartnotes — Tue, 29 May 2012 11:19:00 -0400

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...

modernartnotes — Sat, 26 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

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

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...

modernartnotes — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:03:00 -0400

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

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...

modernartnotes — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:36:00 -0400

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...

modernartnotes — Tue, 22 May 2012 12:32:00 -0400

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.”

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...

modernartnotes — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:08:00 -0400

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.

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...

modernartnotes — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:50:00 -0400

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.

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...

modernartnotes — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:37:00 -0400

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.

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...

modernartnotes — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:09:00 -0400

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...

modernartnotes — Sun, 20 May 2012 13:35:00 -0400

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...

modernartnotes — Sun, 20 May 2012 09:00:00 -0400

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.

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...

modernartnotes — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:33:00 -0400

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...

modernartnotes — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:59:58 -0400

“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.

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...

modernartnotes — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:21:00 -0400

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...

modernartnotes — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:08:00 -0400

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.

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.

You can receive The Modern Art Notes Podcast automatically (and...

modernartnotes — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:23:00 -0400

You can receive The Modern Art Notes Podcast automatically (and for free, of course!) on iTunes. New episodes upload each Thursday around noon ET. Click here to subscribe! (And please review/rate the show there too.)

If you use another podcast app, subscribe via our RSS feed!

P.S. Can you tell what new exhibition will be featured on this week’s show?

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features...

modernartnotes — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:43:00 -0400

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Martha Rosler. An exhibition of Rosler’s pictures of Cuba, taken in January, 1981, are on view now at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in Chelsea. Rosler and I talked last week in front of a live audience at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Rosler will receive her first solo show at the Museum of Modern Art this November when MoMA hosts Rosler’s “Meta-Monumental Garage Sale” in the museum’s atrium.

Rosler has been the subject of dozens of major exhibitions, including the 1999 retrospectinve “Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World,” which was organized by Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Generali Foundation, Vienna. That show traveled throughout Europe and to the New Museum and the International Center of Photography in New York.

Image: Martha Rosler, Playboy (On View) from “Bringing Home the War: House Beautiful,” 1967-72. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Martha Rosler, Woman with Cannon, from “Bringing Home the War:...

modernartnotes — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:28:00 -0400

Martha Rosler, Woman with Cannon, from “Bringing Home the War: House Beautiful,” 1967-72. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Rosler has been the subject of dozens of major exhibitions, including the 1999 retrospective “Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World,” which was organized by Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Generali Foundation, Vienna. That show traveled throughout Europe and to the New Museum and the International Center of Photography in New York.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features...

modernartnotes — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:48:00 -0400

Rosler will receive her first solo show at the Museum of Modern Art this November when MoMA hosts Rosler’s “Meta-Monumental Garage Sale” in the museum’s atrium. Rosler and I discussed the origins of her garage sales — the first one was in San Diego in the early 1970s — and the MoMA iteration in particular. That section of this week’s show is smart and particularly funny.

Anyone can donate objects to be sold in the MoMA presentation of Rosler’s garage sale. (A couple weeks ago the museum very quietly published the garage sale’s website — don’t miss it.) It should be a pretty fantastic event, full of Rosler’s wry commentary on privacy, consumerism and consumption.

3rdofmay: The art: Mitch Epstein, American Elm, Central Park,...

modernartnotes — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:55:40 -0400

3rdofmay:

The art: Mitch Epstein, American Elm, Central Park, New York, 2012, 2012.

The news: “In New York, Neglected, Rotting Trees Turn Deadly,” by William Glaberson and Lisa W. Foderaro in the New York Times.

The source: MitchEpstein.net and The Modern Art Notes Podcast. More images of Epstein’s new pictures of the trees of New York City are available here.