Tag august feature

Happy Birthday, Andy Warhol!

August 6th would have been Andy Warhol’s 83rd birthday. Interest in the work of the pop art innovator shows no sign of flagging in the 21st century: recently, a 1963 self-portrait by the artist (originally sold for only $1,600) netted over $34.8 million at auction. For an in-depth examination of the American icon’s extraordinary

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Books for Summer Roadtrips

Feel like a roadtripping across the U.S. this August? Visit these iconic spots–or just find a lawn chair in the sunshine and read about them!

Tomorrow’s Modern Design of the World’s Fairs

Everything can be modernized: this is an idea that came close to being a “dogma” in the 1930s. Architecture, businesses, and infrastructure could progress, but so could corporate branding, family life, and even the human body. The push to advance socially and technologically is familiar today, but it had a

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David Smith: Master of Two Art Forms

One could say David Smith “invented” sculpture, or put more clearly, he invented sculpture’s place in modern American art. He legitimized the art form to the extent that it could be just as prestigious as painting. Convincing the postwar American public of sculpture’s accessibility arose from Smith’s own belief that

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Saying Bye Bye Kitty!!! to a Culture of Cute

It’s hard to express the magnitude of the disaster that faced Japan after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant melt-down earlier this year. Every aspect of Japanese life has been affected, from entire villages having vanished to the yen’s record low. One might also expect the cultural life of

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Renegade Henry Miller Gets a Playlist

GalleyCat has created a Spotify playlist for a few of Henry Miller’s works, drawing from his descriptions and opinions of classical music, including Beethoven and Hadelich. In his forthcoming book Renegade: Henry Miller and the Making of “Tropic of Cancer”, Frederick Turner discusses various personal experiences and cultural trends that influenced Millers’ writing of the originally censored, semi-pornographic novel.

The Feininger “Family Business”

Covering the full breadth of Lyonel Feininger’s artistic career, a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, “Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World”, places him as a central figure in developing early 20th-century forms and the conversations that took place between German and American styles of art.

“Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” Exhibition Closes This Sunday at The Met

One of the hottest shows of summer is coming to a close this Sunday at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. When we first announced the publication of the catalog for “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty”, there was nothing to see; and now, the exhibition has even picked up an extra week

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Going a Little Nutty with Jim Nutt’s Portraits

“Jim Nutt has made some of the craziest paintings in American art” declares Canadian Art magazine in its Summer 2011 issue. The magazine’s editors apparently enjoy the craziness. Although they chose only seven books for inclusion in their “Top Summer Reading Picks” we are delighted to see that Jim Nutt:

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To London, with Love: Bottled Up Memories from El Anatsui

“El Anatsui”, an exhibition organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, on view now until October 16, displays the intricate metal work of the Ghanaian-born sculptor and his use of bottleneck foil wrappers to invoke the legacies of postcolonialism.