As I See It: The Rewards of Slowing the Pace
The Rewards of Slowing the Pace Susan H. Edwards, PhD Executive Director & CEO Frist Center for the Visual Arts I shall be forever grateful for the opportunity to look at paintings by John...
View ArticleAs I See It: Embracing Klimt’s The Kiss
Embracing Klimt’s The Kiss It’s February. Love and romance are in the air. There are numerous works of art titled The Kiss. Rodin’s embracing couple and Brancusi’s abstract version leap to mind. For...
View ArticleAs I See It: Shifting Winds
Shifting Winds As March winds begin to blow over the Northern Hemisphere, I find myself thinking about Jeff Wall’s A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993. The image is dominated by a flat, open...
View ArticleAs I See It: In a Fraction of a Second . . .
In a Fraction of a Second . . . On an overcast day in 1932, French photographer and co-founder of the Magnum Photos cooperative Henri Cartier-Bresson captured a scene Behind Gare Saint-Lazare using a...
View ArticleAs I See It: Las Meninas
Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656, 10.5” x 9.1”, Courtesy of Museo Nacional del Prado At the Prado . . . If you are in Madrid, be sure to visit the Prado Museum. It houses one of the world’s most...
View ArticleEverything Old Is New Again
As I See It: Everything Old Is New Again Photographs Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art That couture and fashion are seen as art today is unquestionable. This spring when the Metropolitan...
View ArticleHomage to the Square
As I See It: Not Just for Squares From 1949 until his death in 1976, Josef Albers worked on his renowned series Homage to the Square. The over 1,000 works in the series, which included paintings,...
View ArticleAs I See It: Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne
A Story Well Told . . . There are few moments more memorable in the life of an art historian than walking into the Galleria Borghese and seeing Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, 1622-25, for the first time....
View ArticleAs I See It–Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Lam: Modernity’s Trojan Horse by Susan Edwards If you know of the artist Wifredo Lam (1902–82), then it is likely that you are familiar with his most famous painting, The Jungle, 1943. For many...
View ArticleThe Peaceable Kingdom, Now More Than Ever
Between 1822 and his death in 1849, Edwards Hicks painted over a hundred variations of his famous Peaceable Kingdom. Hicks, a Quaker preacher and sign painter, found inspiration in chapter 11 of...
View ArticleAs I See It: Vermeer’s Girl with the Red Hat
Good Things Come in Small Packages An exhibition titled Small Treasures: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and Their Contemporaries is on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art through January 4, 2015....
View ArticleThe Killing Machine
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s The Killing Machine by Mark W. Scala The Canadian collaborators Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller employ video, robotics, and sound in constructions that...
View ArticleThe Enclave: War in Eastern Congo
Invisibility and Ethics by Mark W. Scala Richard Mosse’s The Enclave (2013) is an immersive video environment that captures up close the war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in which an...
View ArticleSarah Anne Johnson: House on Fire
As I See It Artist Sarah Anne Johnson Explores the Public Meaning Behind Private Pain by Mark W. Scala In previous articles, I focused on the constructed visual narrative as a means of posing questions...
View ArticleSigalit Landau and the Israel Paradox
by Mark W. Scala In many of her sculptures, videos, and performances, Israeli artist Sigalit Landau shows the body as a graceful bridge between the buoyant and liberating expansiveness of the sea and...
View ArticleAs I See It by Mark Scala: UNWEAVING RACE
Sonya Clark and Progressive Disassembly by Mark W. Scala Richmond, Virginia-based artist Sonya Clark creates immaculately crafted woven constructions that use the tactile associations of fibers and...
View ArticleAs I See It – James Turrell and the Presence of Light
by Mark W. Scala, Chief Curator Frist Center for the Visual Arts Great works of art become a part of us. Some do this by recalibrating our understanding of the political, social, or linguistic...
View ArticleAs I See It -View from On High The Ambiguities of Drone Warfare
by Mark W. Scala Chief Curator, Frist Center for the Visual Arts In his 2011 video 5,000 Feet Is the Best, Omer Fast opens a window onto one of the most contentious aspects of the war on terror: the...
View ArticleEconomics and Political Theater
Guy Ben-Ner’s Video Stealing Beauty by Mark W. Scala “Stealing Beauty evokes political spectacles in which narratives put forth by every candidate toggle freely between reality, fiction, and...
View ArticleThe Little Black Box, Part II
by Mark W. Scala As discussed last month, “the black box” is often a tabula rasa onto which we can project our fears, desires, and imaginings. For scientists and engineers, the black box is a term for...
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