Some time in 1988 I learned one of my biggest lessons in aesthetics. I was living in the Los Angeles area and went to a movie theater in Century City to see Terry Gilliam’s film, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. I walked away enthralled, excited, and inspired. The next night, wanting to share my enthusiasm […]
Heidi Nickisher
Posted inArts & Entertainment
The Bridges between film and photography
An intimate exhibition of black-and-white photographs by Jeff Bridges opened at the George Eastman House in July. Whether entirely intentional or not, the exhibit is a subtle companion to Site Seeing: Photographic Excursions in Tourism. It continues to foster our ongoing romance with photographs, and perhaps more importantly, with photographic memory. Pictures is a […]
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Never before seen in Italy
The Venice Biennale, which goes back to 1895, is the granddaddy of all biennials. To that august artistic pantheon, others have been added, like the Whitney Biennial in 1932 — which focuses on American art — and in 1962 the Sao Paulo Biennial debuted in Brazil (although its roots go back another 40 years to […]
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Bodies taking up space
Our bodies are our obsessions. We feed them, bathe them, decorate them. When our bodies break down we fix them. We project our bodies into and through space literally as well as through a variety of media. As Andy Warhol once said, “before media… there used to be a physical limit on how much space […]
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Sewing stories
We don’t often get to experience the stunned awareness in realizing that what stands (or hangs) before us isn’t really what it seems. Recently, for us, it was realizing that what looked like an actual dress stretched out and pinned to the wall was, in fact, a digital photograph — complete with all the requisite […]
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A promise of post-partum diversity
Group shows are rarely just about the artwork. They’re mostly about some overarching idea that the work helps to illustrate. Of course, the work itself plays a role as viewers decide what they like or what they don’t like. There is also the matter of how objects work together as a cohesive whole. Is […]
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Image, memory, and identity for sale
In the 15th century, you might have encountered an image once a day, once a year, once in lifetime, or not at all. Today, we are practically swimming in images. They’re all around us. And because of this proliferation we take them as a given, natural occurrence. For our culture, an image or picture […]
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Buyer beware: art on the internet
Two weeks ago, William Yager, owner of Roselawn Galleries in Pittsford, was arrested and charged with selling counterfeit art online. I was instantly curious, of course, about the details. What kind of counterfeit are we talking about? Fakes? Copies? Is there a difference? At least in principle, a work of art has always been […]
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Contemplating American beauty
Does art have to have meaning? Does it need to be spiritually uplifting, morally challenging, and politically provocative? Does art have to have a purpose? It’s an age-old debate, but a new exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery, highlighting the work of American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, offers a response to the schism between beautiful purpose […]
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The pin (and) ball wizard
Once upon a time, there were two Greek painters, Parrhasius and Zeuxis. Zeuxis was considered the greatest painter of still life in the ancient world. In a competition between the two artists, Zeuxis chose to paint an arrangement of grapes and placed the painting outside. It was so realistic that birds flew down to […]
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Everybody was Kung Fu fighting
Art and privilege have a lot in common. To produce images, you must be connected to the apparatus that allows images to be made, disseminated, and seen. When dealing with images of the underprivileged, the artist is responsible for the context in which the images will be viewed. For some, it may be just enough […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Everybody was Kung Fu fighting
Art and privilege have a lot in common. To produce images, you must be connected to the apparatus that allows images to be made, disseminated, and seen. When dealing with images of the underprivileged, the artist is responsible for the context in which the images will be viewed. For some, it may be just enough […]
