“Spring Approaches” pop-up exhibit by the members of Mamaroneck Artists Guild can be viewed on May 1-28, 2021 at the Bronxville Women’s Club in Bronxville, NY
This exhibit is produced in partnership with ARTS-NY.
Dates: May 1 – 28, 2021
Venue: Bronxville Women’s Club, Inc.,A not-for-profit 501(c)3, 135 Midland Avenue, Bronxville, NY 10708 The Club is located at the intersection of Midland and Tanglewylde Avenues in Bronxville, NY.
“Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde—From Signac to Matisse and Beyond” at MoMA is the first exhibition devoted to the influential French art critic, editor, publisher, dealer, and collector.
In this abnormal time, a museum visit takes on a new meaning. It is both a return to normal life as we remember it and an affirmation of the unchanged desire to explore and experience art. A visit to MoMA to see the exhibit dedicated to Felix Feneon is exactly that.
Well researched and painstakingly laid out, the show brings familiar works by such giants of the late 19th-century art scene as Seurat, Signac, Vuillard, Matisse, Modigliani and the non-Western art together following the superb taste and visionary aesthetics of the French art critic and collector Felix Feneon. Credited with coining the term Neo-Impressionism, he had recognized the significance of pointillism and other scientifically ordered art movements and tirelessly promoted them to the public. His fascination with non-Western art and sculpture propelled the interest in the works made in Africa and Oceania. The mesmerizing figurines from the Musee d’Orsay, Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, and private collections stun the viewers by the power and exquisite mastery of execution.
The exhibit comes with an intriguing story of Feneon’s support and participation in the Anarchist movement while working at the Ministry of War. The episode of his imprisonment and a consequent trial are described in the show through the documents, photographs, and testimonies. Excerpts from his writing and publications are full of wit and elegance while the portraits of him by Valloton and Signac present a Mephistopheles-like figure.
The show tells the life story of a visionary who influenced the perception of art by his contemporaries and bravely advanced the Neo-Impressionists and Futurists. Indulge yourself in art and enjoy the show!
Recognized as one of the greatest artists of our time, Gerhard Richter succeeds in combining the detailed pictorial approach with the haze caused by the fog of time. His celebrated blurred figurative paintings, large scale abstract compositions, and monumental glass sculptures are the treasures of the art museums all around the world. Originally scheduled to be on view at the Met Breuerfrom March 4 – July 5, 2020, the exhibition includes a range of artworks from the artist’s early experiments with the pictorial depictions based on the old photographs, the glass sculptures, and the most recent cycle House of Cards (5 Panes) (2020). Some of the works will be more familiar to the art lovers, while others like the cycles Cage (2009) and Birkenau (2014) are shown in the United States for the first time.
Well known for his effort to reconcile through art the historical past with personal memories, Richter is uniquely qualified to remind the viewers about the horror of war, the danger of manipulation through the isolated messages or images taken out of context, and the inconsistencies in the recollection of the past events. To accentuate the point of a fleeting chance of memory, his technique of smudging the clear image reminds us of the distortion brought on by the time.
The technique can be seen as a way to represent the perspective of time similar to the perspective of distance and space. It creates the fourth dimension (time) for otherwise ordinary snapshots. As the objects positioned far away are depicted proportionally smaller and with less visible details, the memories about the events from the past are covered in haze and come out with blurred outlines. One can still see the object, yet as years go by, the exact image loses its significance and is replaced by the vague outline.
While the Metropolitan Museum of Art has temporarily closed, you can visit it online from anywhere
A magnificent exhibition of works by the 17th-century Dutch masters titled “In Praise of Painting” can be viewed online
Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn), Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Met Museum collection of Dutch paintings is highly praised by scholars and extremely popular with the visitors. The “In Praise of Painting ” exhibition, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Met Museum founding, uses the occasion to showcase the treasures by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and others thematically and to highlight various aspects of the 17th-century Dutch society in all its complexity. The selection comes from the Benjamin Altman’s bequest, the Robert Lehman collection, and the Jack and Belle Linsky Collection. Thoughtfully organized by the curators around nine themes from portraiture to landscape and domestic scenes, the exhibition unites prominent works and allows for striking comparisons and keen amplification of the historical details.
The viewers are invited in for a closer look at people, their homes, land and the pastime when the Netherland was experiencing rapid changes brought in by the technological advancements and economic growth after the end of the Thirty Years war. The works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Steen and the rest of their famous contemporaries bring us closer to people living in the distant fast-changing times not that much dissimilar to our own. Societal mores, etiquette and hierarchy were turning in response to industrial progress and diversification at the time of the Dutch Golden Age. Luckily for us, it gave the world great artworks of unprecedented depth and potency. Savor the art in all its greatness.
360° View of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City in the time of social distancing
Sistine Chapel, Vatican / photo by Patrick Landy (FSU Guy)
One of the most popular sites of the Musei Vaticani complex, the Sistine Chapel stuns its visitors with Michelangelo’s frescoes and stories of the sacred rituals, such as Papal Conclave of the Cardinals conducted within its walls from 1492. Completely restored in the years from 1979 to 1999 to its original vibrant colors, the Chapel was visited daily by more than 20,00 people. Pope John Paul II said about the chapel that “The truth of our faith speaks to us here from all sides”.
As humanity stays at home in the face of the global coronavirus pandemic, it is particularly uplifting to revisit albeit virtually the historic places that withstood prior global disasters like plague epidemics and the wars. The Musei Vaticani offers a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel with closeups of frescoes and an unobstructed view of the room without any distraction by the guards or the unavoidable neck craning to see the ceiling.
The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was built in 1477-1480 by Pope Sixtus IV for whom the chapel is named. In fact, the old Cappella Magna that stood on that site from the mid-14th century was restored by the best artists of that time like Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Cosimo Rosselli. From that time until this day the Chapel is used for special ceremonies of the close circle of the Pope and as a place where the Papal Conclave of Cardinals meets to elect a new Pope.
Interestingly, the dimensions of the Chapel are the same as the Temple of Solomon according to the description in the Old Testament, the Book of Ezekiel. The Temple of Solomon was the first temple built by the Hebrews in 832 BCE under King Solomon. It was destructed by Nebuchadnezzar IIafter the Siege of Jerusalem of 587 BCE.
Michelangelo spent from 1508 through 1512 on painting the ceiling of the Chapel on the commission by Pope Julius II. Because at the time Michelangelo was preoccupied with sculptures and was reluctant to commit to such an enormous undertaking, Pope Julius granted him full freedom in selecting the scenes and figures to paint thus convincing him to take on the project. The resulting frescoes are considered to be the triumph of the artistic expression in Western civilization. The ceiling is populated with more than 300 figures starting from Christ’s ancestors including Adam and Eve, the scenes from the Garden of Eden and the Great Flood all the way to Christ’s followers, prophets, and sibyls.
Michelangelo’s mastery brings us the “faces of our time: anxiety masked by domesticity, women at work at household duties, men staring out blankly at an opaque fate” in the words of A.Gopnik in The New Yorker review of the exhibit of the photographs of the frescoes at the Oculus in New York City.
Do your best imagining yourself walking through the grand doors of the Chapel by taking the virtual tour. And while it’s definitely not the same as being surrounded by the great art at the place for which it was created, you can still connect with history and art. Their meaning may even become more apparent and better understood.
Beyond NYC: Spring Approaches Art Exhibit at Bronxville Women’s Club
