In Giorgione’s enigmatic “The Tempest,” probably the most famous image of lightning in art, an electric blue bolt slices open a stormy cloudscape, dividing the landscape in two. It’s title alerts us to look for visual contrasts and symbolic conflicts, appropriate and easily found in a work done […]
On the radio recently, another self-proclaimed expert predicted confidently that from this day forward, the printing of maps would cease. Instead, from now on we will all find our way using the GPS-linked apps on our cell phones. An alternative future he unconsciously conjured, though, was of society […]
Water is one of art’s great subjects, and why not? One of four indispensable elements known to the Greeks, it’s the one that comes closest to being unique to our planet. Water makes life possible, but also shapes and even transports it. We know far more about water […]
Despite the obviously punning reference in its title, a first glance around Driven to Abstraction suggests a third layer of meaning: the impact of the open road on art. Here are three prominent canvases by Jean Arnold, her familiar perspective from her mobile studio—a public bus—condensing transport into a constellation […]
“It’s well known that while it’s only a forty mile drive from Ogden to Salt Lake, it’s at least a hundred and forty miles from Salt Lake to Ogden.” With tongue thus firmly in cheek, Scott Patria, co-founder of the gallery venture he likes to call a “low […]
“I love ambiguity,” Bernard Meyers says, and with that refreshingly unambiguous confession, highlights a principal characteristic of his photography. Ambiguity is what makes his photos—unlike the majority of images produced by today’s ever-more ubiquitous cameras—valid additions to our common visual language. Or in other words, works of art […]
Two things are soon apparent on entering the Shaw Gallery. The first is that, to paraphrase The Wizard of Oz, we’re not in Utah any more . . .
According to Wikipedia: The hippocampus (named after its resemblance to the seahorse, from the Greek hippos meaning “horse” and kampos meaning “sea monster”) is a major component of the brains of humans and other vertebrates. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation […]
Picasso famously told Gertrude Stein, before embarking on what became one of the most famous portraits of the twentieth century, that she needed to understand that it would not look like her. Picasso taught the world a new way of seeing, though, and his pre-cubist portrait of Stein […]
Across the room, Nuala Creed’s “Lament for Fukushima” looks like a child’s well-worn doll, but up close he’s seen to be an adult: one so rounded and smooth as to be mistaken for a child. He sits on the ground with his legs folded in front of […]
Let’s perhaps take a minute to review how far we’ve come. Late in the twentieth century, a consensus arose that Modernism was dying, if not already dead. This is not as sad as it sounds: the first artist to be called modern was Dante, and he’s also […]
By 1938, the Surrealists had concluded that not only the individual objects in the gallery, but the exhibition itself should be a work of art, and they asked ‘retired’ artist Marcel Duchamp to design that year’s International Surrealist Exhibition at the Gallerie des Beaux-arts. For perhaps the […]
‘If love is a story we tell ourselves then I had the story wrong. Or maybe passion is just, and always, a wrong-headed thing.’ — Anne Enright Either it’s becoming increasingly evident as we learn more about our species, or at least it’s become part of the […]
Driving back from Park City, where Brenda Mallory’s second exhibition at Julie Nester opened July 5th, the familiar but still disturbing sight of an elk lying dead on the median strip of I-80 brought into sharp focus the universal significance of the artworks just seen. Once broken, nothing […]
The Supermodel and the Brillo Box: Back Stories and Peculiar Economics From the World of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2014. ISBN 978-1-137-27908-8, 288 pages. Ten Rather Eccentric Essays on Art: Reflections on Damien Hirst, postmodernism, the art market, food in art and more […]
Every time art renews itself, there is the impression that something entirely new is taking place: something coming into being that has never been seen before. More likely, taking in the whole picture, the artists are actually narrowing the field, selecting a small part of what went before, […]
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things. —from Wild Geese by Mary Oliver The Alice Gallery offers one […]
Mil Mascaras prowls the large alcove at the corner of the gallery like a trapped, feral animal: circling, pacing, as though seeking a way out? Or a way in? His lithe, wrestler’s body is tense as he speaks earnestly, then suddenly strikes an aggressive pose, resumes pacing, then […]
