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KEN GREENLEAF
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Seriously committed
My friend the late Sidney Tillim has been much on my mind in recent weeks.
Quiet witness
"A Thickening Rhythm" is a show of five artists, one of whom, Julie Poitras Santos, also curated the show, at Coleman Burke in Brunswick.
Benton's question
There are a few things to remember about Thomas Hart Benton, an iconic American artist who died in 1975 at the age of 85.
Local joy
Every so often Greenhut organizes a "Portland Show," gathering works mostly about the city, or by artists who are identified with it, or both.
Private showing
The work of Edgar Degas has been getting much attention from museums in the past few years.
Very fine years indeed
A long time ago in a galaxy . . . well, it was just New York and it may seem like ancient history, but it was real life and what happened is part of who we are. We do like our stories about those days, and they quickly accrete the patina, and lack of detail, of legend.
Radicals and friends
Degas and the PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART headline the news for early next year. We're so used to Degas and his point of view it's easy to overlook what a difficult and radical artist he really was.
Alive with the past
Chinese bronzes are often felt, quite rightly, to fall within the purview of scholars and collectors who delight in detailed changes from one period or region to another.
Honoring simplicity
There's something fundamentally American about this very enjoyable show of Shaker work at the Portland Museum of Art.
The thing itself
Abstraction is the process of moving from the particular to the general, from the thing itself to an idea about the thing that can thus be considered or communicated. All art is, in this sense, an abstraction. The soup-can painting requires no spoon.
Reading shapes
In his essays on interpretation in the 1970s, Frank Kermode assigned a couple of conditions to the apprehension of a text: carnal and spiritual.
Building mastery
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) occupies a singular place in the history of American art in the 20th century.
Meeting a master
For the first half of the 20th century John Marin (1870-1953) was considered one of the foremost American modernist painters, and this fine show of some 50 of his later works at the Portland Museum of Art gives us a good idea why.
No rules, just reasons
Bill Manning has been a central figure in contemporary art hereabouts for something close to five decades.
Conceptual reality
The first thing you notice about the Rackstraw Downes exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art is how abstract these paintings are.
A writer and performance artist lifts a veil off creative critiquing
In the Neolithic times when I signed onto the art world, art criticism was a rather different species than now inhabits the cultural ecology.
Self-exposure
In “60 wrd/min art critic,” a performance event that has the feel of a triathlon, Lori Waxman, the Chicago Tribune art reviewer, will be coming to Portland to write short reviews for artists who wish to show her their work and get a piece written about it.
Big, big Katz
Alex Katz is one of America's best-known modern artists. His work is so emblematic of art of our time that a graphic showing one of his paintings adorns the subscription card that drops out of my freshly-delivered art magazine every month.
A push in Portsmouth
Nobody starts an art museum. Most of the art museums in America were founded in the later 19th century, when esthetics became part of the larger cultural language — the Portland Museum was started in 1882.
Still lifes focus on the details at the PMA
"Objects of Wonder" is a mixed bag of a show, which is what it sets out to be.
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