Visual Arts

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By | January 01, 0001

Photos: Allston Footbridge Art Show

"Take It Outside" at the Allston Footbridge on June 26, 2010
Artists bring their work to a showcase at the Allston Footbridge on June 26, 2010.
By LINDSEY PAYSON | June 29, 2010

Something borrowed

Beth Lipman and Kirsten Hassenfeld at MECA's ICA
"Bride" stands tall as the leading lady at the Institute of Contemporary Art's current two-woman exhibit "A Meticulous Ferment," a five-tiered pastry of sculpture glittering with as much opulence, self-importance, and fragility as the title might suggest.
By ANNIE LARMON | June 29, 2010

Unholy contraptions

Tavares Strachan's rockets, plus 'The Boat Show' at Drive By, and 'Sensed, Unseen' at GASP
In Tavares Strachan's video The Rocket Launch (2009), two black men in white chemical suits load sugar cane into the back of a three-wheeled mini-truck, then drive down a palm-tree-lined road to a run-down building labeled Bahamas Aerospace and Sea Exploration Center.
By GREG COOK | June 23, 2010

Review: Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies

Linking movies and Cubist painting
Picasso seems to have done so, though preferring Chaplin slapstick and cowboy silents to artsy fare, and biographers place him at several screenings of Lumière shorts.
By GERALD PEARY | June 24, 2010

Art in the air conditioning

Local museums keep you cool — and the art's pretty good, too
From Picasso to William "Shrek" Steig's cartoons, and surfer photos to a Twilight Zone toy store, New England offers art worth traveling to this summer. Here we round up the best in the region, no matter the weather or your artistic inclinations.
By GREG COOK | June 16, 2010

Rain check

When bad weather strikes, just go indoors!
We have just the thing to cure your summer-vacation blues: Maine, from the inside.
By ANDREW STEINBEISER | June 16, 2010

Homer's home

The PMA shows the Maine coastal artist at work
A hundred years after his death, Winslow Homer is still making waves.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | June 16, 2010

Drawing inspiration

Anarchist Seth Tobocman brings radical comic-book to the Lucy Parsons Center
"Die, yuppie scum," chants the long-haired man, to the beat of a pounding drum. "You don't need to fuck people over to survive."
By VALERIE VANDE PANNE | June 16, 2010

With plans for a downtown mural, Shepard Fairey returns to Providence

Obey
It is a rather unremarkable collection of bricks at the moment: an exterior wall at the back of Trinity Repertory Company’s Pell Chafee Performance Center in downtown Providence.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 16, 2010

Slideshow: Tavares Strachan's ''Orthostatic Tolerance'' at the MIT List Visual Arts Center

Tavares Strachan at the MIT List Visual Arts Center | Through July 11
Tavares Strachan's "Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home" at the MIT List Visual Arts Center through July 11, 2010.
By TAVARES STRACHAN | June 18, 2010

Head games

Deb Todd Wheeler and Ben Sloat give conceptual art a kick
One of the best artworks seen around here in recent years was Newton artist Deb Todd Wheeler's installation Live Experiments in Human Energy Exchange , at the (now defunct) Green Street Gallery in Jamaica Plain in 2006.
By GREG COOK | June 10, 2010

Moving forward

The CMCA Biennial balances past and present
The Center for Maine Contemporary Art is back in full swing after an unexpected winter hiatus.
By ANNIE LARMON | June 01, 2010

Finding a niche

The DeCordova's sculpture; Judi Rotenberg's farewell
The DeCordova's sculpture; Judi Rotenberg's farewell
By GREG COOK | June 04, 2010

Thesis defense

MECA’s MFA students strut their stuff
Encompassing a broad range of themes, media, and levels of participation, each set of works in this year’s Maine College of Art exhibition by nine thesis-level Master’s of Fine Arts students achieves its own world and requires a separate toolkit to process and unpack.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | May 26, 2010

Boston After Dark: Glory, Old

Posters of protest at Massachusetts College of Art
Since the national student strike began, the Massachusetts College of Art, on Brookline Avenue in Boston, has undergone a remarkable change.
By THEODORE GROSS | June 03, 2010

Photos: 'The Kennedys' at Peabody Essex Museum

Photos of JFK, Jackie Onassis and family at the PEM through July 18
"The Kennedys” exhibit at Peabody Essex Museum, through July 18
By RICHARD AVEDON | May 19, 2010

Still life

Disfarmer at the ICA
Nobody knew very much about Mike Disfarmer. Even his name was a fabrication.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 18, 2010

Power plays

The Maya and the Kennedys at the Peabody Essex
Some weeks back, I got to listen to Brown University archæology professor Stephen Houston pronounce the throaty, staccato sounds of Maya hieroglyphs carved across a six-foot-wide limestone panel.
By GREG COOK | May 21, 2010

Slideshow: The Maya And The Mythic Sea at Peabody Essex Museum

“Fiery Pool: The Maya And The Mythic Sea,” Peabody Essex Museum through July 18
Mayan works of art at the “Fiery Pool: The Maya And The Mythic Sea,” exhibit
By PHOENIX STAFF | May 19, 2010

The surreal world

Dreamworks by Corey Grayhorse at AS220
Corey Grayhorse offers a style of synthetic glitz that seems to channel our society’s plastic, superficial heart.
By GREG COOK | May 20, 2010

Mixed signals

The amalgamated adventures of Felix Kubin
For those who heard German electronics maestro Felix Kubin slice the air with fried keyboards and speed-tweaked samples at Boston’s Goethe-Institut last November, his return to the States couldn’t come soon enough.
By MATT PARISH | May 17, 2010

Slideshow: Bike cover art contest 2010

Bob Maloney's Experimental Illustration Class competes for the cover spot on the Phoenix 's 2010 Bike Bible
Bob Maloney's Experimental Illustration Class competes for the cover spot on the Phoenix 's 2010 Bike Bible
By BOB MALONEY'S EXPERIMENTAL ILLUSTRATION CLASS | May 13, 2010

Delightful details

Mary Jane Begin’s wonderland realism at Providence Art Club
Mary Jane Begin’s exhibit “Back to the Future: From The Wind In the Willows to Willow Buds” at the Providence Art Club’s Dodge House Gallery showcases her child’s fantasy wonderland realism.
By GREG COOK | May 12, 2010

Puppet pageants

The influential art of Jim Henson and Peter Schumann
In the beginning, there was Kermit. Not Kermit the Frog — not just yet. That would come nearly 15 years later.
By GREG COOK | May 07, 2010

An expanding world

Americans look at European modernism
Housed in two galleries at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, “Methods for Modernism: Form and Color in American Art, 1900 to 1925” presents a healthy survey of works by artists featured in the two most definitive venues for introducing European modernism to America.
By ANNIE LARMON | May 05, 2010

Random stuff

Versteeg’s ‘In advance of Another Thing,’ ‘Sitings 2010’ at RISD
If you were going to create a portrait of the Internet, what would it look like?
By GREG COOK | April 28, 2010

In search of light

USM’s dreamlike Inuit storytelling
Many of us here in Maine are guilty of having at one time or another harangued the forces of spring to hurry it up already, are guilty of cold-month mopery or worse. Imagine, then, living in the Arctic, where the winter is far darker for far longer, and the sun that much more precious.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 28, 2010

Slideshow: ''The Beast In Me - Johnny Cash''

Artworks from "The Beast In Me—Johnny Cash: Art Influenced by the Struggle of a Man" at the Nave Gallery
Artwork from "The Beast In Me—Johnny Cash: Art Influenced by the Struggle of a Man" at the Nave Gallery
By NAVE GALLERY | April 20, 2010

Cheap thrills

The inky delights of Dr. Lakra
They say Dr. Lakra got his pen name from the doctor’s bag he carried around when he first began tattooing, two decades ago. “Lakra” puns on the Spanish word “lacra,” meaning scar or blemish, but it’s also slang for “delinquent” or “scumbag.”
By GREG COOK | April 21, 2010