Archives For Galleries

Art that understands the vocabulary of its past always catches my eye. Beth Lipman who shows at the wonderful Claire Oliver Gallery in New York knows still life. Her glass sculpture speaks to that over the top still life tradition of the 17th century where bountiful excess was all the rage. (Wait!!! That seems to be our era as well!) History has a way of repeating itself but not Beth. These are really wonderful works that take this ancient tradition and spin it so that it speaks to us here and now.

Keep an eye out for her exhibition in April 2015.

 

cut_table

pitcher-with-vines-back

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All images via Claire Oliver Gallery

 

 

 

The Work of Beth Lipman

Holland Cotter won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the art world and is one of the voices more should listen to when it comes to the overreaching influence of money on how and why art is made today.

…”Visit art schools or galleries, and you get the impression that a substantial portion of the art world is content to serve as support staff to a global ruling class. The reality is that, directly or indirectly, in large ways and small, the current market system is shaping every aspect of art in the city: not just how artists live, but also what kind of art is made, and how art is presented in the media and in museums”…

…”If archaeologists of the future unearthed the Museum of Modern Art as it exists today, they would have to assume that Modernism was a purely European and North American invention. They would be wrong. Modernism was, and is, an international phenomenon, happening in different ways, on different timetables, for different reasons in Africa, Asia, Australia and South America. Why aren’t museums telling that story? Because it doesn’t sell. Why doesn’t it sell? Because it’s unfamiliar. Why is it unfamiliar? Because museums, with their eyes glued to box office, aren’t telling the story”…

via Lost in the Gallery-Industrial Complex Holland Cotter Looks at Money in Art – NYTimes.com.

Nice profile about the rise of the David Zwirner Gallery and a excellent fly on the wall view into the obtuse workings of the art world by the folks over at The New Yorker.

“One of the reasons there’s so much talk about money is that it’s so much easier to talk about than the art,” Zwirner told me one day. You meet a lot of people in the art world who are exhausted and dismayed by the focus on money, and by its dominance. It distracts from the work, they say. It distorts curatorial instincts, critical appraisals, and young artists’ careers. It scares away civilians, who begin to lump art in with other symptoms of excess and dismiss it as another garish plaything of the rich. Of course, many of those who complain—dealers, artists, curators—are complicit. The culture industry, which supports them in one way or another, and which hardly existed a generation ago, subsists on all that money—mostly on the largesse and folly of wealthy art lovers, whether their motivations are lofty or base”

via The New Yorker article:

Dealer’s Hand

by Nick Paumgarten