Kim Steele

Hudson Yards

Much hoopla has been published about the ‘largest urban development project in US history.’  But it has been predominantly negative. Hudson Yards is overrun with Super stores like Balenciaga and Hermes, and criticism over ‘public space’ [air] waste above the turn around yards from Penn Station.

The Shed’s wheels are forty feet high, that use the tracks to reveal its roof, and cover an expansive outdoor venue for top flight mainstream performances. Within the West Side Rail Yard of 28 acres, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with others, The Shed is made of steel, and a translucent Texlon-based polymer, which rolls out to form McCourt Plaza. Co–designer David Rockwell stated, “the mark of a good design is that that it survives reality.” (Credit: Pilar Viladas)   “Meh” – I say.  In a place of white-boxed galleries and glass stores, it is not embracing and certainly not a novel use of urban development-same old stuff.  It’s our contemporaneous Atlantis.

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ICE, photograph by Henry Wessel, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

As a shooter of film for forty years, it has been a struggle to grasp the impact of the digital age and the Internet on of the status of photography in our world.  The act of shooting has become an indulgent, social event.

Henry Wessel, sadly recently deceased in California, was a profound photographer, mentor, professor and thinker on photography, especially on the American West.

“Pressing the shutter is saying yes to the world.’” One of his most poignant quotations which set me back; upon arriving at LAX, he commented on the light intensity, “it looked like you could lean against it.” He was honored by many museum exhibitions from Szarkowski’s at Moma, to Eastman House, to Cologne. He was instrumental in the photo program at the San Francisco Institute, joining its faculty in 1973.

Lee Friedlander called him the “Photo Buddha.” I could mention Walker Evens or Cartier Bresson as his inspiration, but he embarked further into the ordinary terrain of life. This plots a direct collusion with Instagram and Facebook imaging. He was concerned about the proliferation of pictures and it’s deterioration of the import of the photograph.

“People don’t pay much attention these days to the descriptive, expressive and suggestive facts found in a good still photograph.

“The process of photographing is a pleasure: eyes open, receptive, sensing, and at some point connecting. It’s thrilling to be outside your mind, your eyes far ahead of your thoughts.”

That’s picture taking.

I cannot help to be critically drawn to the narcissistic nature of people’s images – selfies, food, pets and fronting famous objects. Nothing to do with image making but all about themselves. Sadly that is our future.

ORDER and ORNAMENT: Roy Lichtenstein’s Entablatures

September 27, 2019 – September 27, 2020 at Whitney Museum of American Art

This exhibition will present a diverse array of works on paper by Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) related to his Entablatures series from the 1970s. Inspired by the architectural facades and ornamental motifs he encountered around Wall Street and elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, the series addresses many of Lichtenstein’s central artistic themes while demonstrating a unique emphasis on texture, surface, relief, and reflectivity.

Named after the horizontal structures that sit atop the columns in Classical Greek architecture, Lichtenstein’s Entablatures represent a distinctly American derivative, one based in revivalist, industrialized architectural imitations that were built en masse in the early twentieth century. By isolating clichéd symbols of—in the artist’s words—“imperial power” and “the establishment,” Lichtenstein traces the effect of mass production and replication on cultural forms. A sustained investigation into pattern and repetition, the Entablatures also underscore the echoes of Classical order embedded within Minimalist sculpture and Color Field painting.

The first exhibition at the Whitney devoted to Lichtenstein’s work since the transformative gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Study Collection, this capsule presentation provides a focused look at a single pivotal series, highlighting the artist’s inventive processes and techniques across drawings, collages, prints, photographs, and archival materials.

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MAKING MARVELS: Science & Splendor at the Courts of Europe

November 35, 2019 – March 1, 2020 at
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Between 1550 and 1750, nearly every royal family in Europe assembled vast collections of valuable and entertaining objects. Such lavish public spending and display of precious metals was considered an expression of power. Many princes also believed that the possession of artistic and technological innovations conveyed status, and these objects were often prominently showcased in elaborate court entertainments, which were characteristic of the period.

Making Marvels will explore the complex ways in which the wondrous items collected by early modern European princes, and the contexts in which they were displayed, expressed these rulers' ability to govern. Approximately 170 objects—including clocks, automata, furniture, musical instruments, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, print media, and more—from both The Met collection and over fifty lenders worldwide will be featured. Visitors will discover marvelous innovations that engaged and delighted the senses of the past, much like twenty-first-century technology holds our attention today—through suspense, surprise, and dramatic transformations.

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LEONARDO DA VINCI

October 24, 2019 – February 24, 2020 at
Musée du Louvre, Paris

The year 2019 has a special significance for the Louvre, as it will mark the fifth centenary of the artist’s death at Amboise, in the Loire Valley. When his patron Giuliano de’ Medici died, Leonardo da Vinci left Italy for France at the invitation of the new French king, François I. Probably around November 1516, he arrived at the Château du Clos Lucé, a stone’s throw from the king’s residence at Amboise.

This château was the splendid home provided by François I for Leonardo, whom he appointed “First Painter, Engineer and Architect to the King,” a position for which the artist received a princely allowance. This is where he spent the last three years of his life, compiling notes on various scientific and artistic subjects with a view to publishing treatises, and working on the paintings he had brought with him to France, such as Saint Anne, the Mona Lisa and Saint John the Baptist. Some remarkable drawings from this period, done on French-made paper, illustrate his work on hydraulic projects, festivities for the king and a monumental equestrian sculpture.

On May 2, 1519, the great Italian Renaissance genius died at the Château du Clos Lucé. This is why the Louvre holds almost a third of his corpus of paintings: those he brought to France were purchased by François I and entered the royal collections, which probably already included The Virgin of the Rocks and La Belle Ferronnière, acquired by Louis XII. This outstanding set of paintings, which formed the beginning of the Louvre’s collections, was supplemented by twenty-two of the artist’s remarkable drawings.

The fifth centenary of the Italian master’s death is therefore a unique opportunity for the Louvre to bring as many as possible of the fourteen to seventeen paintings now attributed to Leonardo, according to specialists, to join the five large paintings in the Paris museum. The exhibition will include a large selection of drawings and a small but significant group of paintings and sculptures that will provide some tangible context.

This international retrospective will present the latest research findings, critical editions of key documents and the results of the latest analysis carried out in laboratories or during recent conservation treatment by the Louvre.

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GAUGHIN PORTRAITS

October 7, 2019 – January 26, 2020 at The National Gallery, London

The first ever exhibition devoted to the portraits of Paul Gauguin.

Spanning the later years of his life and focusing solely on his portraits, this exhibition follows Gauguin’s move away from Impressionism towards Symbolism.

By adding carefully selected attributes or placing the sitter into a suggestive context Gauguin was able to make portraits that expressed meaning beyond their personalities. A group of self-portraits, for example, reveals how Gauguin created a range of personifications including his self-image as 'Christ in the Garden of Olives', 1889 (Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach).

Featuring about fifty works, the exhibition includes paintings, works on paper, and three-dimensional objects in a variety of media, from public and private collections worldwide.

It also brings together multiple works of the same sitter from different collections scattered across the world, giving us the opportunity to see how Gauguin interpreted a model in different media over time.

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REMBRANDT - VELÁZQUEZ: Dutch and Spanish masters

October 11, 2019 – January 19, 2020 at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The first ever exhibition devoted to the portraits of Paul Gauguin.

Spanning the later years of his life and focusing solely on his portraits, this exhibition follows Gauguin’s move away from Impressionism towards Symbolism.

By adding carefully selected attributes or placing the sitter into a suggestive context Gauguin was able to make portraits that expressed meaning beyond their personalities. A group of self-portraits, for example, reveals how Gauguin created a range of personifications including his self-image as 'Christ in the Garden of Olives', 1889 (Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach).

Featuring about fifty works, the exhibition includes paintings, works on paper, and three-dimensional objects in a variety of media, from public and private collections worldwide.

It also brings together multiple works of the same sitter from different collections scattered across the world, giving us the opportunity to see how Gauguin interpreted a model in different media over time.

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THE SORCERER'S BURDEN: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn

September 14, 2019 – January 19, 2020 at The Contemporary Austin

Ed Atkins, Nuotama Frances Bodomo, Theo Eshetu, Cameron Jamie, Kapwani Kiwanga, Marie Lorenz, Nathan Mabry, Ruben Ochoa, Dario Robleto, Shimabuku, Julia Wachtel

The intersection of art and anthropology can be traced to the long-standing human desire to collect, classify, and display across cultures and time. In Western societies, the systematic accumulation and exhibition of objects considered to be culturally valuable dates back to the Renaissance-era cabinet of curiosities, or Wunderkammer, the precursor by several centuries to the modern art museum. Meant to inspire and amaze, these cabinets began in private, domestic spaces but over time expanded to entire rooms in the public sphere, eventually becoming what we know today as natural history, anthropology, and ethnographic museums. It wasn’t until the late seventeenth century that the first art museums appeared, taking their cue from these private curio collections turned public, where art collections of the royal, wealthy, and ruling elite made their way into public spaces for exhibition. In many ways, art museums evolved in opposition to natural history museums, the relationship between the two echoing undercurrents of the longstanding discussion between “high” and “low” art. In tandem, anthropological endeavors aspired to remain a comfortable distance from notions of fine art, averse to ethnographic methods becoming aestheticized and the inherent colonialist impulses present in both fields.

At the same time, anthropology and art as fields of study—themselves widely divergent across geographies and cultures—tend to have more in common than not: among them, an intellectual foundation based on curiosity about culture, an impulse to collect, and a reflection of the human condition. More recently, the twentieth century has witnessed Western modern and contemporary art re-engaging with anthropology. From the exoticism of early twentieth-century Primitivism, to the appropriated rituals of Surrealism, to Land Art’s archaeological excavation, and later to the ethnographic turn in exhibition-making beginning in the 1980s; the two fields continue to make uneasy yet fertile bedfellows. The resurgence of artists and curators turning to anthropological methodologies and concerns is both fascinating and problematic, indicative of broader sociopolitical undercurrents. It is this intersection, the complicated relationship between art and anthropology as seen through the lens of contemporary artists, that forms the subject of the forthcoming exhibition The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn, titled after an ethnographic book of the same name by the American cultural anthropologist Paul Stoller. Representing a wide range of media, and including new commissions, site-specific works, and loans, the content will not focus on artists presenting straightforward ethnographic observations, but rather those artists who appropriate, manipulate, and transform elements found in anthropological methodologies and practices to create contemporary works that are alternately subversive, humorous, satirical, dark, playful, and enchanting. The premise teases out challenging issues related to race, colonialism, identity, religion, and politics, as well as potential for insight and fresh perspective in the unexpected intersections.

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BERTE MORISOT: Impressionist Original

October 20, 2019 – January 12, 2020 at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Berthe Morisot, Woman with a Fan (Femme à l’éventail), 1876, oil on canvas, private collection.

This exhibition highlights Berthe Morisot’s approach to portraiture, her focus on the life of women in modern Paris, and her singular role in the French Impressionist movement. Following the recent, internationally touring retrospective of her work, Berthe Morisot: Impressionist Original features paintings from public and private lenders, including four important works in Houston collections that could not be included in the traveling exhibition.

Morisot’s domestic scenes focus on children, family, and flowers, capturing a woman’s life in the late 19th century. Through her portrayal of the human figure, Morisot (1841–1895) was able to explore the themes of modern life that came to define Impressionism: the intimacy of contemporary bourgeois living and leisure activities; women’s fashions; and domestic work. At the same time, she blurs distinctions between interior and exterior, public and private, finished and unfinished.

The exhibition illuminates Morisot’s role as an essential figure within the Impressionist movement. One of the founding members of the Impressionist group—along with Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley—Morisot achieved critical and commercial success during her lifetime. Her work reveals a painter who, against the norms of her time and her elevated social background, became an important member of the Parisian avant-garde from the late 1860s until her death.

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ANTONIO: The Fine Art of Fashion Illustration

September 21, 2019 – January 5, 2020 at Phoenix Museum of Art

Featuring more than 100 original drawings, photographs, and magazines, Antonio: The Fine Art of Fashion Illustration is a multimedia exhibition of ANTONIO, the signature that represented the collaborative creative work of fashion visionaries Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos. The installation features their artistic, editorial, and commercial work created from the 1960s through the 1980s for publications and retailers such as Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, French Elle, Harper's Bazaar Italy, L'Uomo Vogue, Vanity, Saks Fifth Avenue , and Bloomingdales .

Highlights of the exhibition include more than 20 drawings from Antonio's Tales from the Thousand and One Nights , a lavishly illustrated book of stories from The Arabian Nights, translated by Sir Richard Burton and published in 1985. Additionally, Antonio will include 12 never-before- exhibited, large-scale drawings created in 1973 at the Condé Nast offices in New York City during a series of Vogue seminars commissioned by editor Carrie Donovan. Featuring model Pat Cleveland and Amina Warsuma, these live-drawing sessions illustrated upcoming designer collections for buyers and journalists. Known for expanding fashion's view through diverse ideas of beauty, ethnicity, and sexuality, Antonio's drawings capture the energy of three revolutionary decades.

Both Lopez and Ramos were born in the early 1940s in Puerto Rico, and they met as students at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Lopez was an exceptionally gifted illustrator, while Ramos was the art director, researcher, and organizer. In the early 1960s, they began their careers as part of the “youth quake” and became pioneers of a multinational view that moved fashion illustration forward with a modern perspective. Antonio: The Fine Art of Fashion Illustration features a continuous screening of the time-capsule documentary film Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion and Disco (2017) by director James Crump that demonstrates their impact on fashion.

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MICHELANGELO: Mind of the Master

September 22, 2019 – January 5, 2020 at The Cleveland Museum of Art

The name of the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) is synonymous with creative genius and virtuosity. The exhibition Michelangelo: Mind of the Master presents an unprecedented opportunity for museum visitors to experience the brilliance of Michelangelo’s achievements on an intimate scale through more than two dozen original drawings. Michelangelo’s genius is especially evident through his breathtaking draftsmanship on sheets filled with multiple figures and close studies of human anatomy. These working sketches invite us to look over the shoulder of one of Western art history’s most influential masters and to experience firsthand his boundless creativity and extraordinary mastery of the human form. These drawings demonstrate Michelangelo’s inventive preparations for his most important and groundbreaking commissions, including the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco, sculptures for the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, and the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Michelangelo: Mind of the Master brings to the United States for the first time a group of drawings by Michelangelo from the remarkable collection of the Teylers Museum (Haarlem, The Netherlands), which was formed in the 18th century in part from the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden (1626–1689). Additional drawings from the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum round out the display. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by Emily J. Peters (Cleveland Museum of Art), Julian Brooks (J. Paul Getty Museum), and Carel van Tuyll van Serooskerken (Teylers Museum) that explore Michelangelo’s working methods and major projects, as well as the fascinating history of the ownership of his drawings after his death.

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SEE AND BE SEEN: Picturing Notoriety

June 14, 2019 – October 22, 2019, at Norton Museum of Art

From the 19th-century flaneur to today’s social media networkers, the need to get a glimpse of famous or notorious personalities and the compulsion to be seen within an aura of celebrity and influence has driven – and been driven by – the graphic arts. Photography, printmaking, and the rise of illustrated periodicals have given way to televised reality shows and the posts, tweets, and ‘likes’ that define viral internet exposure. In response, artists have absorbed and mobilized the transition from one technology to the next. Their visions and sensibilities are at the core of how we respond to and define “celebrity.”

The exhibition will feature more than 50 works from the 19th to the 21st Centuries and will include images of Queen Victoria, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Marilyn Monroe, and Lil’ Kim in works by such diverse artists as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Hollywood photographer George Hurrell, and artists Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin, Annie Leibovitz, and John Baldessari.

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We have celebrated The Boulevardiers raison de’tre for five years now, founded on the French pre-occupation of strolling and window gazing in Paris, and London, and Rome. This Publisher was struck by a newly found term, "Faire du Lèche-Vitrines," which is crudely translated as “window licking.” Now knowing the decorum of the French, I am convinced that they would not apply this term to their promenading in the trendy section, the Marais, of Paris, which is the center of all that is cool, hip and expensive. The original center of Paris, built in the 13th century by the Knights Templar, much has remained, avoiding destruction by City decree in 1964. The Boulevardiers strolled through this section last summer on the way to L’Orangrie and gazed covetously at the many shops, bakeries and patisseries... and could very well appreciate this phrase.

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Guest Musing from The Boulevardiers "Muse" Sally Steele:

Never let it be said that the Boulevardiers don't celebrate all who wander in search of inspiration, or in daily observation. A recently published book, The Flâneuse, is a lively tome focusing on the French flâneuse, the feminine of flâneur: defined as a woman who is or who behaves like a flaneur; who is defined as an idle man-about-town.

Author Lauren Elkin: "The portraits I paint here attest that the flâneuse is not merely a female flâneur, but a figure to be reckoned with, and inspired by, all on her own…She is a determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk."

For some time, I have been lamenting whilst walking my town, enviously observing the abundance of hipster bistros and coffee bars populated all day and into the evening by those lucky enough to grab the time to simply sit and watch the world go by. But how oh so boring that would be!

Recently perusing the tales of Diego, the sire of Galapagos tortoises, I smiled having "met" Diego in the Galapagos several years ago. And when reading about the rich arts scene in Milan, funded mostly via the largesse of the fashion houses, my head was full of images of days spent wandering there, not so long ago. As I poured over my travel photos I saw Los Angeles, Lima, and Santiago; New York, Maui and Athens; Venice, Istanbul, and Marseilles; Cannes, Sydney, and Tokyo, and so many more. I walked for miles in for London, from my favorite museum, The V&A, to Harrod's, to the trendy parts of town with all the big name galleries. Ditto for New York. And Rome, major renovations to ancient and Renaissance sites currently underway, again due to the largesse of the world's fashion leaders. And oh, Paris, strolling in the Tuileries in the drizzle after a glorious morning spent at l'Orangerie. Then there were some standout strolls on La Croisette amidst the excitement of the awards season. I live a fanciful life!

I'm lucky enough to be partner to the ultimate flâneur, who has so graciously guided me into becoming a full-fledged flâneuse.

Here's to women everywhere, and to living a life that takes the good walk, and turns it into the truly great walk.

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The raking light of fall brings out the Flaneur in me, the season of Flanerie. Elaine Sciolino reminds us of the first establishment of this pastime in literature, “Tableau de Paris,” a twelve volume set of observations the gestalt the of ‘street’ in Paris. Half a century later, this sites’ figurehead, Charles Baudelaire, demarked the ‘wander-spectator’ activity as flaneur. “The crowd is his habitat, as is air for the bird or water for the fish” he quoted.

This activity is so important to the French, that Hermes created a pop-up museum on the left bank to honor its significance. The artistic director of the project, Pierre-Alexis Dumas also created an illustrated book on the subject. It’s a small single room structure with four window displays, including from the collection of a past president, Emile Hermes.

To observe yes, to interact no. The sounds, the smells and the visual jewels glistening in the shop windows- draws us to the streets of Paris, or London or our favorite ville, Roma. And of course, the most animated of them all – the people who stroll and sit and observe in the cafes, not the harried New Yorkers who are irritated by strollers in their path. Years ago, I proposed a story for Life Magazine, on the important promenades of the world, but to no avail. Sadly, it is not an American occupation.

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On every trip to NY, I visit one of my favorite urban spaces, The Grand Central Oyster Bar. Between my passion for oysters and my adoration for Guastavino's tile craft, this is my ideal spot. We traveled to 103rd Street this last trip to enjoy a beautifully illustrated and informative exhibition at The Museum of New York, of his sumptuous tilework throughout New York employed by McKim, Mead and White, and NY City (including the recently uncovered bottom to the Queensborough Bridge, now a Farmer's Market).

Guastavino tile is the "Tile Arch System" patented in the United States in 1885 by Valencian (Spanish) architect and builder Rafael Guastavino (1842–1908). Guastavino vaulting is a technique for constructing robust, self-supporting arches and architectural vaults using interlocking terracotta tiles and layers of mortar to form a thin skin, with the tiles following the curve of the roof as opposed to horizontally (corbelling), or perpendicular to the curve (as in Roman vaulting). This is known as timbrel vaulting, because of supposed likeness to the skin of a timbrel or tambourine. It is also called "Catalan vaulting" and "compression-only thin-tile vaulting".

Guastavino tile is found in some of New York’s most prominent Beaux-Arts landmarks and in major buildings across the United States.

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