tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18368793679839187972024-03-18T02:47:39.314-07:00artbouillonreviews|recommendations|rants|reflections|rediscoveries|readymades|revelationsJesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-5694120928656814912021-07-29T12:26:00.011-07:002021-07-30T12:42:59.021-07:00A Thousand Plateaus: Appreciating Chinese LandscapesLook at the three paintings above. If you are untutored in the history of Chinese art, they may look very similar. In many respects they are. They are all painted within about a century of each other, around the start of the Song Dynasty (960–1279). This was the period that established monumental landscape painting as a major genre in Chinese art. Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-49045813124818339112017-12-31T20:56:00.001-08:002018-01-01T04:48:08.384-08:002017: A Year In Art
2017 was not a good year, geopolitically speaking, and it was a hiatus for Art Bouillon. Still, it was a decent year for art. There were both highs and lows. The ruinous Kiefer above captures the mood of 2017 compellingly, but the rest of his show at Gagosian was a disappointing display of trite female nudes -- these are rendered all the more inopportune by the pandemic of sexual Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com92tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-2049840881815637702016-12-30T06:09:00.000-08:002016-12-30T06:51:31.373-08:00Outside In: Celebrating of the Forgotten Genius of Unica Zürn at 100
2016 has been a year of significant art anniversaries. It was the centenary of dada, which I celebrated on this blog. It was the 500-year anniversary of the death of Hieronymus Bosch, which I celebrated by making a pilgrimage to the Noordbrabandts Museum in Den Bosch for an extraordinary exhibition. It was the (alleged) 40th anniversary of punk rock, which I marked by doing Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-79129577285880093142016-04-28T12:50:00.001-07:002016-04-29T05:55:43.834-07:00Making the Cut: Has a Lost Caravaggio Been Discovered in Toulouse?
The art world was split, a few days back, when it was announced that an unknown Caravaggio painting had been discovered in an attic near Toulouse, France (above). The theme, Judith Beheading Holofernes, is the subject of one of Caravaggio’s most compelling works (below). A second version would be a major addition to his oeuvre. Skeptics believe the newly Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-77638317195324336542016-02-05T20:49:00.002-08:002016-02-06T08:19:39.494-08:00Art is Dead, Long Live Dada: Cabaret Voltaire at 100
A century ago today, the Cabaret Voltaire opened its doors in Zurich, attracting a diverse group of artists and draft-dodgers credited with launching the art movement known as Dada. It is a bit of a stretch to say that Dada has a birthday. By 1916, Marcel Duchamp and Else von Freytag-Loringhoven had been producing readymades for over two years and Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi had Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com47tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-77983054453682000182015-12-31T05:38:00.001-08:002015-12-31T13:13:52.872-08:00From Insane Artist to Outsider: A Genealogy
In a forthcoming article, I criticize the notion of Outsider Art, arguing that it lacks coherent rules for inclusion and that it serves to ostracize disabled artists from the art world. Part of that critique is based on a genealogy of the concept of Outsider Art. Here I want to share an abbreviated, visually enriched version of that genealogy. My focus will be on evolving Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-69921444313466678292015-07-26T10:43:00.001-07:002015-08-02T04:33:32.639-07:00"We all end up in the clay." -James 'Son Ford' Thomas
Summertime is not always a hotbed of good art,
but mostly just good and hot. If you can handle a humid train ride to
Manhattan, or even if you can’t, get over to NYU’s 80WSE gallery, pronto. James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas: The Devil and
His Blues is a celebration of the Delta Blues and Black Folk Art. Upon
entering, an old turntable plays his recordings and beside it rests Son Ford’s
Rachel Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891003001503489919noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-78467230214249640282015-05-09T16:22:00.002-07:002015-05-10T06:52:14.166-07:00Venus Stripped Bear: A History of the Female Nude
Female nudes count among the most celebrated images in the history of Western art. Last week I was reviewing an article by the philosopher, Anne Eaton, with my aesthetics class. Eaton develops a feminist critique of female nudes, describing various ways in which they can be said to objectify women and reinforce harmful stereotypes. This got me thinking about where Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-19355092722773477352015-01-03T09:45:00.001-08:002015-01-04T10:21:36.375-08:00Dürer's Rhinoceros: Art, Exotica, and Empire
To kick off the new year, I want to examine Dürer's rhinoceros, which was created 500 years ago, in 1515. It began as a drawing (now in the British museum), and was then rendered a print and widely distributed. Indeed, it was among the most successful prints of the time, and it fixed a conceptualization of the rhinoceros in the European imagination for the next few centuries. &Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-46704649989301251022014-12-26T17:13:00.002-08:002014-12-27T11:10:24.756-08:00El Greco's Revelation: An Anniversary Appreciation of the Painting that Inspired Modernism
The Metropolitan Museum is currently hosting an exhibition to celebrate the 400th anniversary of El Greco's death. Largely drawn from the Museum's collection, the most impressive work on display is known as, The Opening of the Fifth Seal. Indeed, this is arguably El Greco's finest painting. It is also among his most influential, credited with inspiring Picasso to create the Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-76276857392357438922014-12-24T07:30:00.001-08:002014-12-24T08:32:54.786-08:00Patients as Painters in a Portuguese Panopticon
On a recent trip to Lisbon, I was able to visit a remarkable museum, dedicated to the art of the mentally ill. Largely unknown, even to locals, the museum is located in a mental hospital that closed in 2010. A choice sampling of works from a 3,500-piece collection can be seen there, spanning a century of creative production. There is also a collection of medical Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-59162499671500431402014-12-07T18:19:00.000-08:002014-12-09T03:31:16.637-08:00Between Icons and Abstraction: The Russian Art that Westerners Don't Know
Western art enthusiasts have selective knowledge of Russian painting. When we think about Russia's contributions to art history, we tend to think about modernists like Kandinsky and Malevich, or else perhaps we think of Russian icons, which are recognizable to us but poorly understood. We are also familiar with the socialist realism imposed during Stalin's Soviet regime, though Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-50835333442382261932014-11-20T05:41:00.000-08:002017-08-21T04:47:54.913-07:00Pilfered Pissoire? A Response to the Allegation that Duchamp Stole his Famous Fountain
On November 1, I posted a short animated film paying tribute to Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, the urinal that he allegedly purchased as a readymade in 1917. The film tells the standard story: Duchamp purchased the the urinal at J.L. Mott Iron Works, a plumbing store on New York's 5th Avenue; he then signed it with the pseudonym, R. Mutt, and submitted it to the Society of Independent Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-20702032466469997802014-08-16T18:15:00.000-07:002014-08-17T07:54:26.751-07:00Prehistoric Galleries: A Visit to Quinkan Country
On a recent trip to Eastern Australia, I was fortunate to see some of the spectacular ancient "art" in Northern Queensland. "Art" is is quotes because the original meaning and function of these ancient images is unknown. What we do know derives mostly from contemporary aboriginal interpreters, who have grown up with these paintings and wall markings. On their telling, many Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-89726286028093085972014-07-12T11:09:00.000-07:002014-07-12T13:11:23.700-07:00On and On Kawara
Painting is an atemporal art, and, as such, ill suited to documenting the passage of time. Early Renaissance painters used a technique called multiple narrative, wherein one canvas contained depictions of a sequence of events. A stunning example is Filippo Lippi's Feast of Herod, which depicts Salome dancing and receiving the head of John the Baptist. Klimt and others Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-35304967918148870882014-07-04T06:15:00.000-07:002014-07-10T10:48:40.791-07:00Dix in Stuttgart
Stuttgart is not known as a major destination on the global art map. It cannot compare to Berlin among German art centers, nor even to Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Kassel. Still, it deserves more recognition. Among its masterpieces, the city hosts one of the most impressive collections of paintings by Otto Dix. Dix moved to the area after he was ousted from his Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-9151156347893463282014-06-25T13:48:00.001-07:002014-06-27T12:50:41.001-07:00A Modern Spirit: Hilma af Klint and the Origins of Abstraction
If you consult the art history books, you will probably learn that Kandinsky invented abstract painting, and that his innovation came around 1910. Recently, the record has been corrected. It is now recognized that Kandinsky has at least one predecessor: a Swedish clairvoyant named Hilma af Klint (pictured below). "Clairvoyant?" you ask. Yes; af Klint was preoccupied Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com140tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-55600274505203934212014-04-06T13:53:00.002-07:002014-04-06T14:17:38.977-07:00Futurism's Pasts
"[A] roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace." So proclaims F.T. Marinetti in the 1909 manifesto that launched futurism as a major force in the artworld. Outside Italy, art history texts imply that futurism came to an end just a few years later, with the death of Umberto Boccioni, who was thrown from a horseJesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-2034428047827565212014-02-16T15:43:00.000-08:002014-02-17T05:54:17.819-08:00Armory Show 101
Last year marked the centennial of the infamous Armory Show, which shocked Americans into modernity. This year marks the 101st anniversary, and, for one more week, you can catch a commemorative exhibition at the New York Historical Society. It's well worth a trip. If you are outside of New York, there's a giant catalogue of the show and an impressive web site. Of Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-7500836515676279342014-01-09T13:59:00.004-08:002014-01-10T07:40:03.295-08:00The Two Problems of Balthus
Balthus (1908-2001) presents two problems as a painter. First, and most notoriously, almost his entire output consists of paintings of sexualized adolescent or prepubescent girls. This raises challenging questions out the ethics of the work, and our ethics as viewers of the work. Second, Balthus's style does not fit very neatly into the narrative of 20th century art history.Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-39704629687989530032013-12-24T12:38:00.000-08:002013-12-29T05:40:53.718-08:00The Seoul of Modern Art
I'm just back from the capital of South Korea (aka the Republic of Korea), and I was delighted to discover that, in addition to many other charms, Seoul has become a center for current art. There are many impressive museums there, showcasing both Korean and international artists, as well as a thriving gallery scene. My timing could hardly have been better because a massive new Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-13948663572873625872013-12-07T10:25:00.000-08:002013-12-08T04:39:59.919-08:00Flemish Food Art: An Appreciation
Okay, admit it. When ambling through collections of European art, you tend to bound past those Dutch still life paintings. I know I do. Admirable though they might be in technique, there seems so little there to grab us (the above example is by Althasar van der Ast). No figures to relate to, no narrative, no drama. Worse still, the artists seem Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-15741325778471505182013-10-04T10:44:00.000-07:002013-10-04T10:44:27.502-07:00"Better Out Than In": Banksy NY
Banksy, the infamous British graffiti artist, is currently in New York for a self imposed, month long "residency" which is appropriately located on the walls of New York City, free for the public to enjoy if you happen to locate, or stumble upon them. At each site, a toll free number has been stenciled for you to call and a hear a recording which may or may not have a clue for the Rachel Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891003001503489919noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-25999597345635362052013-09-27T12:48:00.003-07:002013-10-05T17:59:40.679-07:00Magritte Is Not a Surrealist
The new Magritte exhibition, opening at the Museum of Modern Art, offers a welcome opportunity to reassess the artist's place in the history of 20th century art. Magritte was affiliated with the surrealists, and is often regarded as a paradigm exemplar of that movement--perhaps even it most recognizable exemplar. That, I think, is a mistake. Magritte comes into contact Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836879367983918797.post-6595787064875749122013-08-26T08:16:00.000-07:002013-08-26T13:38:44.972-07:00Mayan Murals
For many tourists from the U.S., Mexico is associated with great food, glorious beaches, and melodic mariachi bands. Less adequately appreciated is the fact the Mexico boasts some of the most extraordinary archeological treasures in the world. The great Mesoamerican civilizations that thrived there left many stone sculptures, wall reliefs, and architectural monuments behind, Jesse Prinzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14409691063370479872noreply@blogger.com17