Tuesday

PETER ROUX

"Suspension and Segment"

Exhibition Dates: June 8 - July 8, 2017

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 8th6-8pm


Suspension (An Otherwise Ordinary Day), 2017, Oil on panel, 24 x 24 in / 61 x 61 cm

[New York] Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to announce "Suspension and Segment" by Peter Roux.
 
In the Suspension series, Peter Roux is interested in utilizing landscape as a platform for exploring visual dynamics. Paintings of things are, of course, not the things themselves but rather signifiers, explorations of experience...visual poems. This holds true for painting in all forms from implied realism to pure abstraction.

In this series Roux utilizes somewhat 'epic' subjects--cloud formations, large billows of smoke--as pulls into illusory space and then sets them into dialogue with elements of gestural marks and flat space (often at the edges of the pictorial window). Sharp fields of blacked-out blocking, pushing into areas of deeper representational space further define what is available to the viewer and how it is all ultimately judged by the eye. In these offsets Roux finds tensions and relationships that reflect on how contemporary spatial language and image can be understood.
 
This is Peter Roux' first solo exhibition at Lyons Wier Gallery. He has exhibited throughout the United States from Ogunquit, ME, Boston, MA, Martha's Vineyard, MA, Providence, RI, Charlotte, NC, Atlanta, GA to Seattle, WA, Palo Alto, CA and Sun Valley, ID. His paintings are found in select corporate collections such as Fidelity Investments, Ritz-Carlton Hotels, Four Seasons Hotels, Marriott Hotels, Westin "W" Hotels, Meditech Corporation and Greenfield and Lynch as well as in the collection of the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA. Peter Roux lives and work in North Carolina. 

Suspension (Goodbye Blue Sky - Thanks PF), 2017, Oil on panel, 24 x 24 in / 61 x 61 cm

 

Suspension (Your Disappearing One), 2017, Oil, charcoal on canvas, 36 x 48 in / 94 x 122 cm



Suspension (Take 6), 2017, Oil, charcoal on canvas, 36 x 48 in / 94 x 122 cm


For more information & preview images, please contact:
 
Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 11am-6pm

Friday

Academic Jobs in the Arts




NEW! - Lecturer below the bar in Songwriting
University of Limerick
Irish World Academy of Music and Dance
Location Limerick, IrelandPosted May. 18, 2017
NEW! - Professor of Screen Studies
The University of Melbourne
Faculty of Arts
Location Melbourne, Victoria, AustraliaPosted May. 17, 2017
NEW! - Faculty, Applied Communications
Higher Colleges of Technology
Applied Communications Division
Location All locations in the UAE, United Arab EmiratesPosted May. 11, 2017
NEW! - Professor of Arts-based Research and Pedagogy
Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Department of Art
Location Helsinki, FinlandPosted May. 10, 2017
NEW! - Discipline Lead, Design
RMIT University Vietnam
School of Communications & Design
Location Ho Chi Minh, VietnamPosted May. 9, 2017
NEW! - Lecturer/ Associate Lecturer, Design
RMIT University Vietnam
School of Communication & Design
Location Ho Chi Minh, VietnamPosted Apr. 28, 2017
NEW! - Graphic Designer
Kansas State University
Location Manhattan, United StatesPosted Apr. 26, 2017
Adjunct Instructor
University of North Texas
Department of Design
Location Denton, TX, United StatesPosted Apr. 12, 2017
Adjunct Instructor
University of North Texas
Department of Design
Location Denton, TX, United StatesPosted Apr. 12, 2017
Assistant Professor in Architecture
University of Kentucky
8N100:School of Architecture
Location Lexington, KY, United StatesPosted Mar. 30, 2017
Adjunct Instructor
University of North Texas
Department of Studio Art
Location Denton, TX, United StatesPosted Mar. 24, 2017
Professor of Practice in Contemporary Design
Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Department of Design
Location Helsinki, FinlandPosted Mar. 20, 2017
Graphic Designer
KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology)
Global Communications in the Office of the President
Location Thuwal, Saudi ArabiaPosted Mar. 14, 2017
Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
Rhode Island School of Design
Museum Collection Care
Location Providence, RI, United StatesPosted Mar. 13, 2017
Lecturer (non-tenure track), Costume Shop Supervisor
The University of Texas at Austin
Theatre and Dance
Location Austin, TX, United StatesPosted Mar. 8, 2017
Faculty positions in Design
MIT Art Design & Technology University
MIT Institute of Design
Location Pune, Maharashtra, IndiaPosted Mar. 3, 2017
Assistant Professor in Design
Avantika University
School of Design
Location Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, IndiaPosted Feb. 27, 2017
Associate Professor in Design
Avantika University
School of Design
Location Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, IndiaPosted Feb. 27, 2017
Professor in Design
Avantika University
School of Design
Location u\, Madhya Pradesh, IndiaPosted Feb. 27, 2017
Assistant/Associate Prof. of Islamic Art and Visual Culture
Rhode Island School of Design
History of Art & Visual Culture
Location Providence, RI, United StatesPosted Feb. 16, 2017
Regular Faculty Positions
Georgia State University
Art & Design
Location Atlanta, GA, United StatesPosted Feb. 9, 2017
Continuing Education Faculty - Summer 2017 (Short-Term)
Rhode Island School of Design
Continuing Education
Location Providence, RI, United StatesPosted Feb. 8, 2017
Associate or Full Professor, College of Design
University of Kentucky
8N100:School of Architecture
Location Lexington, KY, United StatesPosted Jan. 26, 2017
Assistant Professor Metals/Gallery Director
Nazareth College
Art
Location Rochester, NY, United StatesPosted Jan. 24, 2017
Assistant/Associate/Full Professor
University of North Texas
Location Denton, TX, United StatesPosted Nov. 15, 2016
Adjunct Instructor
University of North Texas
Department of Learning Technologies
Location Denton, TX, United StatesPosted Nov. 9, 2016
Assistant Professor, Painting
Rhode Island School of Design
Painting
Location Providence, RI, United StatesPosted Oct. 26, 2016
Wenzhou-Kean Univ. Anticipated Faculty Positions (Archite...
Kean University
School of Architecture
Location Wenzhou, ChinaPosted Oct. 18, 2016
Wenzhou-Kean Univ. Anticipated Faculty Positions (Graphic...
Kean University
Robert Busch School of Design
Location Wenzhou, ChinaPosted Oct. 18, 2016

Tuesday

The End of An Era, oil on canvas panel 11x14 inches by Kenney Mencher

Chaslin, the model for this painting, looked a bit to me like she had stepped out of a Doris Day movie. When I posed her, I wanted to make a story using symbols of being a housewife from that era. Like the woman who chases her husband with a rolling pin.

I was thinking that she looked a bit like Pollyanna and since the glass of water is a sort of measure of people's optimism or pessimism. Is it half empty or half full. The act of smashing the glass is sort of revolutionary or a reaction against it.


What you should know about Alice Neel


Unfortunately, Alice Neel is identified first as being a female artist first and then an artist second.  Noticing this kind of sexist labeling is probably even more important today now that human rights in general in the United States seem as if they are headed for some terrible reversals since Trump took office in 2017.

The idea that female artists are as important as men has always had a murky and unsettling quality, because the playing field has never been level for women nor people of color in the Eurocentric and phallocentric world of art.  Often when female artists’ works are discussed, the formal qualities of the work and the content of the work is always in second and third place to the fact that the women is an artist.  Even the physical appearance of the artist seems to be more important than the appearance of the art itself.

Alice Neel’s painting could be dismissed as clumsy and not formally beautiful.  The anatomy of the figures, the paint quality, the color and even composition are not traditionally beautiful if one were to compare the paintings to painters popular before the late 19th century.

The paint quality in Neel’s painting is thin and almost washy.  There is little to no texture and the colors and flesh tones are either too intense (garish or overly stated oranges and pinks) or too muddy gray.    The viewer doesn’t have enough light and shadow to figure out where the light source is coming from.  The compositions are not so much chosen as more by accident.

For example, if you look at a John Singer Sargent portrait it has all the hallmarks of a painter who is looking back at earlier “old masters” such as Velazquez.  The shading, or chiaroscuro is very clear, the color makes sense in terms of the way we expect to see color and shading.  The brushwork shows a kind of skill that is practiced and predictable.  We don’t have to question its beauty in terms of anatomy, shading, color and even composition.  She does not include traditional linear perspective.  When she paints a chair, she doesn’t bother with a vanishing point or a clear system of perspective and depth. (Cezanne rejected perspective too and sometimes I wonder if it was by choice or by lack of skill.)

Alice Neel’s paintings are clumsy in comparison and the color is not traditional.  Hell, it doesn’t even have the same beauty that an Impressionist painter’s color such as Mary Cassatt has.  Neel doesn’t share in the same polished technique as Cassatt, Velazquez or Sargent.  Part of that is kind of on purpose and part of it has to do with context.  Artists such as Neel did not get the same traditional training as artists from before 1900 and the painters that come directly before her in the 50 years from1900-1950 established a type of anti-academic (anti traditional) precedent.  Think of Picasso, Kirchner, even the “Ashcan School” were looking for something new.  In fact, these artists defined themselves by rejecting the styles and conventions that came before them.

The content or iconography of Neel’s paintings is one of the things that made her famous.  As a New Yorker living through the era of Abstract Expressionism, the Beat Generation of Poets, and then the Pop Art and Happenings of the 60’s Neel knew a lot of arty people.  She was a bit of strange or weird person and this actually helped her to get people to model for her.  She would go to art receptions and meet people, also she knew street people and people on the fringes of society and this also helped her to create meaningful content by simply painting either a famous person or a weird person.

I don’t think that Alice Neel planned or strategized here career.  Like many famous artists part of her fame came by her social interactions and how associations with other important people in New York’s avante garde (forward guard) can endorse and help an artist’s career.

For example, an artist who was at the time significantly more famous than she was Andy Warhol, painting him and associating herself with him created both an association that validated her.   She paints Warhol and while not trying to paint him in a flattering way, Neel’s portrait of him is also not meant as an insult either.  It was kind of a “lucky” kind of turn of events that make this portrait so interesting.  Context is everything.

Neel painted Warhol shortly after he had been stabbed.  He is wearing a corset that was designed to help him after the attack and he looks unhealthy.  (In almost all of Neel’s portraits the sitters look a bit unhealthy and even ugly) but in the case of Warhol it is really overstated because of how Neel painted.  Historians love to read into stuff like this.

In "The Andy Warhol Diaries," by Pat Hackett, it is clearly shown that he constantly surrounded himself by beautiful people and things, and strove for a level of physical perfection that was clearly out of his reach. Though bald, his vanity led him to don his trademark wig, shown in the painting carefully arranged, trying his best to maintain his dignity and illusion of youth.  Another thing in Neel’s favor when we analyze here painting.  In a way, it’s almost not important to know for certain if she intended to make him look this way.  It also ties in with what we know about Neel’s life.

Alice Neel had lived a life filled with crises and strife. One of her children had died while still an infant, and the other was abducted by a former husband. She was a self-taught artist with no formal training. Just knowing a couple of things like this about her gives her a kind of pedigree of “crazy artist,” just like Van Gogh that allows us to romanticize her as an artist and also allows our imaginations to run wild when we interpret her paintings.

I’ve seen several documentaries on Neel and one that I particularly remember she does come across as a bizarre or weird person.  In the video, she was attempting to get her grandson to calm down and he was running around her apartment naked and flashing his butt at her.  She came across in the interviews and film as a kind of crazy old lady.

Her status as a weird New York artist who had strong ties to artists such as Warhol made her easily promotable and salable as a kind of grand dame of the New York art world and also an excellent subject for feminist art historian Linda Nochlin.

This is a painting of Linda Nochlin and her daughter, Daisy. Nochlin was a professor at Vassar and wrote an essay in 1971 entitled "Why have there been no great women artists?", which helped to bring attention to feminist art history and argued that women had been 'deprived the opportunity to achieve greatness by their exclusion from the male dominated institutional systems of training, patronage, and criticism that set the standards of professional accomplishment.'

So when we look at this painting, knowing that Nochlin was a famous art historian who specialized in writing about female artists it can inspire interpretations that may have gone beyond what the artist intended.  For example, in the late 1990’s one of my students writes about this painting:

“Alice Neel is showing Nochlin as protective and loving toward her daughter, underscoring the belief that Nochlin held about creating a more equal future for her daughter as well as all the other young woman growing up in that time period, as well as beyond. There is a measure of tenderness and wistfulness shown in the painting, most likely because of the death of Alice Neel's' one child and kidnapping of the other. It is showing a strong, educated woman who is also fulfilling the role of a mother as well as a feminist, and succeeding at both.”

Whether or not this interpretation is the truth, is almost unimportant in today’s world in which interpretation and opinion seem to become almost more factual than actual fact.

Monday

This guy has a really great list, rather than a reblog, go check out this blog post.  


4 Online Libraries Every Artist and Educator Should Bookmark

The site is pretty cool too.
Pretty soon I’m going to release a bunch of new work on my Etsy site.
If you would like to get an email to preview the show and possibly reserve a painting before I open it up to the “public” shoot me an email and I’ll add you to my list.
Kenney.Mencher@gmail.com

In what ways do still-life paintings convey a vanitas theme?


Vanitas is a term that means that all the things we strive for, value, and work at in our world are an expression of our vanity, pride or impotence.
With Wisdom Comes Sorrow
13 And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with.
14 I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind.
15 What is crooked cannot be straightened and what is lacking cannot be counted.
New American Standard Bible
The tem is also usually associated with the Latin term memento mori. (reminder and death) It starts much earlier than the Baroque Period, for example, in the Early Renaissance Masaccio includes a skeleton beneath the donors in this fresco with the words in Italian “What I was, you are, what I am you will become.” A reminder that everything dies. This is also the same idea in Hamlet’s musings on Death in the graveyard scene, “I knew him Horatio, he hath born me on his back a thousand times. . .” While he contemplates the skull.
So skulls and skeletons are associated with death and impermanence.
Later on when people start to become richer painters began to paint the things they bought and the delicacies, such as fruits, lobsters, and flowers, that they could now afford to have imported. Sometimes the depiction of these prestige and wealth items were regarded with some guilt about wealth and it’s association with Jesus’s teachings, “It’s harder for a wealthy man to get into heaven than it is to send a camel through the eye of a needle.” So many images that showed wealth also referenced that it might be a problem.
For example, Petrus Christus. Saint Eloy (Eligius) in his Shop 1449 shows some patrons but also a saint who used his money to help his community. Likewise, The Moneylender and his wife expresses how pretty wealth is but also it’s danger. Check out where his wife is looking and also not looking.
Later on the symbols started to be combined. For example, Caravaggio’s still life is a beautiful painting of delicacies such as fruit, but if you look closer you may notice that some of the fruit has worm holes and is also decaying.
The combination of symbols such as skulls, delicacies, flowers, books, crystal, silver and other expensive items became a standard expression of wealth, vanity, and the transience of impermanence of life. In a way, a vanitas is a way of “having your cake and eating it too.” It satisfies the viewers desire to look at beautiful objects, but also disguises it as a christian lesson about morality and wealth.
Philippe de Champaigne, Vanitas c1650
Come and study with me.

Support artists and get rewarded!


Graphic artist Chucha Marquez (pictured above at the We're Still Working opening reception) creates work that celebrates the beauty, resistance and resilience of Black and brown and queer and trans folks. When they partnered with LYRIC LGBT Youth Center to create youth-designed prints for We're Still Working: The Art of Sex Work as part of the 2016–2017 SOMArts Curatorial Residency season, we knew they would be the perfect fit to design the latest in SOMArts style.

If you pledge $25 to SOMArts' Kickstarter campaign to support the next season of groundbreaking Curatorial Residency exhibitions, we will show our appreciation by sending you a custom-designed SOMArts t-shirt. We hope you'll agree that Chucha's design for SOMArts' new t-shirt perfectly captures our work at the heart of intersectional, community-based art and culture.
Be the first of your friends to rock SOMArts' new style!

About the 2017–2018 SOMArts Curatorial Residency

We are working to bring to life the next season of exhibitions and projects by our curators-in-residence, including: 
  • Game Recognize Game: A participatory exhibition inviting audiences to reimagine the possibility of sport as an emancipatory project, curated by Dania Cabello. 
  • The Third Muslim: Queer and Trans* Muslim narratives of resistance and resilience, curated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Yas Ahmed. 
  • Diasporic Alchemy: A multi-sensory exhibition, transforming ancestral traditions into ritual futurisms through the co-creation of new global mythos, curated by Louis Chinn and missTANGQ.
Now more than ever, it’s crucial to support exhibitions like these that provide a platform for diverse artists to tell their own stories.

Please join us in supporting these visionary artists!

Night Light 2017 Call for Submissions

SOMArts seeks artists of color to exhibit in the two-night, large-scale exhibition, Night Light: Multimedia & Performance Festival, on Friday and Saturday, August 25 and 26, 20178:00 pm–midnightNow entering its seventh year, Night Light blankets SOMArts indoors and out in luminous art installations, including audiovisual performances, performative interventions and digital and cinematic projections. This year, Night Light will be co-curated by Karen Seneferu and Melorra Green and presented in conjunction with The Black Woman is God: Divine Revolution.

The deadline for artist proposals has been extended to June 13, 2017. Learn more about Night Light and apply to participate today!
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Image credits (from top to bottom): Chucha Marquez at the We're Still Working opening reception, photo by Chani Bockwinkel; SOMArts t-shirt design created by Chucha Marquez; We're Still Working: The Art of Sex Work exhibition documentation, photo by Chani Bockwinkel; The Global Street Dance Masquerade performance at Night Light 2016, photo by Astra Brinkmann.
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