Arts of War: Artistry in Weapons across Cultures

Arts of War: Artistry in Weapons across Cultures is a new exhibition at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum that presents the varied beauty and craftsmanship of weapons drawn from cultures around the world. From maces, clubs, daggers, and spears, to shields, helmets, and entire suits of armor, this exhibition highlights more than 150 striking examples of deadly objects that are also extraordinary works of art. On view until October 18, 2017, it unveils the stories behind some of the most stunning war artworks ever created and reveals the passion and purpose of the people who made them.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Dagger  -  Northern India

Image courtesy of the Peabody Museum

American Indian and Ethnographic Art at Skinner

Skinner will present a sale of fine Native American antiques and other traditional art in Boston today, November 9.  Among the lots will be a wide range of exquisite North American items from the Southwest to the Woodlands, as well as Maori carvings from New Zealand, figurative ceramics from ancient Mexico, and much more.

View the online catalogue.

Totem pole attributed to John Cross  -  Haida, Northwest Coast

Door lintel panel  -  Maori, New Zealand

Belt cup with portrait carving  -  Northeast

Images courtesy of Skinner Auction

Sizing Up A Shift In Boston’s Art Scene

Last week’s news that the Judi Rotenberg Gallery will close its doors in late June comes as a blow to the contemporary art scene in Boston and to the gallery scene on Newbury Street.

The gallery opened in 1971, and for many years it was a sleepy venue for expressionist art. Judi Rotenberg’s daughter Abigail Ross Goodman took the helm in 2001, and together with codirector Kristen Dodge turned the gallery into a space for smart, provocative, often cutting-edge art. Their roster includes hot commodities such as the video and performance team Carlson/Strom and conceptual artist Dave Cole, who has knit, among other things, a giant American flag, using utility poles as needles.

Several galleries have closed or left Newbury Street in the last two years, many due to the struggling economy. Ross Goodman says that closing Rotenberg is a personal decision, not an economic one. “I’m ready to shift my relationship to the art world in a new direction,’’ she said in an interview.

There are still strong art galleries on Newbury Street, such as its flagship Barbara Krakow Gallery, as well as Miller Block Gallery and Gallery NAGA, among others. Maybe with a reviving economy, new commercial galleries will open there. But with the exit of Rotenberg, the street is languishing; Harrison Avenue has a higher concentration of galleries, and a more forward-thinking approach to art.

Ross Goodman and Dodge developed a powerful presence and an attention to young, emerging artists in a neighborhood where the art tends to be more conservative. They also kept their commitment to many of the painters the gallery represented before they came on, straddling two demographics, and opening a world of video and conceptual art to collectors of paintings.

They have embodied and helped finesse a shift of interest in Boston toward truly contemporary art, spearheaded by the revitalized Institute of Contemporary Art. It’s sad to see them go.

Two galleries that show traditional art have exhibits up that are evidence of a growing local passion for new work. “Clothes Make the Man?’’ at Childs Gallery and “Counterpoint: The Voices of John Walker and African Art’’ at the Hamill Gallery of Tribal Art mix contemporary art with the venues’ regular inventory. Both exhibits are ambitious.

Hamill Gallery has a better space to work with — a lofty space that suits the often large-scale, bold, juicy abstract paintings of John Walker, who has chosen an array of masks and sculptures to exhibit with his work. The matchup, even under pallid fluorescent lights, is stunning.

These paintings, many never before exhibited, date from the 1980s to the present. A viewer can follow Walker’s signature forms: the rectilinear hourglass inspired by Goya’s portrait of the Duchess of Alba; the soldier with a sheep’s head who represents the artist’s father, a World War I veteran; the more recent tidal landscapes, playgrounds for paint inspired by summers in Maine. There are occasional direct evocations of tribal art: a shield from Papua New Guinea appears in “Oceania for Rachel.’’

The crosscultural connections are breathtaking. “Homage to My Father’’ features the sheep-headed soldier moldering in dark ochre tones (and a white halo) as well as a cartoon version of the figure. Several sheep’s-head puppets from Mali perch nearby, leering, funny, and dark, accentuating the painting’s morbidity and its magic.

Three gorgeous landscapes grouped together sport high horizon lines. To look at them is to drop into what lies below that line — muddy low tide coursing with gullies and dotted with boulders, or underwater, with glimpses of fish and serpentine sea creatures. Sitting before the paintings on a low platform are three Nigerian headdresses representing fish, in the same gray, speckled tones as two of the paintings. In a corner, a bird sculpture from Guinea has an S-curved neck that echoes the snaking form in the painting beside it.

The confluences between Walker’s paintings and the African objects add a startling dimension to canvases already roiling with life and grief.

“Clothes Make the Man?,’’ curated by William Stover, late of the contemporary department at the Museum of Fine Arts, also makes some terrific pairings, but the exhibit suffers from being crammed to the rafters of Childs Gallery, where it is hung salon-style.

The show examines costume and performance’s part in the perception of identity, a theme prevalent in contemporary art lately. It includes work by Triiibe and Caleb Cole, who photograph themselves in costume, and drawings by Cobi Moules and Ria Brodell, who examine gender through self-portraits. Brodell’s subdued “Self-Portrait as an Old Man (whittling)’’ hangs beneath an undated 20th-century portrait by Leo Blake, “The Sheriff,’’ who, like Brodell’s old man, is grizzled and gruff.

It’s a delight to look at some of the older works, such as William Merritt Chase’s charming 1881 painting “Dancing Girl,’’ through Stover’s 21st-century lens. Plump and blushing, with her hand to her forehead, the Italian street dancer performs for change. She has put on her demeanor, just as she has put on her clothes, and just as the three women in Triiibe, across the gallery, doll themselves up to go bar hopping in “Compatibility Quiz.’’

Source: Boston.com

By: Cate McQuaid

Exhibit Explores African Art, Western Perceptions

From the Daily News Tribune. By: Chris Bergeron

BOSTON — To Western eyes, the mask-like faces and naked loins of carved African sculpture speak of primitive appetites from the Dark Continent.

Like other kinds of colonialism, the 19th-century "discovery" and marketing of native art from Africa, and later Oceania, transformed ritual and ceremonial objects from everyday life into commodities for foreign consumption.

Now an informative exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts uses striking objects to reveal how early Western collectors and photographers turned cultural artifacts into exotic works of art.

The show, "Object, Image, Collector: African and Oceanic Art in Focus," does far more than merely display objects that appear exotic to Western tastes. Breaking new ground, it explores how photography shifted Western perceptions of objects initially collected for anthropological study into highly prized works of art.



Adding a new dimension to such exhibits, it showcases photos by Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Sheeler, Clara Sipprell and Walker Evans along with publications by Carl Einstein that influenced how the public viewed art from Africa and the Pacific Islands.

The MFA's first exhibit of its kind, it borrows more than 50 objects including three-dimensional pieces and textiles from 20 Boston collections.

Museum Director Malcolm Rogers described the exhibit as "a wonderful marriage between object and photography. ...It's the very first exhibit of its kind to highlight art of Africa and Oceania through local collections," he said during an opening tour.

Located in the second floor Art of Asia, Oceania and Africa Gallery, the exhibit runs through July 18.

Christraud Geary, senior curator of African and Oceanic Art, and Karen Haas, the Lane Collection curator of photographs, organized the exhibit. Rather than just show objects of remarkable craftsmanship and beauty, they've focused on how photography and other kinds of presentation shaped public perceptions.

A scholar who has written extensively on the subject, Geary said French and European artists were fascinated by turn-of-the century exhibits of African art because it let them express feelings that were limited by Western traditions.

"Artists were the first to embrace these objects. Exhibitions in art museums and galleries followed and also played a role in their interpretation, but the impact of photography in promoting this shift has been neglected," she said.

In the early 20th century, artists as different as Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Man Ray were incorporating elements of African art into their works.

"Artists (from Europe) were attracted by the forms of African art. They saw it as specimens, not art," Geary said. "They felt anything that caught their fancy was an object to be celebrated."

Born in Germany, Geary has traveled widely in Africa, performing field research in Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa. She served 13 years as curator of the photographic archives of the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Regarded as one of the founders of Modernism, Sheeler emerges in this show as a master photographer whose images dramatically shaped public perceptions of African art.

Haas said she was fascinated "to realize the very early role that Sheeler's photographs played in the reception of African art as works of fine art rather than ethnographic objects."

Visitors will see many remarkably crafted objects that will dazzle their eyes and imaginations. By displaying old photos of these pieces, Geary and Haas challenge viewers to wonder whether they're perceiving them within the context of their original construction or whether their unfamiliar appearance tricks us into only seeing reflections of our own stereotypes.

In other words, do we collect them as works of art because we don't understand what they really once were? How would we feel about someone from Gabon who spent lots of money acquiring pictures of poker-playing dogs because they thought they revealed something deep and mysterious about American culture?

The exhibit also breaks new ground for many viewers who are likely more familiar with art from virtually everywhere else in the world than Africa.

Visitors examining for the first time a reliquary guardian figure from Gabon or a Congolese wood and shell hermaphrodite figure will not only see examples of stunning beauty but mirrors to their own perceptions about unfamiliar cultures.

Asked how visitors new to African art might best appreciate the exhibit, Geary said, "I think they ought to look at the form first. Form speaks to us," she said.

THE ESSENTIALS:

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is open seven days a week. Hours: Saturday through Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.; and Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 9:45 p.m.; (Thursday and Friday after 5 p.m. only the West Wing is open).

The museum is closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day and Patriots Day.

General admission (which includes two visits in a 10-day period) is $20 for adults; $18 for seniors and students 18 and older and includes entry to all galleries and special exhibitions. Admission for students who are university members is free as is admission for children under 17 during non-school hours.

On school days until 3 p.m., admission for youths 7-17 is $7.50. No admission fee is required after 4 p.m. on Wednesdays although donations are welcome.

For information, call 617-267-9300 or visit www.mfa.org.