New Art Examiner Without Fear or Favor

Ken Turner I want to change the world, I fail all the time Alfredo Jarr It’s funny when you create an image on a canvas and it looks back at you. Funny in the sense of being something other, a thing of difference and strangeness to one’s own idea of life, how we see and think. It’s an imaginative leap …

Al Jirikowic ‘Dissociative fugue’ is a type of amnesia that is caused by an extreme psychological trauma instead of physical trauma, illness, or other medical condition. It’s severe, and considered rare. If we review a few articles of recent Art News, clearly the main theme revolves around activities that provide for the Covid19 closed down art world, substituted for the …

Kathryn Hixson From the Archives: This piece first appeared in the New Art Examiner in May 1991 with Derek Guthrie as Publisher and Howard Yana-Shapiro as Acting Publisher. Kathryn Hixson was a freelance writer living in Chicago contributing to Arts and The Journal of Art. Though American art produced in the 1980s and early 1990s deliberately, and satisfactorily, distanced itself …

  The Toronto Argonauts are a Canadian football team competing in the East Division of the Canadian Football League.  Occasionally in the coming years the team may  simply not play.  Sitting out the clock  without engaging the ball is  an unexpected game strategy. The wind might nudge the ball here and there and thus the Argonauts, taking a page from …

Graziella Colombo   Milan is still a city made of stone and iron, stucco and bronze, stained glass, mosaics and ceramics. It is the Milan of Liberty, the instantly recognisable Art Nouveau style, innovative in the use of materials, which became popular at the beginning of the 20th century. Milan is the result of the inspiration and creativity of architects, …

Liviana Martin   Città di Castello, a town in the province of Perugia, has one of the largest collections of works by Alberto Burri (1915-1995). With its vast rooms, Palazzo Albizzini houses 129 works by this maestro of informal art and tireless experimenter who was capable of giving nobility and artistic form to the poorest materials. It was Burri himself …

Aleksander Hudzik Perhaps one of the most overused and detached from its original meaning is the philosophical adage that states: ‘the limits of my language are the limits of my world’. Let’s risk using this phrase to recapture its meaning in a way that its author, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, wouldn’t be happy about. Linguistic difficulties are the everyday struggle of …

Daniel Nanavati In July 1877 several obituary notices were published about Ernest Griset. The Publishers Record stated: “Griset was very happy in illustrating the Darwinian change of an animal into a man, and of combining men and animals, something after the manner of Grandville. He was quite French in his manner, though he had lived in England from early boyhood. …

Frances Oliver The Covid lockdown has sent me back to old favourite books, and I have just revisited two by Ludwig Bemelmans, one from my parents’ art book collection, My Life in Art, and a battered autobiography, Life Class, from mine. Ludwig Bemelmans (1898–1962), born Austro-Hungarian, later American, was a writer and painter renowned chiefly for his children’s books. The …

Susana Gómez Laín Lately, the coronavirus world pandemic and social riots of all kinds have been the excuse for too many vandals to behead, daub, overturn, vilify, revile, insult, degrade – I run out of words and synonyms – many statues and busts are erected to commemorate the glory of some historical characters of all ideologies and walks of life, …

Features: 6 An American Child and the Victorian Radicals – James Cassell 9 Intimate Art – Daniel Nanavati 11 Utah can be the Art Scene of the West – Alexander Stanfield 13 In response to Darren Jones on the Whitney Biennial – Al Jirikowic 15 Chairs, Tables and Sex – Frances Oliver 16 Defund the Police, Refund the Arts – …

Thirty three Arch Bridge (c1602, Isfahan, Iran) Thanks to the patronage of Shah Abbas 1, a period began in which richness of details, magnificence of colours and compositional imaginativeness found expression in complex buildings and above all urban development on a huge but serene scale of calm grandeur. In the magnificence of projects, their calibrated emotional impact and the convincing …

Margaret Lanterman Art as political and social comment has a very long and effective history, but the artist’s intent and the message of the work has often been abused for political ends. This repurposing can happen well before the art is installed, or long after. Public sculpture monuments are not a simple thing to discuss because they are seldom just …

Years ago I started to keep a note on the details in artists’ biographies recording who their parents were, their wealth, etc. Most were well off and many had a parent or spouse who was already an artist. Others married their success. Anna Boghiguian, who had a big solo show at Tate St Ives, was described by The Telegraph (a …

by James Cassell From the Yale Center for British Art Yale University in New Haven holds the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. The museum’s founder and chief benefactor, Paul Mellon, a 1929 Yale alumnus, had gold-certified ties to England. First, his mother was English and many of his childhood summers were spent in the English countryside …