….Hélio Oiticica’s Mythical World

January 8, 2017 / / No Comments

“PITTSBURGH — I’ve heard Caetano Veloso’s 1968 song “Tropicália” hundreds of times. My parents, who are Brazilian, played it when I was growing up, and it embodies most everything I love in music: an eclectic mix of samba, bossa nova, and rock. Some might say it’s the song that launched the career of Veloso, who that same year would be jailed, together with fellow musician Gilberto Gil, by Brazil’s military dictatorship. Tropicália became the chosen name for the Brazilian artistic movement of the time that was anarchist in spirit and disillusioned by the modernist projects of the preceding decade that soured under the oppressive regime………….”     Read more

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Hélio Oiticica, “PN1 Penetrable (PN1 Penetrável)” (1960), oil on wood @Hyperallergic

Egyptian Surrealism and the Quest to Define Modern Art in Egypt

January 8, 2017 / / No Comments

“The calls to revise the canon of art history have grown louder in the last few years, but the research, curation, and collection of art from regions that have long been overlooked or ignored is a slow process. Egyptian modern art appears to be the latest to undergo this process of rediscovery and integration into the larger history of art. Two major traveling shows (one beginning at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the other at the Palace of Arts in Cairo) are reexamining this period and prominent Egyptian modern artists, including George Henien, Hamed Nada, Ramsis Yunan, ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Gazzar, and Van Leo……..

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Inji Efflatoun, “The Girl and the Beast” (1941) @ Egyptian Surrealism and the Quest to Define Modern Art in Egypt.

Bruce Nauman…..a dark room

January 8, 2017 / / No Comments

“As much as we might feel that our lives are lived these days at breakneck speed, Bruce Nauman’s work suggests otherwise. “Films,” for Nauman, “are about seeing.”

………..Bruce Nauman began working with video in 1968, after a move from San Francisco to New York. He’d been working with film, but found it difficult to find a good processing lab on the East Coast. Around this time Nauman had his first show at the Leo Castelli gallery. The gallerist knew of the artist’s interest in video, so he put up $1200 for some equipment and gave Nauman a year to work with it……”  Read more

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