When practicing his photography Man Ray took a shot of a dusty surface that is now renowned for its ambiguity. It prompted the curator of a London show to wonder if twentieth century history can be described “from the perspective of dust”? Dust is “a harbinger of disturbance. This is dust as history, settling in the aftermath of events.” A short essay by the curator and more images are here.
“Luscious Americana” is this writer’s summation of Thiebaud’s renowned images of pies, cakes, hot dogs, ice creams. But these paintings are more than simple images. “His patisserie is so painterly as to imply all sorts of analogies between subject and style. Yet this way of painting is also very fully itself, independent of its subject. Sweet as pie though they first appear, these paintings are a more pensive form of praise.“
By mid-career Sargent was booked solid doing portraits of the rich and famous. Watercolours were his way of relaxing. He never gave these works much emphasis but they now seem a substantial achievement. “Most of this show is lush prewar Sargent, who in watercolour really became modern, rewriting high culture as a threatened montage of changing perspectives, passing instants”. A video is here (2 min) and images here.
Zeid’s life is every bit as exotic as her art. Born into the elite of Turkish society, family wealth enabled an art education at home and in Europe. Her increasingly abstract style fused the modernist ideas sweeping through Paris and London with the Bysantine and Islamic influences of her region. And, as with many other female artists, her efforts were quickly forgotten. An interesting video (3 min) is here.