Brancusi felt a debt to America, its openness to the new. In return he has been “the fountainhead” of American sculpture. Listing his undoubtedly numerous innovations tends to obscure where his true greatness lay. An earlier critic is more specific – “his rapturous feeling for surfaces … [and endowing] his forms with something of the clarity and finality of law”.
Art glass struggles for attention as an area of sculpture. An exception has been created with the Corning Museum’s global survey of contemporary glass, the first such show in decades. The linked piece is not the most memorable of reviews but it sheds some light on an art form that has long left tumblers and jugs behind. More images are here.
Animals, for the Japanese, figure prominently in their culture. They feature in the Shinto religion, sometimes with supernatural powers, other times representing human foibles. Animal iconography also appears in secular political and philosophical discourse. And, of course, there is contemporary kitsch. All in all, a very, very Japanese thing.
The Whitney Biennial aims high – to profile “relevant and important” American art. As you might expect, it can’t satisfy everyone. Increased diversity of artists represented gets applause. From there, complaints. For one “There’s a lot to like … but there’s not a lot to love.” Another laments an absence of “the irresponsible joy of aesthetic experience”. Images are here.
With his family wealth, Porter could afford to be contrary. New York was agog with boisterous abstraction but, having seen a Bonnard show in Chicago, Porter chose figuration. Landscapes and interiors best showcased his colourist abilities. One interior, a “low key visual symphony” seems to celebrate paint itself; maybe he was “a covert abstractionist after all”.