The Brightness Before Him: Edvard Munch and his Model Hanna
Eric Aho tells his own story of meeting Edvard Munch’s model Hanna Brieschke in Oslo and hearing her own descriptions of her time with the Norwegian painter.
Another Day, Another Banksy*
Carol Diehl’s impassioned, lucid, and fascinating book Banksy: Completed was published in 2021. Anyone interested in contemporary art should read it. It made me radically reevaluate my take on the anonymous provocateur, whose 2013 one-month New York “residency” I had totally ignored.
Eve Biddle and The Year of Mary Ann Unger
Most of us have experienced moving through life’s routines only to be ambushed by an olfactory prompt that transports us to another place, to a buried memory, to someone special from our past. It could be the scent of a freshly mowed lawn or of Love’s Babysoft or the aroma of pancakes or simmering borscht. For Eve Biddle it is the acrid fumes of welding that spur her fondest childhood memories.
REFRESHING THE NARRATIVE: An Interview with Lisa Edelstein
When someone tells you they created their own coloring book, a typical reaction might be to imagine a book of simple line drawings that can easily be filled in. You might also make a similar assumption about the kind of artwork someone who started painting during the pandemic lockdown would make. However, if these are your assumptions, upon meeting Lisa Edelstein, you will quickly realize that you have grossly underestimated her. Edelstein, known early on as Lisa E., is mostly recognized as an actor for her roles on “House,” “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce,” and “The Kominsky Method,” among others.
SIXTY DELICATE WORKS ON PAPER: Philip Taaffe at Luhring Augustine Tribeca, November 12 —December 22, 2022
For the past decade, Philip Taaffe has been showing large and larger canvasses of dazzling variety at Luhring Augustine’s several locations. In his recent exhibition at the gallery’s Tribeca space the artist scaled down and zoomed in. Showing some sixty delicate works on paper mounted on panel, Taaffe focused on just two modi operandi from his extensive bag of tricks: natural science exotica and the play of symmetry. Most of these works bristle with vintage illustrations of mollusks, crabs, insects, spiders or other creeping, crawling fauna, but in such densely mirroring, contrapuntal arrangements as to create a kind of meta-zoology.