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Just Looking
A Critic’s Eye on New England Art
Take a look at art in New England with Edgar Allen Beem. Read his recent interview on contemporary art in New England with the Abbeville Manual of Style.
He's been art critic for the Portland Independent, art critic and feature writer for Maine Times, and now is a freelance writer for Yankee, Down East, Boston Globe Magazine, The Forecaster, and Photo District News.
He's the author of Maine Art Now (1990) and Maine: The Spirit of America (2000). In 1988, he won the Manufacturers Hanover Art/World Award for Distinguished Newspaper Art Criticism for his coverage of the 1987 auction sale of Vincent Van Gogh's Irises.
Ed says, "My credo as an arts writer has long been: 'The work of art is the search for meaning.' I believe art is not only a form of personal expression but also a form of inquiry, every bit as much a quest for truth as scientific research."
Ed Beem's newest book, Backyard Maine: Local Essays, has just been published by Tilbury House, Publishers, of Gardiner, Maine. It's not about the meaning of art; it's about the meaning of family, community, and life in general.
Everything Old Is New Again
Photocopies @ Dartmouth, Antiqued Photos @ UNE
November 6, 2009 at 8:16 AM | Post a Comment
Art and technology tend to have a love-hate relationship. Some artists embrace the latest technologies as new tools with which to create. Other artists react against new technologies, embracing instead traditional even antique mediums. Examples of both impulses can currently be seen in a pair of remote and unrelated exhibitions that nonetheless beg to be considered together.
Art at Colby
50 Years on the Walls and on the Page
October 30, 2009 at 2:42 PM | Post a Comment
The Colby College Museum of Art is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an exhibition and a book, both entitled Art at Colby. The exhibition runs through February 21, 2010, but it is the book that I would like to call your attention to here. A book is the second life of art, so while not many readers will make it to the Waterville, Maine, college between now and February, Art at Colby ($50 hardcover) is an exhibition you can hold in your hand for years to come.
Williams Museum Goes Over Niagara Falls
William Morris Hunt and Alec Soth on Honeymoon
October 23, 2009 at 8:37 AM | Post a Comment
The Williams College Museum of Art has mounted a series of late fall exhibitions that celebrate and provide context for its 1878 William Morris Hunt masterpiece "Niagara Falls," a symphonic oil of one of America's iconic landscapes. Hunt (1824-1879) was a Vermont native who became a celebrated Boston portrait and landscape painter.
Solotaire Playing in Portland
Robert Solotaire was a Downtown Guy
October 15, 2009 at 12:30 PM | Post a Comment
Robert Solotaire passed away a year ago this month at a very youthful 78 years of age. Bob was a downtown kind of guy, a ubiquitous presence on the streets of Portland, particularly up in the West End where he ran a boarding house, wrote for the neighborhood newspaper, and painted the lively urban scenes for which he is well-known.
Modulating a Maine Modernist
Charles DuBack Makes a Comeback
October 8, 2009 at 10:03 AM | Post a Comment
Back in the 1950s, three artists lived in a building on 28th St. in New York City. Bernard "Blackie" Langlais lived and worked on the top floor. Alex Katz had a studio on the second floor. And Charles DuBack lived on the first floor above the street level lumberyard below. All three men attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and all three became closely associated with Maine art, albeit in decidely different ways.
