Westchester Fall Art Shows: The Katonah Museum of Art and Greenwich’s Bruce Museum

PLUS: The Intersection of Visual Art, Performance and Technology in Peekskill; Concordia’s ‘Bronze Age’

 

 

Eye to I…3,000 Years of Portraits
October 27, 2013 – February 16, 2014  
Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah(914) 232-9555; katonahmuseum.org
While the Bruce Museum’s exhibition looks at a very specific kind of portrait, the Katonah Museum of Art takes a broader view—a much broader view. Eye to I’s overview of portraits starts with an Egyptian bust of Amenhotep III, which dates back to 1500 BC, and goes all the way up through Diane Arbus and Andy Warhol and other more contemporary artists. Each of the portraits will also feature an “interpretive copy” made by members of the community (and you may be able to add your own as well).

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Closer: The Graphic Art of Chuck Close
September 28 , 2013– January 26, 2014
Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT
(203) 869-0376; brucemuseum.org
Artist Chuck Close’s name is synonymous with portraits: large-scale portraits, hyper-realistic portraits, photo-based portraits, self-portraits—you name it. The Bruce Museum has collected some of the finest examples of Close’s work—some on loan from local collectors—curated with participation from the artist himself. 

Art at the Core: The Intersection of Visual Art, Performance, and Technology
September 29, 2013 – July 27, 2014
Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill
(914) 788-0100; hvcca.org
In this day and age, art doesn’t just stay on the walls—it’s an experience. Remember Marina Abramović staring at strangers in MoMA for The Artist Is Present? For its newest exhibition, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art displays sculptures, paintings, and drawings that have a live-performance or new-media aspect to them. Keep an eye on their calendar for in-museum appearances or video events happening throughout the year.

Industrial Sublime: Modernism and the Transformation of New York’s Rivers, 1900-1940
October 12, 2013 – January 17, 2014
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers
(914) 963-4550, hrm.org
New York’s rivers sure have changed a lot since the artists of the Hudson River School painted the unspoiled nature of the local scenery. Yet, even after industrialization, artists were still inspired by the view, incorporating the smokestacks, bridges, cranes, and ocean liners that moved into the area into their work. Industrial Sublime explores the link between the Hudson River School and American Modernism with works by Georgia O’Keeffe, John Sloan, Cecil Crosley Bell, George Ault, and others. 

The Bronze Age: Rodin & the Methods of a Master
September 12, 2013 – November 27, 2013
OSilas Gallery, Concordia College, Bronxville
(914) 395-4520; osilasgallery.org
If you think Auguste Rodin was nothing more than The Thinker—think again. This exhibition showcases portrait sculptures by the artist, including 10 models on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art that show the casting of Rodin’s Sorrow. Look for talks and demonstrations along the way that give a glimpse into the bronze casting process, along with a birthday party for Rodin on November 12.

Also Consider: The Clay Art Center gets a dose of girl power when artist Cynthia Consentino investigates the female in art in an exhibition titled Reconfigurations (September 7 – October 19) // Artists at the Pelham Art Center take their cues from technology and literature in the new cross-disciplinary exhibition, Convergency (September 13 – October 26) // The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum explores the ways artists combine the visual and the auditory in a group of exhibitions simply titled Music (September 22 – March 9) // The Greenwich Historical Society celebrates the 100th  anniversary of the landmark 1913 Armory Show and its local participants with “The New Spirit” and the Cos Cob Art Colony: Before and After the Armory Show (October 9 – January 12) // The Canfin Gallery shows off its renovated exhibition space with a solo show for artist Jean Duquoc (October 19 – November 10)// Drawing sheds its “first draft” status in the drawing works on display in Pushing the Line at ArtsWestchester’s Arts Exchange (October 26 through November TBA). 

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Hudson River View (Sugar Factory at Yonkers) by Daniel Putnam Brinley; courtesy of hudson river museum

The Hudson Then and Now
After spying this artwork at the Hudson River Museum’s Industrial Sublime exhibition, are you looking to be inspired like artist Daniel Putnam Brinley who was moved to paint the Hudson-side sugar-refining factory in Yonkers circa 1915? The factory is actually still in operation in Yonkers today as American Sugar Refining, which does the refining for Domino Sugar as well as other brands. (The Domino plant nearby on the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is not as lucky—it’s being turned into condos.) You can find the American Sugar Refining headquarters at 1 Federal Street in Yonkers—just 2.5 miles away from the Hudson River Museum. 

 


Photo courtesy Pace PrintsThree Things You Might
Not Know About
Chuck Close
We all recognize Chuck Close as an innovative artist known for his photographic and abstract portraits. But we checked in with New York University Professor of Modern Art and Bruce Museum Adjunct Curator Kenneth Silver, PhD, who told us some things about the artist you wouldn’t know just by looking at his work. 

[1] “Since childhood Chuck Close has been affected with learning disabilities—including dyslexia,” Silver says. “He also suffers from prosopagnosia, an impairment known as ‘face blindness,’ that prevents him from recognizing or differentiating between human faces. It is no coincidence that Close has chosen to devote his career to portraiture: By studying an image in the two dimensions, he is able to better identify and remember a person’s face.” 

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[2] “After graduating from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1962, Close attended graduate school at Yale University, where he received his master of fine arts degree in 1964. There he was part of the ‘golden generation,’ with Richard Serra, Robert Mangold, Janet Fish, Jennifer Bartlett, Rackstraw Downes, and Steven Posen among his fellow students.”

[3] “Although Close began painting professionally in 1967, he experimented with his first print, Keith/Mezzotint, in 1972, collaborating with the master printer Kathan Brown at her Crown Point Press in Oakland, California,” Silver notes. “Each of Close’s prints is an adventure in problem-solving. Although a painting takes Close up to a few months of work, the prints are challenging and technically complex, often requiring up to two or more years from start to completion.”

» For more from the 2013 Fall Arts Preview, click here

Martine Franck, Portrait of Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1992, collection of Ellen and Robert Grimes Kehinde Wiley, Morthyn Brito, 2011; by Kehinde Wiley and Sean Kelly, New York, NY Gilbert and George, HETERODOXY, 2005; Courtesy of Hudson Valley Center for contemporary art

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