Glenn Barr's First Solo Show in Seven Years: Old Style/ New Style/ Creative Mix

Artist Glenn Barr, who worked on Nickelodeon's "Ren and Stimpy Show" in the mid-1990s and was one of two artists from Detroit's 1990s underground art scene to make it big, will be presenting his first local show in seven years. Barr is most known for his surrealist and noir-styled paintings and prints, but along with his re-emergence comes the added style of lighter, more realistic works.

As mentioned in an article from the Detroit News:

"When I started out, my work was irreverent, campy, erotic, alluring and somewhat dangerous in theme," Barr says, as if that's all safely in the past. But even a cursory look at his new stuff suggests the continuing vitality of those themes...

...By contrast, Barr's recent, realistic works spring from the mythic realm of vintage advertisements and noir paperbacks -- and more recently the folk art decorating the sides of Detroit beauty salons.

It's this move into realism that tickles Tom Thewes, who carried Barr's work at Detroit's late C-Pop Gallery until it closed earlier this year. In particular, Thewes points to "Evening," a tension-filled work in which a well-dressed man helps a woman into her fur coat.
"It's beautiful and in the vein of an old 1950s illustration," Thewes says, noting that Barr collects old illustrations by the masters. "There was a whole story there that didn't need all kinds of crazy weird creatures. I loved it."

Barr does continue to use his darker creativity to produce the quirky noir works that everyone associates him with, and his approach of combining elements from his old and new styles create an innovative mix of art worth seeing.

Exhibition Details:

Start Date/ Time:

October 28, 2009 at 6:00pm

End Date/ Time:

November 27, 2009 at 9:00pm

Location:

323East Gallery
323 E. Fourth St
Royal Oak, MI

Tel: 248-246-9544

For the little ones

I previously wrote about the Lascaux cave paintings on this blog, so imagine my delight when I came across this precious children's book over the weekend. First Painter by Dawn Sirett tells a fantastically fictional tale of how the first cave paintings were created. I know that it's well, a little more "youth-geared" than most of my recommendations, but it's never too early to create an art lover!

America through the eyes of its first painters

An interesting new book was published this year that examines the first years of America through the portrait artists that documented the great politicians of the time. The Painter's Chair, by Hugh Howard, chronicles George Washington's relationship with these artists.

When George Washington was born, the New World had virtually no artists. Over the course of his life and career, a cultural transformation would occur. Virtually everyone regarded Washington as America's indispensable man, and the early painters and sculptors were no exception. Hugh Howard brings to life the founding fathers of American painting, and the elusive Washington himself, through their evolving portraits. We meet Charles Willson Peale, the comrade-in-arms; John Trumbull, the aristocrat; Benjamin West, the mentor; and Gilbert Stuart, the brilliant wastrel and most gifted painter of his day.

Howard's narrative traces Washington's interaction with these and other artists, while offering a fresh and intimate portrait of the first president. The Painter's Chair is an engaging narrative of how America's first painters toiled to create an art worthy of the new republic, and of the hero whom they turned into an icon.

Dennis Hopper and his new billboard paintings

From NYMag:

Before his self-directed performance in 1969's Easy Rider made him the Dennis Hopper you know, he was but a promising young photographer documenting the sixties in all its cinematic glory. On display at Shafrazi through October 24 is his new show, "Sign of the Times," a collection of Hopper's pre-'67 photos of Warhol, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, and other twentieth-century art-world luminaries, along with a dozen of his never-before-seen "billboard paintings." Vulture spoke with Hopper this week about the show, his career, and a job opening at the Vatican.

click here to read the interview

Painting her son's final images of Iraq

Typically, this site is devoted to posts about artists' first endeavors, or breakthrough moments in art history, but I was really moved by an article I recently read in the Los Angeles Times that may be more appropriately categorized as a "last".  Suzy Shealy, the mother of a soldier who lost his life in Iraq, is painting images of the last things her son saw in his short life.  An excerpt of the heart-wrenching story is below:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Suzy Shealy was one of those preppy Southern moms whose artistic streak found expression in what she calls "crafty-type things": cross-stitched towels, Christmas ornaments, knitted scarves.

It was stuff to give away at school auctions or offer to neighbors, stuff with little hearts and frills, the comforting, precious visual language of mother-love.

Yet here she was on a balmy June afternoon, in a studio overlooking a yard full of petunias and marigolds, painting the kill-or-be-killed scowl of an American soldier patrolling on the streets of Iraq.

Whish-whish went her brush, and as if by magic, the planes and angles of the soldier's bones emerged from a light haze of grayish paint: gun-metal cheekbones and nostrils flared and fierce. She outlined the suggestion of a right arm, and a hand clutching an M-16 assault rifle.

The snapshot she painted from was attached to the canvas with a potato-chip clip from her kitchen. In the photo, a second soldier hovered in the background, his torso emerging from a Humvee turret.

But Shealy will not paint her dead son. She is not ready.

"I'm just not," she said. "I don't know why."

Some of Sgt. Joseph Derrick's personal belongings were returned to his family in boxes. Some of it came back in little velvet jewelry bags with "UNITED STATES ARMY" embossed in golden letters. His mother has kept nearly everything, no matter how trivial: the phone card he used to call her from Baghdad, his cellphone, his boot laces, his civilian clothes.

A mother learns that every one of her children has a signature scent. The old T-shirts and sweats still smell like her first child. She can still picture him the day he was born -- those perfect hands and perfect feet, those big blue eyes. How could she throw his things away?

Among the belongings that came back from Iraq was a tiny Flash drive she had sent to him as part of a care package. It returned to her filled with more than 500 photos. Some of them were taken by Joseph. Others were taken by his fellow soldiers. Before Sept. 23, 2005 -- before the insurgent sniper fired the bullets that pierced his neck -- Joseph had told her about the pictures. He couldn't wait, he had said, to come home and deliver the stories that the pictures promised. But without their narrator, Shealy found that the photos amounted to a chain of riddles. An eternally incomplete slide show.

Click here to keep reading the story

Chagall's first artwork

Marc Chagall, the painter associated with Modernism and France, was actually born Moishe Segal to a Russian-Jewish family in 1887. At the time of his childhood, Jewish students were not admitted to Russian schools. However, with a bribe to an official, Chagall's parents managed to get him access to attend, where he fell in love with drawing.

It makes perfect sense that, considering Chagall's contribution as a Jewish artist, his first artwork ever created was an illustrated Haggadah for Passover (a text that details the order of events for Seder) for his family. I couldn't seem to find any images of his particular Haggadah... perhaps it's still in his family and not on public view?

"Damien Hirst's auction" or "Hirst rhymes with first"

It's been almost a year since Damien Hirst's infamous auction took place at Sotheby's in London. Hirst is an interesting figure in the art world - his splashy work and astronomical prices have earned him a spot as one of the most loved and despised artists in the world. September 15, 2008, Sotheby's held a special two day sale of works by Hirst, which is nothing rare (I joke). However, it was incredibly rare, in fact the first time that a set of work went straight from an artist's studio to the auction block - no galleries, no exhibit, no public display. It was sensational. It angered many. It made a lot of people smile, and a lot more people curse his name.