Thursday, March 7, 2013

WNYBAC - Exhibition Opening/Event


Chris Fritton – The Baltimore Catechism

Opening Reception and Artist’s Talk on Friday, March 15th / 6-9pm
The Baltimore Catechism is an unintentional, fanciful, imaginary revision of A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Prepared and Enjoined by Order of The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1885) wherein the authors posit the most fundamental and absurd physical and metaphysical questions, and postulate ever more fundamental and absurd answers. Originally intended as just an artist’s book, the project quickly took on a much wider scope, begetting large-scale woodcuts and accompanying prints, a performance component, and hand-set letterpress posters and broadsides. Capricious and inadvertently satirical, this eccentric exhibit features 12 large-scale prints and corresponding woodblocks, the artist’s book, and elements from the construction of the Catechism.
The opening reception for The Baltimore Catechism is free and open to the public. On view March 8th-April 12
A complete reading of The Baltimore Catechism will take place at a special "Midnight Mass" on April 5th at 11:30pm at WNYBAC. This event is also free & open to the public. 

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

University at Buffalo


Renowned Scholar of French Art and Culture
to Speak at Buffalo History Museum
Talk investigates impact of electrification of Paris on turn of the century art  

Buffalo, NY – The University at Buffalo Department of Visual Studies is pleased to host Dr. S. Hollis Clayson, professor of art history and Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University. Clayson’s talk, titled John Singer Sargent's Paris Moon Light: Twilight Disenchanted?, will explore her work analyzing the electrification of Paris and its impact on the art of the time. Clayson will speak at 7pm on Thursday March 28, 2013, at the Buffalo History Museum. The talk is free and open to the public.

Specializing in the social history of nineteenth-century Parisian art, Clayson has organized 3 exhibitions and has written: 2 books; more than 30 articles, book chapters and exhibition catalogs; and given more than 100 conference talks. The recipient of numerous grants and fellowships for her scholarly work, her excellence in teaching has also been recognized by several awards. Her long career has culminated in appointment as next year's Samuel H. Kress Professor at the National Gallery of Art, one of the most prestigious academic appointments in the world.

Jonathan D. Katz, Director of the Visual Studies PhD program will introduce Clayson and said of her work: “Long celebrated as one of the premier voices in the study of 19th century French art, Holly Clayson has worked on everything from the image of the courtesan in Impressionism to the conditions of life and art in Paris under the siege of 1870-71. After earning recognition for redefining Impressionism through including the perspective of the unheard, Clayson now sets out to chart the impact of the unseen; the electrification that literally redefined visibility in the last quarter of the 19th century."
  
Of late, Clayson has begun turning her attention to the effects of electricity in the development of modern painting, and it is out of that research that this project emerges. Entitled  John Singer Sargent's Paris Moon Light: Twilight Disenchanted?, Clayson argues that Sargent's supposedly most "impressionist" canvases, the two Luxembourg Garden paintings of 1879, are nothing of the kind.  They are read instead as extraordinary redefinitions of the Whistlerian nocturne that respond explicitly and imaginatively to the electric street lights that newly impinged upon the Jardin du Luxembourg, the largest green space on the Left Bank. From within the matrix of illumination discourse, Sargent's canvases displace the brutality of electric into the poetry of reflected moon light.

Hosted by the University at Buffalo’s Department of Visual Studies, Clayson’s talk is co-sponsored by: the Buffalo History Museum; the New York Power Authority; M. Pascal Soarès, Honorary Consul, Consulat Général de France; and the Alliance Française de Buffalo.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Buffalo State College - Department of Fine Arts

Dr. Maria Georgopoulou, Director of the Gennadius Library in Athens, Greece will present
"The Venetian Cities of Crete (The Cities of Crete during the Venetian Occupation, from 1204-1669 AD)"

Tuesday, March 19 at 5 pm
Burchfield Penney Art Center Auditorium

Monday, March 4, 2013

Canisius - Amy Greenan exhibition

This show is up in the library until 8 April. To earn extra credit for this, visit the gallery between now and 8 April (you will need to get the key from the Reference Desk), and write the 2-page critical reaction to the exhibit.