Roberto Matta Echaurren was born in Santiago de Chile in 1911. He graduated as an architect in 1931, moved to Paris in 1935, and landed a job in Le Corbusier’s architectural office. Then he switched to a different design. He befriended the inner circle of Surrealists in 1936, though by…
Salvador Dalí was, at different times in his life, an anarchist, communist, Cubist, Surrealist, monarchist, and avowed mystic. With an exuberant imagination and remarkable craft, Dalí — a fashion dandy who once declared himself divine and managed to outrage most of his avant-garde comrades — became one of the most…
Cupid became a cue for creative contemplation in February. On Valentine’s Day Sherry Gaché presented Real Love, a performance and installation display of blown-up multilingual love letters, at a handsomely refurbished Green Door Gallery. Put aside your conventional idea of love and enjoy four couples as they unabashedly make out…
Damien B. is a nonprofit arts center run by the Boisseau family from France. One of its goals is to bridge the gap between artists from Miami and Europe, offering them a place to work and show art. The three-story building has eight studios, a showroom, and a big outdoor…
Pop Art is not only not art … it is not even bad art,” wrote Barbara Rose, a well-known critic and curator, in 1965. Pop Art was never a critic’s movement, but it became the most popular art movement in American history. It happened because Pop Art showed something about…
By the end of the summer, every local artist in Miami was making plans for a series of shows in conjunction with Art Basel 2001, and yes, Basel was going to be a great plug for Miami (though some of the artists’ responses seemed just too opportunistic in their want…
Photography is a great medium for social documentation. Think of nineteenth-century French photographer Eugène Atget, who produced thousands of photographs of Paris with direct, novel, and poetic renditions of everything imaginable: people in the streets, shop fronts, buildings, wheeled vehicles of all kinds, decorative details, et cetera. Cuban photo documentaries…
For those who find it difficult what to make of some of the art being shown today, here’s a solution: Suspend judgment. Concepts need time to grow on you. That’s why a skeptic like Marcel Duchamp believed it was better not to know what to believe, rather than believe something…
My art chronicle begins on a rainy Friday night, on my way to Ambrosino Gallery in North Miami. Upon arrival I don’t find too many people, but those there are staunch art lovers. In spite of the rain, they gather by the door. “The less people there are at exhibits,”…
The still life is probably most famous in its nineteenth-century form: assorted fruits on a plate, next to a wine bottle, and a terra cotta figurine on top of the mantelpiece. Cezanne’s image of nature, or simply an example of bourgeois décor? But the history of still life goes back…
In The Medium Is the Message: An Inventory of Effects (1967), Marshall McLuhan envisioned the Global Village, a synchronized world where time and space has vanished and multimedia engulfs everyone. McLuhan thought the media would put us back in touch with ancestral emotions, from which print had divorced us. Charming…
Oscar Wilde, that astute observer of the late Nineteenth Century, said that controversy reveals a favorable condition for change. It’s applicable to the recent debate among artists, critics, and the curious over some negative reviews of the exhibition “Skins,” at the Dorsch Gallery. Because of the very diverse yet interconnected…
What’s in a name? In Vivian Marthell’s work, quite a lot — of imagery and humor. While checking out “Intimate Addictions: Living Large in Tight Spaces” at lab6, I was particularly taken with butt-pops, as she calls these clever pieces made with beads and candy wrappers. Her chupa-chups and get…
Primitive iconography is dramatic and seductive, but it also can be trite and manipulative. How to tell the difference is the key: In general look for consistency of symbols and the substance behind the style. The primitive must deliver immediate expression, raw and succinct. Unfortunately of all the stuff we…
If you’re into fresh and original events, check out Sound Art Workshops (SAW) at the new South Florida Composers Alliance venue in North Miami. SAW, an effort lead by Gustavo Matamoros, mixes both aural and visual arts for events that are truly interdisciplinary. Recently I saw Lou Mallozzi’s Usi Scrutati,…
Robert Thiele’s exhibition at the Barbara Gillman Gallery makes me think of the end of the world. Not in a paranoid way — I’m not picturing a nuclear attack coming from the skies, or fearing an unforeseen market crash that makes capitalism obsolete. Rather Thiele’s sculptures convey the emptiness, even…
Fernando Garcia’s paintings are crafty enough to bring to mind Plato’s distrust of art. For the Greek philosopher, by attempting to become more real than reality, painting was a deceiving art form. But in fact Garcia’s work makes you relish the delicate balance between perception and illusion. Is that really…
Social alienation seems to be an underlying theme of postmodern urban America. The separation of labor and leisure has created a social estrangement that is only becoming more acute. We don’t have the time or, more important, the space to make contact. People usually spend two-thirds of the day confined…
Miami is getting the vibe of a bigger city. April’s bunch of openings was a good example, keeping many of us happily busy. And this time around it was Coral Gables that had some of the most interesting shows: Cuban veteran Flora Fong at Cernuda Arte; Neoexpressionist works by Carlos…
Pop art brings to mind those extraordinary images from the cold-war and civil-rights era of the Sixties: a startling moment when the United State’s middle class seemingly swept up the proletariat. Mixing liberal democracy with Coca-Cola, Elvis, and Little Orphan Annie, pop art became more than a fad; it became…
In the best of all possible worlds, a veteran art teacher would decide to shake up the inertia of the system with the quixotic idea of recruiting inner-city high school students for an art program he builds from scratch; then he would end up sending his graduates to the best…
The House, the latest in a series of alternative art spaces popping up around Miami, seems to reflect a generational trend. Martin Oppel, Bhakti Baxter, and Tao Rey are three artists just out of a serious art-brewing operation: New World School of the Arts. They rented an old house off…
