Link to Post:
http://aeqai.com/main/2012/07/george-inness-at-the-cincinnati-art-museum/
Kevin Muente reflects on George Inness' painting Near The Village, October in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Muente writes: "Tonal shapes read harmoniously throughout. Grass plains flow and mysteriously turn into a stand of trees. Buildings in the village Inness handled in a similar fashion to an overturned log in the foreground. The trees taunt their color to the clouds, but otherwise share the same DNA, identical in size and shape as well as retaining the softness of their edges. The tree trunks divide and subdivide the picture plane in interesting variations. A lone tree illuminated by light on the right hand side resides at equal distances to the furthest yellow tree to the right and the tree against which our mysterious man leans in the middle of the painting.... On the far left side a swatch of sky, cloud bank and stand of trees are all about the same height, and completely interchangeable... Inness binds everything together. Cohesion is a constant in Inness's version of an October afternoon. Soft edges meld and wed forms. At times it is impossible to assess where one object ends and another begins."
Link to Post:
http://altoonsultan.blogspot.com/2012/02/at-met-john-f-kensett-minimalist.html
Altoon Sultan blogs about the work of Luminist painter John Frederick Kensett whose work is on view in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new American wing.
After viewing the new installation, Sultan writes, "It's as though I saw a completely new painter, one who looked at the world with a sense of its essential nature, and who left the extraneous behind. A painting: sea and sky, the light of sunset gently touching the waves, the only diagonals barely traced in the upper sky. A painting full of light, but not drama; an everyday glory."
Link to Post:
http://www.linesandcolors.com/2011/12/16/heart-of-the-andes-frederic-edwin-church/
Charley Parker posts about the original cinematic presentation of Frederic Edwin Church's painting Heart of the Andes.
Parker notes that "was originally displayed in a dark gallery where it was reportedly lit by theatrical gas jet and reflector lighting and displayed in an elaborate frame, decked with curtains to create the impression of a view from a window. The room was supposedly further arranged with palm fronds and visitors were provided with opera glasses to view the painting's details. Patrons waited in line, over 12,000 of them, and paid twenty-five cents (probably the equivalent of $6 or $7 today) to view the painting."
Link to Post:
http://altoonsultan.blogspot.com/2011/02/against-american-exceptionalism.html
Altoon Sultan calls well-deserved attention to an alternative cannon of 19th Australian and Danish landscape painters. She writes: "Luminism was defined as a peculiarly American painting style. But really, it's not; I disagree with Novak who calls it "one of the most truly indigenous styles in the history of American art."
Link to Post:
http://philipkochpaintings.blogspot.com/2011/02/bold-power-hiding-in-subtle-colors.html
Artist Philip Koch looks at color through the work of Hudson River School luminist painter Sanford Gifford. Koch states: "There's a slippery quality to color... sometimes you get it, other times it just won't give you any traction at all... What's key... is Gifford's decisiveness, choosing to let one color dominate his picture."
