Thought Portal

Stella’s work can be found in major art museums across the country, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, which hosted the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth’s traveling retrospective for him in 2015; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gardens; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Stella is survived by his wife, Harriet McGurk, five children, and five grandchildren. An ongoing exhibition of his recent sculptures is on view at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York through May 18.

News of the Halaby show’s cancelation at Indiana University became public as the school was already facing scrutiny. On Wednesday, the Herald-Times reported that the university had suspended professor Abdulkader Sinno, who helped a Palestinian students’ union host an event by a former IDF soldier who has been publicly critical of Israel. The university’s vice provost reportedly claimed that Sinno had not obeyed standard procedure when he aided in the organization of the event. Sinno told the Herald-Times that the school’s suspension of him was part of an effort to “chill academic freedom and legitimate free speech on Palestinian human rights.”

Sonia Delaunay (13 November 1885 – 5 December 1979) was a French artist, who spent most of her working life in Paris. She was born in Odessa (then part of Russian Empire), and formally trained in Russian Empire and Germany before moving to France and expanding her practice to include textile, fashion, and set design. She co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes, with her husband Robert Delaunay and others. She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964, and in 1975 was named an officer of the French Legion of Honor.

Her work in modern design included the concepts of geometric abstraction, and the integration of furniture, fabrics, wall coverings, and clothing into her art practice.[1]

How To Paint a Geometric Wall Mural | Home Project DIY Timelapse 

“Distorting processes from photographic history, the vibrant patterns in these reliefs are caused by violent chemical reactions. In applying mordançage solutions to silver gelatin prints, Nelson bleaches selected areas and simultaneously lifts specific dark hues of the emulsion. This late 19th century technique is commonly appreciated for its stark contrasts, precise contours, and depths of light applied to create life-like portraits. In appropriating the historical process, Nelson suspends virtuosity and representation as photographic ideals. The works gouge a different potential application of the chemical bonds and—in continuation of feminist and queer abstraction—unfetter the constraints of resemblance to real-world referents. They call to mind Luciana Parisi’s cyberfeminist theory of microfeminine particle-forces emerging from non-linear reactions between potential and actual desires, resulting in intensifications of mutant desires.”

In the late 1700s, a young man named Friedrich Froebel was on track to become an architect when a friend convinced him to pursue a path toward education instead. And in changing course, Froebel arguably ended up having more influence on the world of architecture and design than any single architect — all because Friedrich Froebel created kindergarten. If you’ve ever looked at a piece of abstract art or Modernist architecture and thought “my kindergartener could have made that,” well, that may be more true than you realize.

Today's edition features jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran.  He shares his view of Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie and feels moved to music by its straight lines and blocks of colour.

Today's edition features award-winning comedian and actor Steve Martin - he finds two "lonely" works that speak to him; Stanton Macdonald-Wright’s Synchromy and Morgan Russell’s Color Form Synchromy.

Hilma af Klint (October 26, 1862 – October 21, 1944) was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings were among the first Western Abstract Art.

She belonged to a group called "The Five", a circle of women who shared her belief in the importance of trying to make contact with the so-called "High Masters"—often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilma_af_Klint

The exhibition, Visionary Drawings, tells the story of Emma Kunz (1892–1963), a Swiss healer and spiritualist. Her works were only exhibited after her death, and she herself believed that her art was destined to be viewed by later generations. In the last few years, her drawings have been shown alongside the works of artists such as Hilma af Klint and Agnes Martin; however, Kunz’s practice does not easily fit into the history of the development of abstraction. Perhaps this is because art in itself was not her primary occupation; she considered it a means for the exploration of the astral plane. 

In 1975, Barbara Visser was a nine-year-old kid on a school field trip to the Stedelijk art museum when she first saw a painting titled Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III by the American post-war artist Barnett Newman.

What she saw was a massive canvas, nearly 18 feet wide and eight feet tall. On the left side, a small strip of blue, and on the right, a small strip of yellow. But the rest of the surface was painted entirely red. “And I got very angry,” says Visser, “I ran out of the museum. I sat on the steps and was determined not to go in again.”

This was a painting that produced such strong reactions in people that it drove them to action. Visser struggled with the painting her entire life and made a feature-length documentary about it called The End of Fear, which inspired this story. It’s about a reaction the painting received that was so intense, so violent, it set off a chain of events that shook the art world to its core.