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Aesthetic Effect of Old Master Paintings Measured by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
The University College of London recently undertook an experiment where subjects were given brain scans while they viewed a 10-second interval progression of projected images of paintings by Old Masters such as Constable, Bosch and Ingres.
John Constable, A View on the Stour, 1810, Oil on paper laid on canvas, 10 1/2 x 10 1/2 in (26.7 x 26.7 cm), Philadelphia Museum of Art (royalty-free stock photo.)
The results showed that blood flow to the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with pleasure and desire, increased by ten percent — a reaction similar to falling in love.
Western Art, Colonial Portrayals of First Nations Peoples and “The European Male.”
The Triumph of Mischief touring exhibition at Glenbow Museum
The Treason of Images solo show at Trépanier Baer Gallery
Canadian Cree Kent Monkman’s paintings, performance art, super-8 movies, antique tintypes, multimedia presentations, & mixed media installations poke fun at depictions of First Nations People in art and movies from the 19th century right up to modern times.
"Théâtre de Cristal" by Kent Monkman; multimedia tipi installation, with beads, fishing line, simulated buffalo hide, digitalized super-8 movie, "Group of Seven Inches", and video, "Robin's Hood", 2006. The Triumph of Mischief touring exhibition at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB, Canada, until April 25th, 2010.
George Catlin, Paul Kane and Cornelius Krieghoff were a few of many historical western artists who presented a view of North American First Nations’ peoples skewed by colonialism and self-importance, which Kent Monkman punctures with sharply pointed paintbrushes and sharply painted fingernails.
The ROW: Reflections on Water Exhibition at Touchstones Museum in Nelson, BC, and what is happening to BC’s regional museums?
By Simone Keiran
A lap cedar rowboat gleams in the centre of Gallery A at Touchstones Museum in Nelson, BC., crafted in the 1940s by Clarence W. Walton of the defunct Walton Boatworks, one of many owner-operated boat builders that thrived in the Kootenay-Columbia region.
“As a passenger, it is not always possible to see clearly what is immersed below the vessel, which emulates subconsciousness.” Deb Thompson, Curator-in-Residence spoke during the public gallery walk, on 08 October, 2009, for ROW: Reflections on Water, a nonlinear, thematic exhibition running from September 12 to November 22, 2009.
Waterspines, an installation by Tanya Pixie Johnson for ROW.
ROW is the latest Touchstones exhibition to eschew traditional chronological or culturally codified display paradigms for shows which embrace, among other things, activism at the community level with community input.
Retro-active: Two Decades of Sculpture by Lou Lynn
Grand Forks Art Gallery, June 13 – August 15, 2009
By Simone Keiran
Published in Route 3: Life in the West Kootenay/Boundary Region Magazine, Summer 2009. Ed., Shelley Ackerman
Lou Lynn, Sculptor (Photo by Janet Dwyer)
Hand-tools have always fascinated artist, Lou Lynn, particularly the union between a succinct form, such as the semi-circular sweep of a prehistoric ulu whose handle runs parallel to its blade, to a specific practical function: a knife which was not used to stab but—depending on how the handle was held—to slice or scrape with a rocking stroke of the wrist. Her metal and glass sculptures suggest implements such as the ulu, auger, chisel, trowels, rasps and other forms.
“I’m not actually inspired by tools,” she emphasizes. “The form is more important, how shape determines how tools came to be used.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Grand Forks Art Gallery and Boundary Museum Saga
The City of Grand Forks got a shiny new art gallery, the Boundary Museum acquired a fine pair of historical sites, and after the Furies finished running amok, everyone settled down to mend fences and ponder the true purpose of community museums and galleries.
By Simone Keiran
The New Grand Forks Art Gallery
Grand Forks is the largest urban center in the Boundary region of British Columbia’s south-central interior. As such, a showcase building for its heritage and visual arts community seemed in order. Unfortunately, few transitions could have been as fraught with difficulty as when the Old Courthouse on Central Avenue, an attractive brick Palladian-style landmark built in 1911, was transformed into a civic cultural centrepiece. Collections were seized, wrecking crews were called in, the City was taken to court, and it was mischief for everybody involved.
Oxygen: The Vital Element
This artist-run gallery in Nelson, BC, Canada is all about community.
by Simone Keiran
Published in Route 3: Life in the West Kootenay/Boundary Region
Winter 2008/2009 Issue, ed., Shelley Ackermann.
Nicola Harwood, Artist-in-Residence, manning the phones at Oxygen Artist-Run Centre, Nelson, BC, Canada
“It is important not to give into divisive political tactics, or it becomes too easy to lose courage.”
Nicola Harwood, director and founding member of the artist-run Oxygen art Centre in Nelson, spoke about the misconception of artists as elitists—people who siphon off public funding, while criticizing those who provide it.
It’s out of the kiln and onto the Western Canadian stage for twelve of the Kootenay School of Art’s best clay artists at the prestigious Gallery of BC Ceramics on Granville Island.
By Simone Keiran
Published ARTiculate, Fall/Winter 2008
Tanis Saxby, Shadow Line Four
The Kootenay School of Art has produced excellent clay sculptors, ceramic artists and potters since the program’s inception in 1990. They’ve travelled across the globe to exhibit, teach, and demonstrate their artistry. They’ve won awards at international juried exhibitions. They’ve expanded the possibilities for how clay can serve families and communities. They’ve bridged the cerebral domain of museums and conceptual clay art with the simple, practical level of everyday service and use. This is why three accomplished clay instructors at KSA, Pamela Nagley Stevenson, David Lawson and Garry Graham, held no reservations about sharing their group show at BC’s most respected clay art gallery, the Gallery of BC Ceramics, on Granville Island, this September, with nine select successful graduates.
John Cooper’s spontaneous art, a fixture of the Kootenay Lake region of British Columbia for the past forty years, is an individual compendium of 20th-century art movements.
John Cooper at his home in Queens Bay Townsite, Kootenay Lake, BC, Canada (19th September, 2008)
Stories about John Cooper are as abundant and provocative as his paintings. Like Toad Rock or Mount Loki—the monumental landscape icons he likes to paint around Queen’s Bay, the tiny benchland community just past Balfour on Kootenay Lake where he lives—certain themes reoccur, steady as a pulse. These are rooted in Expressionism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, all the early modern art movements, which are also the themes of his life.
A Look at the Visual Appeal and Attraction of Carnival Art
“The gaudy, bawdy art of carnival rides hooks thrill-seekers with sensational fantasies from soft porn to invincibility, which mask its roots in Classical Antiquity.”
Crazy Beach: A ride that really has nothing to do with the beach.
This short photo-essay and review of the commercial art and design used to entice customers at PNE Playland in Hastings Park, Vancouver, BC, which traces the roots of carnival past Medieval festivals thrown in defiance of the black plague to Greco-Roman Mystery Schools and the Cult of Dionysius, has just been published at Suite101.com. Copyright restrictions prevent me from posting it here, but please click on the link if you’re interested in reading it.
Catalogue of the Paintings and Writings of Artist, Alf Crossley
Exhibition September 26 – October 9, 2008
Kootenay Gallery of Art, History and Science
Castlegar, British Columbia, Canada
Misty Morning, Slocan Lake; Oil on Canvas, en plein air.
Since the 1970’s, Alf Crossley has painted En Plein Air throughout the Kootenays and western Canada.
His paintings and drawings incline toward abstract expressionism but have no direct antecedents. Impressionism, perhaps closest to Sisley or Pisarro, is indicated with flecks of transient light and colours which seem to gently flicker before the eyes; Post-impressionism, especially along the line of Cézanne, is inferred from object surfaces that break into planes of colour, but Crossley departs from all but the loosest assimilation of form: the shoulder of an unknown mountain, the line of a shore, the patterns of bird tracks or of branches and leaves. The imprint of American Expressionism through De Koonig and Gorky sometimes emerges in his bold lines and vibrant colours, yet Crossley does not remove natural representation entirely: a mountain is usually identifiable as a mountain; the reflection of a cloud-filled sky in water is the image of what it appears to be. Even his forays into pure abstraction always present some form of horizon, some connection to the natural world to root the viewer within physical reality. Some similarities are shared with another Canadian abstract-expressionist landscape painter, Paul-Émile Borduas, especially with the use of thick impasto, or the occasional almost geometrical arrangements of saturated colour, or in other renditions, the spare, almost Japanese style of airy arrangements that emerge in Tony Onley’s scenes of ocean beaches.
