“If I Don’t Draw in a Day I Feel Wicked,” Bruce Davenport, Jr.
A segment on New Orleans Artist Bruce Davenport Jr. Bruce and his artworks will appear in “The Whole Gritty City”.
All posts by Stephen Hawkins
“Review: Works by Willie Birch and Eudora Welty,” Gambit
In the 70-year journey that has taken him from the New Orleans housing project where he grew up to having his work exhibited in some of the more hallowed halls of the New York art world and back to New Orleans again, Willie Birch has always been outspoken. Even so, his current Arthur Roger Gallery show can seem very quiet. Unlike his earlier 7th Ward street scenes, there are no second lines, stoop sitters or funerals in these big black-and-white works on paper, only stark, empty vistas where ragged buildings and rickety fences initially suggest a social realist view of his hardscrabble neighborhood. But like a back street Pompeii, these scarred, unpopulated vistas have their own tales to tell, and if they lack local charm in the usual sense, they are not without dignity. Rendered with eloquent simplicity, they reveal through their subtle luminosity a resonant depth of presence. “It is what it is,” they seem to say, but like the area’s residents, there is clearly more to them than what is seen on the surface.
“Auction set to benefit iconic New Orleans artist George Dureau,” Times-Picayune
Friends of New Orleans artist George Dureau have organized a benefit auction to help defray costs of nursing and medical care for the 82-year-old French Quarter icon. Dureau, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, is confined to a nursing home. Dureau’s personal effects will go on the block at Crescent City Auction Gallery, 1330 St. Charles Ave. The July 13 auction begins at 1 p.m. and features both the studio props that appeared in Dureau’s acclaimed photographs, and a host of domestic objects. Highlights include a 19th century walnut bed; a pair of modernist chairs by Bertoia, and a cypress refectory table that Dureau, a grand entertainer, once used for dinner parties.
“The Stunning Grandeur of the World’s Great Opera Houses,” slate.com
Photographer David Leventi started out thinking he would be a reportage photographer. He admired Henri Cartier-Bresson and street photography, began his career interning in the archives at Magnum Photos, and shot with a Leica camera searching for the elusive “decisive moment.” But things started to change when he began working for photographer Robert Polidori.
“Review: Paintings, Drawings and Photographs by George Dureau,” Gambit
Of all the artists this city has produced, there are probably none more representative of its iconic mix of flamboyant elegance and earthy eccentricity than George Dureau. Now 82, the painter and photographer was a French Quarter fixture for decades until his recent move to an assisted living facility. Despite his dexterously deft brushwork, most of his international reputation is based on a photographic oeuvre in which all aspects of formal technique are harnessed to his genius for conveying a striking humanistic presence. In this, he profoundly influenced one of his early studio assistants, a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe, who went on to become a New York art star. But Mapplethorpe could not match his mentor’s depth, as even that city’s art critics have noted in recent years. The work seen here is a classic Dureau sampler, and while it is easy to understand the popularity of his flamboyant paintings and drawings, it is his photographs that, while not for the faint of heart, will ensure his place in art history.
June 2013 Exhibition Opening – George Dureau: Paintings, Drawings and Photographs
June 2013 Exhibition Opening – Willie Birch – Southern Gothic: An Insider’s View
Willie Birch – Southern Gothic: An Insider’s View
Installation views from Willie Birch – Southern Gothic: An Insider’s View – June 2013 Exhibition at Arthur Roger Gallery
“Last Call: Stephen Paul Day at Arthur Roger Gallery,” Pelican Bomb
Self-loving, self-reflexive, or perhaps self-deprecating, Stephen Paul Day’s “Blame It On Vegas: Collecting Meta-Modern” offers many opportunities for similarly complicated readings. As both curator and artist, Day forms the exhibition’s thesis by creating and gathering an odd variety of objects from historically and geographically distant places. These objects share a palette of white, bronze, and pastels but the harmony ends there. Wavering between humor and novelty, with a hint of disgust, the viewer is taxed with making sense of Day’s assemblage of the “metamodern.”
“‘Optical jazz’ – Artist John T. Scott’s work on display at LASM,” The Advocate
His mother told him to pass it on. And he did. He passed it on to his students who became teachers, and they passed it on to their students. He passed it on to other artists, who passed it on to their colleagues. And they’ve gathered in the Louisiana Art & Science Museum on this particular night to share memories of John T. Scott, a friend and mentor who died in 2005 in Houston. Yet it seemed as if somehow he’s still in the world, even walking with them through the Louisiana Art & Science Museum’s main galleries as Mora Beauchamp-Byrd guided them through Rhythm & Improvisation: John T. Scott & His Enduring Legacy. That’s the title of the museum’s exhibit of Scott’s work shaped by African, Caribbean and New Orleans musical traditions. The work has been described as “optical jazz” or “visual blues.” The show runs through Sunday, July 14.