“Simon Gunning and the Southern Louisiana Landscape” at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. October 1, 2016 – February 5, 2017. “Did you ever stand and shiver … just because you were looking at a river?” So sang Bob Dylan’s early mentor, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, about a youthful trip to New Orleans where the Mississippi River’s inscrutable currents embodied the sense of mystery he felt here — a sensibility echoed by Simon Gunning in this sprawling retrospective. Intrigued by the Big Muddy and its contrast with the pristine shores of his native Australia, Gunning devoted much of his life to exploring its awesome charisma and the city it shaped.

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October 2016 Installation of Lin Emery’s Quinte at the University Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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The term Toile de Jouy refers to a particular style of patterned textile, typically a neutral background overlaid with woodcut-style bucolic scenes of Rococo romance. Think of men and women lounging in billowed, ruffled sleeves, children playing in pantaloons, a musician playing the flute, or a farm animal at work. Roughly translated, Toile de Jouy means “canvas of joy.” Considering these designs were often made into upholstery or wallpaper, the average contemporary viewer may be hard-pressed to feel joy; to be thrilled by a seat cushion or a parlor wall would be a rare ecstasy. However, artist Tim Hailand seems to be after something more complex than simple joy in his exhibition “Sister I’m a Poet,” currently on view at Arthur Roger Gallery.

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New Orleanians have always enjoyed seeing themselves portrayed on the stage. Witness the perennial popularity of shows like “And The Ball and All,” not to mention the innumerable productions of “A Streetcar Named Desire” that have been mounted over the decades. To some extent, that’s been true of our tastes in visual arts as well. You never have to look very far to see a Rodrigue or a Michalopoulos poster on someone’s wall. But the deep pleasures afforded by Simon Gunning’s paintings go far beyond just local interest.

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There is an old controversy in art and science regarding the way some mystics and schizophrenics see the world as a glowing network of interwoven patterns. Is it a nutty hallucination or were they on to something? Similar patterns in the work of schizo mystic genius artists such as Walter Anderson or Vincent Van Gogh also turn up in the work of psychedelic researchers as well as recent explorations of quantum physics and fractal geometry.

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Last year, I stood in Arthur Roger Gallery, the prominent commercial venue on New Orleans’s Julia Street where Birch has exhibited since 1993, observing his drawings of the Seventh Ward, acrylic-and-charcoal works on paper in velvety grisaille. I recognized familiar anti-monuments—a watering hose coiled against peeling clapboard, a forlorn pair of tennis shoes flung over an electric wire—from the artist’s historically black, working-class neighborhood, located only five miles from the gallery, but seemingly a world away.

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STARTING IN THE 1990S, advances in digital technology made it easier for photographers to print their work at previously unimaginable sizes. The result was a golden age of vast pictures—typified by the work of artists such as Andreas Gursky—with the kind of impact previously limited to painting or films. But in these social-media–saturated times, when we’re constantly thumbing through palm-size images shared freely on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, is there still a meaningful place for photographs measured in feet? For Edward Burtynsky and Robert Polidori, two of today’s most esteemed practitioners of large-scale photography, the answer is unequivocally yes.

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