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Showing posts with label smithson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smithson. Show all posts

Tuesday, 30 September 2025

Artlyst - The Art Diary October 2025

My latest Art Diary for Artlyst features exhibitions by several artists whose work I have championed through essays and exhibitions, as well as solo and group shows that explore environmental, social, and spiritual concerns. Read on for news of exhibitions by Michael Landy, Ana Maria Pacheco, Robert Smithson, and Suzanne Treister, among others, together with shows at Compton Verney, Firstsite, Pallant House, and the Engelundsamlingen in Vrå:

'‘Everyday Wonder to Revelation’ at Clare Hall, Cambridge, is an exhibition providing a rare opportunity to see paintings by Caine. These paintings delve into the core Neo-Platonist idea of the oneness of the world, the nodus mundi. We see this in his depictions of everyday objects, such as rugs, mopheads, carpets, and bundles of cloth. Although his subject matter is humble, the intricate depth of his draughtsmanship reveals unity and cohesion. We see it too in his expansive and luminous landscapes. When Caine blends his perceptions of space and shimmering light in the landscape with his exploration of the core in everyday things, he presents us with a vision of worlds beyond. His images invite us to step through a veil into barely imagined possibilities. Through his exploration of the small, the infinite beckons; through his exploration of the wonder of the everyday, revelation becomes possible.

In the essay I wrote for the exhibition catalogue, I note that: “Without reference to standard religious iconography and with a primary focus on landscape, still life, and portraits, Caine imbued and infused his work with spiritual reflection and with spirituality itself. That he did so in ways that allow those who do not share his beliefs to enthusiastically embrace and appreciate his work for their many other compelling qualities is a testament both to Caine’s skill as an artist and the subtlety of his understanding of the connection between earth and heaven.”'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -
Monthly diary articles -

Articles/Reviews -

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Kevin Morby - O Behold.
Posted by Jonathan Evens at 21:19 0 comments
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Thursday, 21 January 2021

Artlyst: Made in USA - Ed Ruscha, An American Perspective

My latest piece for Artlyst previews Ed Ruscha: OKLA at Oklahoma Contemporary focusing in particular on the Catholic influences found in Ruscha's work:

'Dual associations, blends and juxtapositions are, I think, at the heart of the influence that Ruscha believes Catholicism to have had on his work. He has said that there is a connection with his work and his experience with religious icons: the cross and the Church’s stations. He has spoken of this connection in terms of flavours that come over, ‘like incense used in the Church, benediction … the ritual … a deeply mysterious thing that affected me.’ More than that, however, is the dual nature of religious icons and Church rituals through which the ordinary becomes extraordinary; pigment on board becoming a window to the divine and bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ.'

In the article I note that this exhibition is part of a growing trend to take seriously the religious influences found in the work of many contemporary or modern artists: 

'This is not to claim such artists for the Church – Ruscha is a confirmed atheist – but acknowledges the reality of religious influences in work in ways that in earlier periods of modernism either went unacknowledged or were dismissed. Additionally, as I have sought to do in articles for Artlyst about Salvador Dali, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Smithson and Andy Warhol, among others, this acknowledgement of influence fills out our understanding of art history in the modern period whilst also creating a clearer picture of the continuing impact in a changed and changing cultural landscape of religious practices and theological ideas.' 

My other Artlyst pieces are:

Interviews:
Articles:
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Woody Guthrie - Oklahoma Hills.
Posted by Jonathan Evens at 21:56 0 comments
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Thursday, 14 January 2021

Artlyst - Robert Smithson: The Archetypal Nature Of Things

My latest piece for Artlyst reviews two Robert Smithson exhibitions at Marian Goodman Galleries and considers the significance of the period in Smithson's life when he got interested in Catholicism through T.S. Eliot and that range of thinking:

'Smithson was invested in a definition of art that was timebound and precarious, that would not claim monumental status, rather collaborate with entropy. Up until his death in 1973, Smithson demonstrated that art can be a means to explore how we might try to understand our place on the planet, with all of its complexities.

All this is incipient in that earlier starting point where he identified with the “Christian mystics bemoaning a fallen world”. Incipient there, too, is his awareness of that the unknowable zero island – the prolongation of spirals which reverberate up and down space and time – is only realisable on a metaphysical level, as that offers the only path from the contingent natural universe to something beyond.'

My other Artlyst pieces are:

Interviews:

Articles:
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Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus - I Carry The Sun.
Posted by Jonathan Evens at 17:29 0 comments
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