News Art Blog

On October 3, 1948, at 3:50 pm, Peter Blume finished his epic painting, years in the making, titled The Rock (shown above). “After a turbulent decade in which Peter Blume embarked on false starts, endured debilitating anxiety, experienced self-doubt, and found his faith in the creative process renewed,” Robert Cozzolino writes in the catalog to the new exhibition Peter Blume: Nature and Metamorphosis, finishing The Rock must have been a great relief. Blume recorded that date and time the way many record the
birth of their children, for The Rock was his precious baby, but completing it marked a rebirth of sorts for Blume as a different kind of artist. Shaped by political and artistic currents of the first half of the 20^th century, Blume emerges as a difficult to categorize artist, but also as a fascinating visionary who struggled to paint a personal reality clinging to the foundation of hope. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Peter Blume Painted His Personal Reality of Hope."

If the The Noguchi Museum’s 25^th anniversary exhibition were an episode of Friends, it would be titled “The One Where Isamu Became an Artist.” On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and his Contemporaries, 1922-1960, which runs through April 24, 2011, demonstrates just how Isamu Noguchi navigated through the worlds of sculpture, painting, dance, theater, and even architecture and design with a little help from his friends. Borrowing bits from different means of expression, Noguchi added them together into the greater sum of his sculpture. With friends like Arshile Gorky, Constantin Brancusi, Frida Kahlo, Martha Graham, and Louis Kahn, Noguchi became an artistic force transcending traditional boundaries. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "With Friends Like These."

[Image: Isamu Noguchi, Arshile Gorky, De Hirsh Margulies. Hitler Invades Poland, September 1, 1939. Crayon and sealing ink on paper, 17 1/2 x 22 7/8 in. © 2010 The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. © 2010 The Arshile Gorky Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy Gallery Gertrude Stein, New York.]

[Many thanks to the The Noguchi Museum for providing me with the image above and a review copy of the catalogue to the exhibition On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and his Contemporaries, 1922-1960, which runs through April 24, 2011.]