Keith Haring Foundation starts Tumblr of His Notebooks covering Pittsburgh and early NY years

The Brooklyn Museum is hosting a major show covering Keith Haring's early development.

Keith Haring: 1978–1982

Keith Haring: 1978–1982 is the first large-scale exhibition to explore the early career of one of the best-known American artists of the twentieth century. Tracing the development of Haring’s extraordinary visual vocabulary, the exhibition includes 155 works on paper, numerous experimental videos, and over 150 archival objects, including rarely seen sketchbooks, journals, exhibition flyers, posters, subway drawings, and documentary photographs.

The Keith Haring Foundation will be uploading a scan from Haring's early notebooks each day for the length of the show.

http://keithharing.tumblr.com/

Already several of the images are of pages done in or around Pittsburgh. Honestly, I find it amazing and disturbing that Pittsburgh has never hosted a major show of his work.

My previous post about a show of his early sketchbooks.

Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties @ Brooklyn Museum

Malvina Hoffman: Martinique Woman


Florine Stetheimer: Natorium Undine

Spending a bit of time in NYC again, hoping very much that others will keep one up on shows in Pittsburgh.

The Brooklyn Museum has an awesome permanent collection, heavy on great American art, strong Egyptian and African holdings and lots of contemporary work. Sadly, much of this is marred by ugly and hugely distracting, educational labels and giant signs. Even worse are the loud video displays that make it very hard to spend time or think about what one is seeing. Even so, this is a must see place.

The Youth and Beauty show currently up has none of these problems and is wonderfully, curated and displayed.


George Bellows: Two Women

It's hard for any one show of a modest 64 or so works to fully represent an artistic era, but this seemed to. I was struck by the contrast between so much of the American Art from this period with what was happening in Europe. The twenties in Germany and Eastern Europe was a time of turmoil and political chaos. While, beauty, gaiety, and infatuation with technical inventions is evident, it tends to be tempered by the scars, anger and questions left by the great war.

Much of American Art, in contrast is just very happy, sincere and optimistic. Our time of doubt comes in the 30's

Artists of the period dealt with the impact of European modernism; migration to cities, mass production, photography and the emerging role of women's liberation. The show reflects all of this. Several great works from the Harlem Renaissance are included.


Aaron Douglas: Charleston

An insanely great show, with works by Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Stuart Davis, Peter Blume, Joseph Stella, Thomas Hart Benton and many more. See it if you can.

James Kalm with The Dinner Party @ The Brooklyn Museum

Thanks to James Kalm, and You Tube we can see the work by Judy Chicago (and many other artists) that Jim Shaw's Donner party plays off of. One a perhaps absurdly heavy handed attempt to make something sacred and the other a play on the profane.