Hark back to the bygone warmer days of October, and of the memories that trickle out of the foggy haze of pre-Thanksgiving languor. There should, hopefully, be a few of the Big Game. And if it’s not too much of a challenge, try to remember what made the 115th Big Game so special. And of course, it was freshman Reade Levinson’s genius, if a little gruesome, Beat Cal poster representing Stanford.
Construction will begin on schedule for the McMurtry Building, the new home of Stanford’s Art & Art History Department, in summer 2013. The structure is intended to invigorate the department and strengthen its presence on campus.
Alexander Nemerov stepped down from his role as chair of Yale’s art history department last spring to accept a new interdisciplinary position at Stanford, a move representing the increased focus on art’s role on campus.
At first glance, the life-sized photograph suggests that the woman in the painting is modeled after the woman seated next to the painting, and further inspection only supports this conclusion. The similarities are uncanny: same white shirt, same periwinkle coat, same cropped, copper-colored hair. Even their facial structures seem to correlate.
The first time I saw a Mark Rothko painting up close was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I liked it, though I’m pretty sure that half of my eagerness to approve was to be contrary about conventional art tastes. I’ve got a poster of one his paintings now, and the more I stare at it, the more calming I find it; it’s not just an aesthetically pleasing color swatch. But are his abstract expressionist paintings really art? This is one of the central questions of John Logan’s new play, “Red,” which introduces us to a fictitious version of Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz, the famous Jewish-American Abstract Expressionist painter.
David Spencer Nelson’s column on why contemporary art turns him off is a bracing and personal call to all of us in arts practice and arts education (The Mixed Messages of Modernism: Empty museums: an explanation, Oct. 28). Let’s rise to the challenges he articulates.
In the ‘60s, the question “what is art?” was answered by a chorus of “anything.” Since then, our culture has paid a high price. I gave up going to see anything made after 1917 when I saw a toilet bowl in the Whitney Museum. There was an American Standard toilet in one of America’s most renowned modern art museums. I was told it was a thought piece. Personally, I thought there was very little there. In September, I decided to go back. I saw vintage video games and machinery made to do odd things. I had an N64. I’ve already seen them in action.
Stanford recently accepted one of the preeminent collections of post-World War II American art, a significant private donation known as the ‘Anderson Collection,’ that is expected to make the University a major destination for art enthusiasts.