Joan Miró: The Magic of Metaphors

Two works by Joan Miró that will be discussed in class (click photo for larger image)Jill Kiefer will be devoting one online class to Joan Miró ( (1893-1983). You can also read about this wonderful artist here on What About Art?

Miró was one of the great mavericks of modern art. Although he was closely associated with both Dada and Surrealism, Miró developed a signature style that truly defies labels. Using pictorial signs, biomorphic forms, geometric shapes and traveling lines—he vigorously expressed the fruits of his imagination with respect to his own human experience. By juxtaposing semi-abstracted forms with recognizable imagery, Miró addressed a broad range of concepts and ideas in a transcendent, lyrical way. His visual poetry contributed enormously to the avant-garde movements that would follow him, and his work continues to delight and inform us to this day. Join us as we explore the ways in which this inventive artist dismantled traditional modes of representation. 

Friday, 12 June - 3:00pm – 4:00pm Eastern (New York Time)

Click HERE to Register. Class sizes are limited to don’t wait!

What is Abstract Art—Really? - A Virtual Program by Jill Kiefer

(LEFT) Robert Delaunay, 1885-1941) - Joie de vivre (The Joy of Life) - 1930 - Oil on canvas, 200 x 228 cm, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris - (RIGHT) Joan Miró, born April 20, 1893, Barcelona, Spain died December 25, 1983, Palma, Majorca. Women and Bird in the Moonlight - 1949 - Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 66.0 cm, Tate Gallery, London (click photo for larger image)“Dr. Jill” will continue to offer single-session art history programs online, beginning in June, on a variety of topics. Every session runs for one hour. The presentations are around 35-45 minutes long with time left over for a Q&A. Check out the program descriptions and REGISTER NOW! This is a global program—and the times noted are EDT (New York time) and GMT.

On Wednesday, 17 June, Jill will present What is Abstract Art—Really? – Abstract Art is a term which, over time, has come to be equated with Nonrepresentational Art. But are they really the same thing? A true work of abstraction is a nonobjective representation of the essence extracted from something real. Given all of these cryptic terms, it’s no wonder that people get confused! In this program, we’ll explore art that will help us to identify the differences between these terms—and lead to a deeper appreciation of both. Artists examined will include Wassily Kandinsky, Arthur Dove, Jackson Pollock, Louise Nevelson, Helen Frankenthaler, among others.

The date for this event is Wednesday, 17 June – 10:00 - 11:00 am EDT (New York Time) 14:00 - 15:00 (2:00 - 3:00 pm) GMT

Gertrude Greene: Purity

Gertrude Greene - Construction - 1935 - Painted wood, board, and metal - 16 x 24" (40.6 x 61 cm) - MoMA, New York (click photo for larger image)American artist Gertrude Glass Greene (1904-1956)  looked to the purity of Mondrian and Russian Constructivists Antoine Pevsner, Naum Gabo, and Vladimir Tatlin for her artistic foundations, avoiding overt commentary in her art. She became fascinated with the Constructivists’ ideas about unifying art and politics—their belief that when "purified," art would show the way for reordering society along higher planes. 

Even more than the theory, however, Greene was impressed with the work of such artists as Naum Gabo and began doing Constructivist drawings. 

Greene was also an activist. She helped establish the Unemployed Artists' Group, which was formed to lobby for federal support for unemployed painters, sculptors, and printmakers. 

“In 1937, when the American Abstract Artists was formed, Greene was its first paid employee. She tended the desk at the Squibb Gallery exhibition in 1937, passing out questionnaires and answering the queries and jibes about the art that was featured in the first annual show. Her own work was also shown that year in the opening exhibition of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting.”

Edgar Degas: A Passionately Informed Modernism

Edgar Degas - Self-Portrait - c. 1857–58 - Oil on paper, mounted on canvas - 10 1/4 x 7 1/2 in. (26 x 19.1 cm) - Clark Museum - Williamstown, MAHaving been born into a rich Franco-Italian banking family, Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was never short of money and never doubted his vocation as a painter. Indeed, his family encouraged him. Nevertheless, he was a shy, insecure, and aloof young man, which one can gather from his early self-portraits.

Degas made nearly forty self-portraits between 1854 and 1864, during his extensive travels in Italy. He studied Old Master paintings and developed his own style. His self-portraits were experiments, and most of them remained in his studio until his death. 

In the work featured here, painted when the artist was around twenty-three years old, Degas reveals a inwardness that suggests the mannerist influence of Jacopo Pontormo—combined with Degas’ own ideas about modernism and his informed understanding of art, past and present. Interestingly, he gave up painting his own face at age thirty-one. It was the faces of others that commanded his attention.

Joseph Stella: Precisionist

Joseph Stella - The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme - 1939, oil on canvas, 70 x 42 inches (177.8 x 106.7 cm), Whitney Museum of American Art, New YorkJoseph Stella (1877-1946) was a painter best known for his depictions of industrial America, especially his images of the Brooklyn Bridge. He is associated with the American Precisionist movement of the 1910s–1940s.

Stella's professional career left a lasting mark on American modernism, but it was just as fraught and unsteady as his personal life. Following the hugely influential 1913 Armory Show, he became a key figure in the New York art world. His style and subject matter changed frequently throughout his career, reflecting his own search for meaning and identity as an immigrant working in a rapidly changing urban America. Perhaps because of his outsider status, his images of industrial America were his most successful and influential. Indeed, his images of New York City landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge are depicted with the power and honesty only truly possible from a truly dynamic mind.