Portland Art Museum & PAM CUT
The Feast of St. Valentine’s Day has been celebrated in many different ways for well over a thousand years. No matter how you may feel about our contemporary version of Valentine’s Day, which tends to center romantic love, this can be a helpful reminder that love and connection are critical to our humanity. Photography has… Read more
Judy Pfaff is an innovator, acclaimed for her groundbreaking work in installation art during the 1970s. At a time when minimalism was prized, she approached spaces with maximal intention, filling galleries with maze-like accumulations of materials in linear and geometric shapes. Some have called it “painting in space.” Pfaff’s works on paper, like the one… Read more
Jess Perlitz’s Burned Beast is a mismatched creature, resembling an ill-fitted hobby horse with visible seams and dowels. The basswood has been hand-chiseled and sanded, and burnt in the final stage, at once creating a pragmatic and protective seal, while also signaling a kind of ritual act. The “shadow” is created by rubbing charcoal on… Read more
While he was a young artist, David Park experimented with the predominant style of the day: abstract expressionism. However, he made a decisive turn toward representation and broke away from the fashion of the 1950s American art world. Park favored painting the figure either alone or in groups, using thick layers of paint and blocks… Read more
Happy New Year! Artists have long marked the occasion by sending original prints to their friends and family. In this example by German sculptor and printmaker Renée Sintenis (1888–1965), the pup looks exhausted by the festivities. The artist took advantage of drypoint’s ability to create a raised ragged edge to capture ink (known as the… Read more
Curiously, this photograph is one of only two in the Museum’s permanent collection that includes “New Year” in its title. Made by Portland-based photographer Will Walker, it depicts people selling and purchasing copies of the New Year’s Day 1918 edition of The Oregonian. Thanks to @multnomahcountylibrary and its online research resources, I looked through the… Read more
Constantin Brancusi’s polished bronze A Muse is one of the anchors of the Museum’s collection of European modern art. The sculpture is a refined distillation of a woman’s facial features. A muse is a person, or a personified force, that inspires artistic creation. Brancusi depicted this subject several times, making versions in marble, plaster, and… Read more
Are you ready for the holidays? In this lithograph, American artist Adolf Dehn (1895–1968) offers us a view of Christmas Eve in 1931. There are only a few small presents beneath the tree–perhaps a reference to the Great Depression that was seizing the country–but the little fir is covered with lights and ornaments. Two busy… Read more
Artist Édouard Vuillard found inspiration from the people closest at hand, as seen in our current special exhibition, Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, 1889–1900. Vuillard’s mother, Madame Marie Vuillard, was a constant in her son’s life and in his art. More than 500 paintings in which she is depicted,… Read more
Emerging Zodiac is an exceptional example of Parkinson’s work and her dedicated interest in the human body in relation to the greater cosmos. The model of the dancing figure is artist Eiko Otake, a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist who has performed several times @picapdx. Inspired by Otake’s movements, Parkinson has documented these performances. Emerging Zodiac is… Read more