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Curator's Corner

Calligraphy/Typeface as Abstraction

Monday, September 23, 2013 | Karl Cole

Abstraction is defined as the reduction of form to simple (geometric, or organic) or decorative (a word I hate) shapes. I’ve blogged briefly about calligraphy in the past, but I rarely get a cha ...

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Curator's Corner

Commemorating Qi Baishi

Monday, September 16, 2013 | Karl Cole

Chinese painting, drawing, and graphic arts of the 20th and 21st centuries is an amazing combination of traditional and bold contemporary statements. Today I honor Qi Baishi, who died on this date in ...

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Curator's Corner

Beauty in Syria and Egypt: Blown Glass

Monday, August 26, 2013 | Karl Cole

Considering the unfortunate circumstances in Syria and Egypt presently, I thought I would present some art from that region to show what beautiful things have come out of Syria and Egypt. ...

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Curator's Corner

Pop Art, Again! Patrick Caulfield

Monday, August 19, 2013 | Karl Cole

While American art was “discovering” abstraction in the years immediately following World War II (1939–1945), Britain was exploring new territory. Their experience with abstraction h ...

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Curator's Corner

Art at the Beach: Tom Wesselmann

Monday, August 12, 2013 | Karl Cole

This week I present you with one of the more witty aspects of Pop Art. Pop Art parodied American culture in all of its aspects. Naturally, beach culture and tanning would be one of them. And naturally ...

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Curator's Corner

Fashion and Society: 1700s France

Monday, August 5, 2013 | Karl Cole

I’ve talked about fashion relating to politics. This entry will relate to society at the time of one of the most outlandish periods in fashion: France in the 1750s through 1780s during the reign ...

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Curator's Corner

Vacation: Leisure Time in Art

Monday, July 29, 2013 | Karl Cole

Since vacation is on everyone’s mind now that summer is in full swing, let’s just look at works of art that spout vacation, special day off, or festival. And, yes, this can be an art histo ...

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Curator's Corner

Sculpture as Jewelry: Liv Blåvarp

Monday, July 22, 2013 | Karl Cole

As you know, I consider artists in any medium to be ARTISTS, not “artisans” or “craftspeople” or “decorative artists.” When one looks at jewelry, even if it has bee ...

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Curator's Corner

The Wari: Andean Textile Arts

Monday, July 8, 2013 | Karl Cole

Recently a royal tomb of the Andean Wari culture was excavated in Peru about 175 miles north of Lima. It contained the mummified bodies of 57 royal women and 6 female servants (assumed sacrificed). Th ...

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Curator's Corner

American Originals: Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald-Wright

Monday, July 1, 2013 | Karl Cole

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs how spotty modernism was in American art in the early 1900s. Since the colonial period, American artists had a tenacious obsession with realism, including the wo ...

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Curator's Corner

Furniture conforming to...? Jere Osgood

Tuesday, June 25, 2013 | Karl Cole

Traditionally, furniture was designed to conform to the human body and what was being worn at the time. That’s why we see low side chairs with no arms during the mid-1800s when women were wearin ...

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Curator's Corner

Lacquer: Japanese Negoro Ware

Monday, June 17, 2013 | Karl Cole

The art of lacquer has long fascinated me. When I was in an Asian Art seminar in college (decades ago), I learned that ancient Chinese bodies coated in lacquer still had supple skin. Now that’s ...

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Curator's Corner

The Windsor Connection

Monday, June 10, 2013 | Karl Cole

My nephew just repainted our kitchen table and chairs. It occurred to me that the chairs are modern day versions of the Windsor chair. Our chairs even have the elegant h-stretcher joining the legs, an ...

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Curator's Corner

The Brueghel (Bruegel) Family

Tuesday, June 4, 2013 | Karl Cole

Having ancestry in northern Europe (Switzerland), I naturally gravitated toward Northern Renaissance art in college. I’m particularly fond of Flemish artists, because they reflect a similar unva ...

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Curator's Corner

A Unique Design: Maria Benktzon

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 | Karl Cole

In the mid-1900s, Scandinavian artists emerged at the forefront of modernism in all facets of design: architecture, furniture, and the art of household objects. Among them were many women who came up ...

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Curator's Corner

You Think You Know Ancient Egypt?

Tuesday, May 21, 2013 | Karl Cole

At first glance this small sculpture would lead the viewer to believe that it was firmly within the realm of ancient Egyptian art. It actually belongs to a culture that bordered dynastic Egypt, and tw ...

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