BEST AMERICAN ART by Alexandra Jopp

Exhibition – Enola Gay: Hiroshima as Tragedy By Alexandra A. Jopp Doves fly around the Atomic Bomb Dome at the Peace Memorial Park after their release during the memorial ceremony in Hiroshima, on August 6. The western Japanese city marked its 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing. AFP/ Getty Images / Kazuhiro Nogi Every year on August 6, the world observes the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Early on that morning in1945, a B-29 Superfortress bomber known as the Enola Gay, under the command of Col. Paul Tibbets, dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The explosion killed as many as 70,000 people in an instant and left tens of thousands more with injuries and illnesses that would later claim their lives. At that moment, a new era – a nuclear era – began. Every August 6 reminds us that memory cannot be morally neutral. The story of the Enola Gay is the story of Hiroshima’s tragedy. It is the story of the destruction wreaked by nuclear wea...

“Would you like another Sir?”   Glancing up as the ice melted away under the mellow heat as the summer afternoon sun slowly dissolved into evening, he smiled and gave a slight nod.   “Please”.   “Very good Sir, Crown Royal on the rocks” and the waiter went back inside, leaving him to continue his solitary contemplation.   A nice restaurant, he thought, nice view, good service – always attentive yet never obtrusive.   She liked it here too.   He knew that was one of several reasons why they came here.   They came often enough to be comfortable, but not so often as to be considered regulars.   He smiled at remembering one of his unwritten goals – “never go anywhere so often that you become a regular”. His fresh drink arrived and he nodded his thanks as the waiter disappeared.   How long had he been sitting there?   No real way to tell since he never wore a watch.   But as he swirled the ice in his new drink he knew the sun was lo...

By Alexandra A. Jopp                                   In the United States, Surrealism moved from a political and literary movement toward one that focused more on visual style. European artists in America explored low and high perspectives, moving from the metropolitan modernity of New York City to the “fantastically shaped landscapes and cactus-shaped deserts” of Arizona (Tythacott 160). The Surrealist artists’ experiences also included collecting exotica in New York shops and encountering members of the Hopi, Inuit and other native cultures. However, if Orientalism for European observers was largely a study of imagination, then for Surrealists, the interaction with the native peoples of North America remained not fully experienced. For example, Breton’s brief encounter with the Hopi included an ancestor worship ceremony during which he took notes on the tribe’s customs and beliefs that he late...

By Alexandra A Jopp The East has been very tempting to Western observers for centuries. It is an eternal enigma, an eternal “other,” unknown, exclusive and hidden from the eyes of Europeans under the black, silky veil of tokens and legends. It has typically been seen as a hot, restless, extremely emotional, vigorous, sometimes aggressive but invariably seductive and attractive world. Everything draws to it: its exteriors and interiors, its softness and aggressiveness, its love and hate. Delacroix Women of Algiers 1834    Copyright: http://www.annexgalleries.com/itemimages/sHS101.jpg  --> Most intriguing to European artists were often the East’s women. Almost always, there is a softness in the way they are depicted, but it is combined with a strength that is exhibited as they revel in the feel of their own glamour and essence. “Step back from the canvas, think, feel,” as Renoir would say (Nochlin 3). One must love a female body  in order ...

For some Europeans, especially those in the cultural elite, Americans will always be déclassé. The United States, in their conception, is the land where great art goes to be homogenized, a place forever more rearguard than avant-garde. Or, as Oscar Wilde put it, “America is the only country to go from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.” It is little surprise, then, that Surrealism, one of the most revolutionary art movements, came late to the U.S., not arriving to a significant degree, in fact, until the late-1930s, by which time it was already in decline in France. The American Man Ray, however, overcame the defect of his place of birth to become one of the era’s leading modernists, if not an official Surrealist. This, though, would only happen following the (immediate) failure of a New York-based Dada publication he founded with Marcel Duchamp and a subsequent move to Paris. Man Ray developed photographic techniques that would become crucial to Surrealism, us...

Slide 2 By Alexandra Jopp  Paris was in a state of magical metamorphosis between the World Wars   Ilse Bing, Eiffel Tower , 1934. Gelatin silver print  Ilse Bing, Danseuse-Cancan , Moulin Rouge, Paris, 1931.Gelatin silver print

Stuart Davis.  Smithsonian American Art Museum .  By Alexandra A. Jopp One of the foremost American Modernists to appear between the world wars, Stuart Davis became famous for cosmopolitan and remarkably bright compositions of American life --> Stuart Davis’s artistic interests were heavily influenced by European Modernist works exhibited at the 1913 New York Armory Show. The splendid display of Post-Impressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist innovations kindled his interest in Modern art. Inspired, Davis developed his idea that his paintings, which included coastal views of New England , electric signs, gasoline stations, French cafés, and Parisian buildings, should “reveal a life of their own, rather than mirror reality.” 1 He insisted that, “The act of painting is not a duplication of experience, but the extension of experience on the plane of formal invention.” 2 Thus, Davis ’s subjects came from everyday life, something he explained in his essay The Cube Ro...