Issue 13 Art

The Radical Familiar: Matisse’s Early Nice Interiors

April 25, 2017 Essays, Issue 13, Issue 13 Art, Issue 13 Essays

The paintings may be best known for what they are not. They were made on the heels of work now considered Matisse’s most groundbreaking, the paintings from the period between 1907 and 1917 when he engaged with the early perceptions of modernism. His trajectory through these years widened his ambitions and shows him becoming more cutthroat within them, first leaving behind the saturated exuberance of fauvism, then, by degrees, flattening color and form into strange and austere near-abstractions.

Under Current: Tidal Pull

April 15, 2017 Issue 13, Issue 13 Art, Studio

By AMANDA VALDEZ

Where do your shapes come from? This is a common question I encounter.

I dislodge shapes stored in my body through the act of drawing. These shapes originate from a vast matrix of experiences. There are typically three categories of overt reference: art and archeological objects I seek out through research and travel; landscape; and direct physical experiences (floating on a lake, running in the woods, dance, aging, sex).