The Tale of Auguste’s Brain

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, After the Bath (1888)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, After the Bath (1888), oil on canvas, 25 ½ x 21 ¼ inches, Wikipedia images
by D. Dominick Lombardi

It was probably somewhere around 1987 when I read a quote attributed to Auguste Renoir in an art magazine. I don’t recall the exact passage, but he likened his paintbrush to his penis when discussing why he so obsessed over capturing the erotic aspects of a woman’s flesh. A month or so later I made a drawing, I was in my pseudo Post Modern stage making sculptures that looked like they could have been executed in the nineteen teens, twenties or thirties, and the subject was my interpretation of Renoir’s sensual sentiment about his female nudes. Continue reading “The Tale of Auguste’s Brain”

dArtles

by Steve Rockwell

dArt logo with an image by an anonymous photographer of Joan Mitchell and Jean Paul Riopelle in Chicago, about 1957. Yseult Riopelle Archives. Private collection © Estate of Jean Paul Riopelle / SODRAC (2017)

It has been nearly 15 years since dArt magazine has stuck its digital fingers into the design and look of its online presence. It’s hardly late-breaking news that the torrent of information flowing through our devices is ever-massing. Its invasive waves lap freely into our private and public spaces. Continue reading “dArtles”

Editorial Contributors

D. Dominick Lombardi is represented by Kim Foster Gallery in New York, NY and Prince Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1978, Lombardi has curated over 100 exhibitions in a variety of museums and galleries. Titles include: Water Over the Bridge, Tondo, Tondo, Tondo, Duchamp’s Plumbing, Shaky Ground, reVision, Through the Veil of the Soul,  HEAD, Eye on the Storm, In Their Own World, Monkey Spoon, Anonymous, Bóm: How art can disrupt, reorient or destroy, Fear is a Four Letter Word, Speaking in Strings: Ken Butler and Kurt Coble, Critics Select I & II, Over the Top – Under the Rug, FUNKADELICIDE, The Impact of War, The Waking Dream, The Tradition  of  Icons and Champions of Modernism: Non-Objective Art of the 1930s & 40s and Its Legacy. For past 21 years, Lombardi’s 400 plus features, interviews and art reviews have appeared in such publications as as The New York Times (1998-2005), The Huffington Post (2012-present), ARTslant (2012-14), Art in Asia (S. Korea) (2007-09), Public Art and Ecology (China) (2011-12), Sculpture (1999-present), dART (2005-present), Art Papers (2004), ARTnews (1997), ARTlies (2004-09), Juxtapoz (2002), New Art Examiner (1997-98), Night (1996-97), Art New England (1997-99), NYARTS magazine (2004-09) and culturecatch.com (2006-present) among others.

Dominique Nahas is a former museum curator and director. Currently an independent curator and critic based in Chatham, NY and Brooklyn, Nahas lectures widely and teaches critical studies in the Fine Art Department at Pratt Institute. He is a contributing essayist in the 2021 monograph on the art of South Korean artist Lee Jinju recently published by Artbook Press Ltd.

Kōan Jeff “KJ” Baysa, a physician and farmer who merges the areas of science and contemporary art, has participated in medical missions in conflict zones and organises art activism projects globally. A Clinical Immunology Fellow at UCSF, he practiced medicine in the Bay Area, Manhattan, and Honolulu and regards the cultural constructs of disease and the well-being of the individual in the context of the health of the planet. An alumnus of the Whitney ISP, he is a member of AICA, the international association of art critics and IKT, the international association of curators of contemporary art. The Founder of iBiennale, the globally itinerant art event, he is a curatorial advisor for the Fresh Winds Biennale in Iceland and the Congo Biennale in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well as the Co-Founder and Co-Curator of the Joshua Treenial in California’s Mojave Desert. His latest project is iB202X, a series of art activations spanning the decade. Positions: Program Board Advisor-Art Omi; Cultural Advisor-World Council of Peoples for the United Nations; Alumnus-Advisory Committee of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics; Member – Cultural Agent-Curators Network; International Advisor-Dag Hammarskjold Plaza; Advisory Board-Kaus Australis, Rotterdam. A Ford Foundation grantee surveying contemporary art in Vietnam, he has curated exhibitions and activities in China, Japan, Chile, Croatia, Mexico, Korea, Austria, Canada, Ireland, England, Ukraine, Holland, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and throughout the US. Writing catalog essays and reviews, Dr. Baysa has lectured at the United Nations, MoMA, Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum, National Academy of Sciences, Phillips Collection, Hanoi University of Culture, and the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study. He travels internationally for art events and divides his time between New York, Honolulu, and Los Angeles.

Christopher Hart Chambers is an artist based in NYC. He also writes about art for several periodicals and occasio-nally curates exhibitions. Last year the Nassau County Museum of Art’s Contemporary Gallery featured a solo exhibition of his work. Also last year he co-curated with Al Diaz the Graffiti Street Art exhibition at the Bishop Gallery in Bedstuy, NY.  www.christopherchambers.com

Emese Krunák-Hajagos is an art writer with publications in dArt International magazine (Toronto/Montreal/New York/San Antonio), NY Arts (New York), Artes Magazine (Connecticut), Huma 3 (Madrid/Venice), Balkon (Budapest), Interpress Graphic (London/Prague/Budapest). She writes in English and Hungarian and a few of her articles are translated into Spanish. She is member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). Emese is co-founder and co-publisher of artoronto.ca, an online art magazine covering the visual art scene in Toronto. Her holistic approach brings together the history, philosophy and cultural atmosphere of the times, providing a more complex understanding of the art. She lives in Toronto.

Siba Kumar Das is a former Indian diplomat and a United Nations official who writes about art – an interesting thing to do when a global art is coming into being. Serving the United Nations Development Program in New York and several developing countries, he addressed global development challenges at international and local levels, concentrating on poverty eradication and the reduction of inequalities and exclusion. He now lives in the United States as a citizen, splitting his time between New York City and upstate New York. He has published articles on artists living in the Upper Delaware Valley, and is presently focusing on art in a more global context. His experience in development and interest in art has brought home to him that artistic creation and development success are born in similar crucibles.

Gae Savannah is a sculptor/writer based in New York City. She works
in new materials including plastics. Savannah also writes for Sculpture magazine. She teaches Contemporary Art, Film, and Writing in the MFA program at School of Visual Arts.

Peter Frank is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post. Until July 9, 2008, he was a long-time critic for LA Weekly. He was a past editor of Visions Art Quarterly and was an art critic for The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News in New York. Frank contributes articles to numerous publications and has written many monographs and catalogs for one person and group ex- hibitions. He has also organized many theme and survey shows for placement at institutions throughout the world, taught at colleges and universities and lectured in North America and Europe.

Mary Hrbacek is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (aica – usa), since 2013. She has written more thant 400 analytical reviews of NY art exhibitions during the past 21 years.She has contributed art reviews for publications that include whitehotmagazine.com, The M Magagazine, NY Arts Magazine, dArt International, Resolve 40 Online Magazine, culturecatch.com, and  NYartbeat.com. Hrbacek has been exhibiting artwork for more than 35 years at galleries and museums in New York City, across the United States, in Europe and in Asia. Museum shows include those at The National Academy of Design, and The Muscarelle Museum of the College of William and Mary, where she was awarded the Juror’s Choice prize by the Director of the Drawing Center, NYC. In 2005 Hrbacek showed at the Parrish Art Museum in an exhibition curated by Sara Nightingale. Her solo exhibition was a charchoal drawing show at Roger Smith in 2006. She has had four solo exhibitions at Creon, NYC including Peopled Forest of My Mind, curated by Elga Wimmer and Life Before Life on view in 2015.  Her show, Vital Connections, curated by Suechung Koh appeared at Gallery D’Arte, NYC. Paris Koh Fine Arts presented, “The Painted Veil That Those Who Live Call Life” in NYC, 2017. Elga Wimmer PCC curated, “Mary Hrbacek: Human Nature: Pefka and Sycamore,” NYC in 2020. Her paintings have been included in more than 30 group exhibits in New York City, Toronto, California, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Canada and South Korea. Hrbacek’s work may viewed at: https://www.maryhrbacek.com and artesmagazine.com

Thalia Vrachopoulos holds a doctorate in the Philosophy of Art History from the City University of New York Graduate School. She has served as a curator for over one hundred national and international exhibitions accompanied by scholarly catalogues. Dr. Vrachopoulos is a full-time professor of the visual arts at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. She has written scholarly essays and reviews for NYArts Magazine, Visual Culture AD, Part, +-0 , Public Art, Art in Culture, Art in Asia and Sculpture and has been included in many international panels. Dr. Vrachopoulos recently co-authored a book on Hilla Rebay, the founder of the Guggenheim Museum, which was released in December 2005 by the Edwin Mellen Research Press. Dr. Vrachopoulos’ contributions have been recorded and have become a permanent part of the Yale Library collection of Accomplished Women in the Arts.

Antje K. Gamble is an art historian of Italian modernist sculpture and midcentury transatlantic exhibition practices. She is Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art & Design at Murray State University. From Fascism to the Cold War, her work examines the exhibition, sale, and critical reception of Italian art and how it shaped and was shaped by national and international sociopolitical shifts.

Julie Garisto is a Largo High and USF grad who’s currently enrolled in University of Tampa’s Creative Writing MFA program, Julie Garisto is an assistant editor/contributor at the central Florida nonprofit arts agency Creative Pinellas, where she covers arts and music events. Julie also contributes to the Tampa Bay Times as well as other publications. She served as arts and entertainment editor for Creative Loafing (2010-2015).

Eric Nord is an artist, curator, and writer. He received his degree in Art History from the University of Denver. He previously worked for Sperone Westwater Gallery, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, and was the Executive Director of the E. E. Cummings Centennial Celebration while living in New York City in the 1990s. Currently he is the Executive Director of Leon Nonprofit Arts Organization in Denver, Colorado.