Abstract Art Online


Director Joseph Walentini





	Artists Websites
	Claire Seidl Farrell Brickhouse Joe Walentini Emily Berger Ravenna Taylor Marianne Van Lent Janet Shapiro

Galerie Cerulean Presents

Marianne Van Lent
The Cloud Paintings

January 19th to March 1st 2010

Marianne Van Lent - Click here to enter the exhibition

In this show Marianne Van Lent has shifted her emphasis of landscape narrative (as tied to the sea) with a particular view skyward toward the clouds. By contrast the last series of paintings gave a more even emphasis to earth and sky. But the artist has also raised the ante in making paintings that are more expressive. The last body of work was quieter in expression with the primary divisor between the sky and the sea. Not so these works; everything is for more dynamic from the color contrasts to how the forms are rendered.

Click on the image above to enter the exhibition

Click here for the full press release.

Galerie Cerulean, is an online exhibition space sponsored by Abstract Art Online with an emphasis on a wide array of and an open definition for abstract art.

Galerie Exhibition Schedule

Farrell Brickhouse Setember 15 - October 26, 2009
Claire Seidl October 27 - December 7, 2009
Joe Walentini December 8 2009 - January 18, 2010
Ravenna Taylor March 2 - April 12, 2009
Emily Berger April 13 - May 24, 2009
Janet Shapiro May 25 - July 6, 2009

Art in the Age of
Electronic Communication

II ripped off my title for this piece from Walter Benjamin�s 1935 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. That essay focused on tying art to Politics as a contemporary concept and provides a criticism of the art object as unique. As Benjamin wrote: �For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art for its parasitical dependence on ritual�. The ritual refers to the primitive, feudal, or bourgeois structures of power and its further association with magic (religious or secular). There is a nice Socialist appeal to this notion I suppose, but it is seems rather dated today.

For one thing, Benjamin assumes that the problem lays with the art rather then the audience. With mechanical reproduction art is supposedly open to everyone. But what do we end up with today art that inspires the masses because it�s accessible to everyone? No, instead the gamut runs from someone like Tom Kincaid with his sappy, sentimental and badly rendered paintings knocked out as �product� to the lowest common denominator of pornography. Perhaps Warhol was the best shot at making art for the people but the average

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