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KEN GREENLEAF

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PMA show highlights MoMA’s influence

Defining the canon
It's a peculiarly American irony that the same man who basically invented the advertising model for the business of broadcasting radio and later television would have amassed a significant collection of modernist art.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | May 16, 2013

Stop making sense

The implied narratives of Per Kirkeby
The current show by the highly-acclaimed Danish artist Per Kirkeby at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is a broad survey of his work, with examples of his paintings and sculpture from the 1960s up to a few years ago.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | April 17, 2013

Marking mud time in Portland galleries

An afternoon’s wander
Galleries tend to hunker down for the annual Maine economic recession, and are more or less vamping until full spring. Which is OK, since they are often picking from gallery inventory, and they have some good things.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | March 20, 2013

Crossing the sea to go below the surface

Have ideas, will travel
The world is, as Tom Friedman has noted, flat, which doesn't take much label-reading to ascertain.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | February 20, 2013

Lois Dodd’s first career retrospective showcases a bright abstractionist

A brilliant example
"Lois Dodd: Catching the Light" is the kind of show that reminds you why you got interested in art in the first place. The paintings are terrific and the big, first-floor gallery at the Portland Museum of Art has never looked better.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | January 23, 2013

Two fantastic new painters at Aucocisco

Just getting started
The hardest thing about starting an art career is finding your own voice.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | December 12, 2012

Older pieces lend perspective to modern world

Back and forward
Events in the art business have been evoking the past for me these days, a function, I suppose, of accumulating high mileage.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | October 31, 2012

Taking an observation on Winslow Homer’s oeuvre

Blown away
"Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine," a show of more than 30 Homer works depicting Maine and the sea, commemorates the opening the newly-restored Homer studio on Prouts Neck.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | October 03, 2012

Jeff Kellar’s work plays with understanding

Having it both ways
Jeff Kellar's work is formal, cool, and reserved, bringing to mind the Dave Brubeck Quartet back in the "Take Five" days, dressed in dark suits and narrow ties with Paul Desmond blowing alto magic under his black horn-rim glasses.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | September 19, 2012

Skip the clichés — this is the real deal

Midcoast modernism
For a few generations now there's been a current of artistic intellectual seriousness in coastal Maine lying obscured beneath the fog of Wyeth popularity and other clichés that fill the galleries, restaurant walls, and roadside stands.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | September 05, 2012

Shows at two museums combine for a real lesson

Three Maine masters
The connections between Frank W. Benson (1862-1951) and Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and the Portland Art Society are pretty straightforward.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | August 15, 2012

PMA looks closely at Normandy

Artistic invasion
Walking across the first gallery at the Portland Museum of Art's fine exhibition, "The Draw of the Normandy Coast: 1860-1960," you encounter three paintings of the same subject that outline three of the different ways of thinking that were part of artistic life in the period.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | July 11, 2012

Catch the summer art buzz

Onward and upward
Some parts of Portland may get quiet in the summer, but there's plenty action in the art biz. And lots of cruise-ship visitors this year to quicken the streets a bit.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | June 06, 2012

Emily Nelligan inspires at Bowdoin

Seriously committed
My friend the late Sidney Tillim has been much on my mind in recent weeks.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | May 09, 2012

Installations at Coleman Burke

Quiet witness
"A Thickening Rhythm" is a show of five artists, one of whom, Julie Poitras Santos, also curated the show, at Coleman Burke in Brunswick.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | April 11, 2012

What should art be about? UMaine prof seeks answers in history

Benton's question
There are a few things to remember about Thomas Hart Benton, an iconic American artist who died in 1975 at the age of 85.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | March 28, 2012

Greenhut’s ''Portland Show'' welcomes spring

Local joy
Every so often Greenhut organizes a "Portland Show," gathering works mostly about the city, or by artists who are identified with it, or both.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | March 21, 2012

The PMA offers a glimpse inside Degas’s world

Private showing
The work of Edgar Degas has been getting much attention from museums in the past few years.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | February 29, 2012

Aucocisco shows early works from Bernard Langlais and Jean Cohen

Very fine years indeed
A long time ago in a galaxy . . . well, it was just New York and it may seem like ancient history, but it was real life and what happened is part of who we are. We do like our stories about those days, and they quickly accrete the patina, and lack of detail, of legend.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | January 18, 2012

A peek at Portland art shows in 2012

Radicals and friends
Degas and the PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART headline the news for early next year. We're so used to Degas and his point of view it's easy to overlook what a difficult and radical artist he really was.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | December 28, 2011

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