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OPENING: “Painting in Haiku,” work by Andrea Krauss, opened Wednesday at Studio Gallery; “In Res Media,” work Ruth Levine, opened Wednesday at Gallery 10; “Beautiful,” work by Virginia women artists, opened yesterday at Greater Reston Arts Center; “Don’t Be Scared, You’re Supposed To Be” opens tomorrow at Irvine Contemporary; graduate student graduation exhibition, with work by Joanne Kaufman, opens Monday at Washington Studio School.
CLOSING: “Purge/Deluge,” work by Kate Kretz, closes today at Hillyer Art Space; “More Photographs than Bricks” more at George Washington University’s Luther W. Brady Art Gallery; “Magical Realism,” works by Gina Clapp, more at City Gallery; “Circuits,” work by Charles Cohan, closes tomorrow at Curator’s Office; member and anniversary show closes tomorrow at MOCA DC; “Pentimenti: After the Flood,” work by Don Kimes, closes tomorrow at American University’s Katzen Arts Cente; “Scents and Medical Sensibility” closes tomorrow at Smith Farm Center’s Healing Arts Gallery; “Warhol’s Jews: 10 Portraits Reconsidered,” work by Andy Warhol, closes Sunday at the Washington DC JCC’s Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery; “Amsterdam to Budapest,” work by Holly Foss, closes Sunday at Foundry Gallery; “Paper Dolls,” work by Fierce Sonia, closes Monday at Torpedo Factory Arts Center’s Art League Gallery; work by Linda St. Clair and Ruth Ava Lyons closes Thursday, May 6 at Aaron Gallery.
ONGOING: See our listings.
After the jump, reviews of “Helio: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, works by Jenn Figg and Tricia Keightley at Project 4, and “Warhol’s Jews: 10 Portraits Reconsidered” at the Washington DC JCC’s Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery.
Critic Louis Jacobson had to visit the Corcoran’s Eadweard Muybridge twice—-and he didn’t see the photographer’s iconic moving images until the second. He writes:
So extensive is the lead-up to Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion” series that after 45 minutes of patiently working my way through examples of Muybridge’s early landscape, documentary, and commercial work, I had to duck out without seeing a single moving image. Instead I returned the next day for another 45-minute visit.
Organizing a retrospective this way is like assembling a Babe Ruth exhibition and devoting half of it to his pitching career. The early Muybridge had his share of achievements, but his animal and human freeze-frame work is what he’s remembered for—justly.
Critic Maura Judkis reviews works by Jenn Figg and Tricia Keightley at Project 4:
Jenn Figg and Tricia Keightley aren’t just linked by their blend of environmental and industrial inspiration, in which the branches of a tree are akin to a lever on a mysterious contraption. They’re also linked by something far more frustrating. For two artists who are all about building devices—whether in 2-D, like Keightley’s imaginary machines, or in 3-D, like Figg’s ladders and swings made of branches—the defining characteristics of these devices are their useless fragility. Literally, either could snap like a twig. The show is a blend of three aesthetics: Keightley’s paintings are space-age and steampunk all at once in their complicated dysfunction and Jetsons color scheme, while Figg’s neon-painted branches bring a crafty vibe into the fold. They stand out especially against Project 4’s glass cube, where a fragile wooden ladder stretches up toward a skylight as though it were an escape hatch—but thanks to the delicate curlicues of branches, one that can never provide escape.
City Lights editor Erin Petty looks at the JCC’s Warhol exhibit, which closes this weekend:
Thirty years ago, Andy Warhol produced a series of silkscreen prints called “Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century.” Warhol chose his subjects, which include Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, and Albert Einstein, on the recommendation of New York and Israeli art dealers, and dubbed the collection “Jewish Geniuses.” Critics panned Warhol, who had until this point displayed little interest in Jewish culture, deeming his work exploitive and commercially motivated. In “Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered,” audiences can again view this suite of 40-by-32-inch prints. For those who know Warhol mainly through his prints of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s Soup cans, these portraits may be surprising. There’s none of his signature repetition, and the colors are fairly subdued. What’s most interesting to see, though, is that the cultural relevance of Warhol’s subjects, and the debates surrounding them, have largely endured.