Review

Updating Ruskin’s Sublime Landscape in the Age of the Anthropocene
Hyperallergic, July 2, 2018

Landscapes After Ruskin: Redefining the Sublime presents in its introductory text an intriguing proposition: “In a world overwhelmed by rapid technological advances, natural disasters, and a heightened sense of anxiety, it is still possible to find unexpected beauty.” Curated by New York photographer Joel Sternfeld and drawing on works from the Hall Art Foundation in Vermont, the exhibition at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery takes as its starting point the concept of the sublime in nature popular in the 19th century.

Landscapes After Ruskin, Grey Art Gallery, New York — ‘distressingly enchanting’
Financial Times, May 11, 2018

When 19th-century painters such as JMW Turner wanted to grapple with the sublime — which they did with obsessive regularity — they turned to nature’s terrors. Art offered Alpine storms, raging whitecaps, floods and earthquakes, all of which viewers could observe in the comfort of the gallery. Just as horror films stoke fear and also provide solace (that can’t happen to me!), the artistic sublime provoked a frisson of vicarious suffering.

Dark Beauty and Global Hipsters: The Art of Chen Wei

July 31, 2012 by Nora Boyd The fact that I sometimes wear black has been interpreted by friends back home in California as evidence that I have become a hipster, but I can’t say that I’ve ever felt like a hip New Yorker. I often envied the visitors to the gallery where I worked in […]