Category Archives: Art

New Light on the National Mall

By Roger Catlin | Published: March 25, 2012
The biggest movie in Washington is showing nightly on the continuous, circular wall of the distinctive Hirshhorn Museum, the Doug Aitken installation “SONG 1” that opened Thursday night. There on the three stories unfolds images of people in cars, alone on loading docks, working in kitchens or in factories or standing in parking lots, each [...]
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Out There at the Visionary Art Museum

By Roger Catlin | Published: January 3, 2012
Had my mind blown by the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore last week. It’s a kind of haven for folk art, inspirational works of whimsy and monumental obsessional works by those who may be indeed touched. It’s all housed in a splendid set of buildings decorated with the broken glass and mirror of folk [...]
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Into Space at the Corcoran

By Roger Catlin | Published: January 3, 2012
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is several blocks from the Air & Space Museum. But visiting artists Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro had space in mind when they were asked to create their first U.S. installation there. Thinking of space, and space travel, they created a gallery full of planets representing the Top 10 top [...]
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Warhol’s ‘Shadows’

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 29, 2011
Only a couple of weeks are left in the Warhol stand in Washington. In addition to “Warhol: Headlines” show at the National Gallery, closing Jan. 2, there is an epic presentation of  the epic “Warhol: Shadows” at the Hirshhorn, that I just got to this week. The man who made pop from mass produced images [...]
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‘Work of Art’ Pieces On Sale Online

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 14, 2011
In one of the niftiest commercial tie-ins for a reality show, creations by the contestants on Bravo’s “Work of Art: The Next Artist” have been made available to buyers at OverstockArt.com. A few artists have their works available every week, including last week, Dusty’s street art of American surveillance cameras, right, Young Sun’s smiley “Jaded [...]
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Patti Smith Exhibits at the Atheneum

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 12, 2011
As an artist, Patti Smith is nothing if not multi-disciplanary. She began as a poet. She hung around with Robert Mapplethorpe. I read her as a rock critic in magazines like Circus before her first recordings slashed a hole into the complacency of rock, circa 1976. She was influential and inspiring in her role as [...]
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A Bad Review for Bob Dylan, Artist

By Roger Catlin | Published: October 15, 2011
It was 50 years ago last month when a New York Times critic gave a big boost to Bob Dylan, effectively kickstarting his music career. But it was quite a different critic today who wrote about his art show in a gallery there. Already the Times had written about “The Asian Series” at the Gagosian [...]
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Warhol’s Headlines

By Roger Catlin | Published: October 12, 2011
If he hadn’t turned the art world on its head, Andy Warhol would have been pretty good in newspaper layout. He had a clear appreciation for the bold italics of a well chosen banner, liked the style of a standalone photograph and caption and the overall bold impact of a tabloid page one. In the [...]
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