Michael Lobel

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 01, 2024 at 15:04 UTC

Homeless people can be arrested for sleeping, Presidents cannot be arrested for rampant graft and corruption done while in office. There is no clearer a summary of "conservative 'law and order'" than this.

14 replies 592 reposts 1466 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 01, 2024 at 17:04 UTC

Walt Kuhn, Portrait of Clowns, 1939 www.artic.edu/artworks/118...

1 replies 0 reposts 17 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 04, 2024 at 15:30 UTC

I've posted this image before, but it's still so relevant today: in this 1936 editorial cartoon for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, artist Romare Bearden labeled the Supreme Court as "The Great Barrier to Equality"

4 replies 155 reposts 388 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 30, 2024 at 22:57 UTC

Jacob Lawrence, "The Libraries Are Appreciated," from Lawrence's 1943 Harlem series, an image that depicts the Harlem Branch of the NY Public Library

0 replies 31 reposts 119 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 21:37 UTC

You might be surprised (or tickled) to learn this has an art historical precedent: a letter Guillaume Apollinaire wrote from the front in WWI, describing the wartime activities of various avant-garde artists

2 replies 0 reposts 4 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 19:04 UTC

This almost makes it worse...?

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 18:50 UTC

Relatedly: bsky.app/profile/mlob...

0 replies 0 reposts 16 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 17:49 UTC

Okay I get it, people are bummed today, but I feel like we could also use a little more David Wojnarowicz fight like hell energy

1 replies 17 reposts 96 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 15:18 UTC

Since there's a lot going on today and a lot of people are feeling stressed & overwhelmed, maybe this is a good time to introduce all of you to early 20th-century artist Tade Styka and his distinctive painted dog portraits

5 replies 73 reposts 239 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 14:40 UTC

Wow- I'm not a lawyer but really seems she took the gloves off here, huh?

1 replies 1 reposts 35 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 13:52 UTC

I've been saying for the last few years that George Grosz is the historical artist whose work most captures the vibe of our own contemporary moment, and today I'm doubling down on that assessment (George Grosz, The Painter of the Hole I, 1948)

0 replies 6 reposts 29 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 00:48 UTC

totchos please darth

0 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 00:31 UTC

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 00:03 UTC

Goya, Two Old Men Eating Soup, c. 1819-23

4 replies 11 reposts 63 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 14:43 UTC

How is your post even "word salad" by any reasonable definition of the term??

0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 14:06 UTC

I haven't heard that...? It's in the major catalogue raisonné, so I've always assumed it was. And it's just awkward enough that it tracks with his lack of painterly sophistication that early on (when he was in The Hague)

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 13:59 UTC

Thanks! In the book's introduction I focus on Van Gogh's "Flower Beds" painting at the NGA, which highlights the challenge of defining the category of nature with any precision. I'm low-key obsessed with the painting, which I know is not as sought after as his later work but I love all the same

1 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 13:22 UTC

🙏

0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 13:17 UTC

An update on my Van Gogh book: turns out it's been selling so well that two days after its release it's already seeing some delays on Amazon😮. The good news: if you're interested, it can be ordered directly from Yale Press, which has plenty of copies available: yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

1 replies 2 reposts 13 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 12:25 UTC

So @peterhuestis.bsky.social has been noting a new video format from London's National Gallery, where a curator holds up a reproduction of an artwork to discuss it, rather than standing in front of the *actual* work in the museum. Can anyone help explain what's going on here? I for one am mystified

2 replies 0 reposts 8 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 12:23 UTC

I just watched a few of them, and I'm dumbfounded. Is it a way to make art "more relatable?" Try out a new format from the typical "curator in the galleries" approach? I really want help understanding this!

3 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 26, 2024 at 21:31 UTC

Thank you! I'm very much hoping the book will shift people's sense of Van Gogh's work while underscoring his connections to our own current climate realities

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 26, 2024 at 16:40 UTC

For what it's worth, according to Patty just before the Floor Burger's first showing at the Green Gallery in NYC in 1962, she & then-husband Claes Oldenburg "inaugurated" the piece by making love between the patty and the bun

2 replies 1 reposts 6 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 26, 2024 at 15:07 UTC

A very happy birthday to the remarkable Patty Mucha, who turns 89 today!🎉 The left photo is from when I visited her in Vermont a few months ago; the other shows her in the 1960s with then-husband Claes Oldenburg along with the Floor Burger, one of the many products of their artistic collaborations

0 replies 3 reposts 25 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 26, 2024 at 09:37 UTC

I was just there a few weeks ago, and damn she was just so, so good (this is her bust of French naturalist painter Leon Lhermitte)

0 replies 1 reposts 9 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 21:03 UTC

Thank you! I know that for some it will be a challenge to think of Van Gogh's artwork in relationship to industry, but when you consider the period and places he lived in the connection comes to be utterly unsurprising

0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:09 UTC

I'm excited to share that today is the official publication date for my new book, Van Gogh and the End of Nature, from Yale University Press, which more firmly grounds Van Gogh within the industrial era in which he lived & worked (thread)

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

8 replies 47 reposts 173 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 15:47 UTC

🙏

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 15:03 UTC

Thanks so much- I really appreciate it. So happy to have this out in the world now

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:44 UTC

Thanks, Jeremy! So now am I allowed to take just a little rest...?🙏

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:42 UTC

Thanks so much for the invitation - looking forward to this in the fall!

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:41 UTC

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your interest in the book, which I'm glad to now have out in the world

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:31 UTC

Thanks so much, Joshua, and thanks for the signal boost - I really appreciate it!

0 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:30 UTC

The book ends on a contemporary note with the work of Latoya Ruby Frazier, now featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, who referenced Van Gogh in photographs she made while in residence in the very same Belgian coal mining region Van Gogh had visited more than a century earlier

1 replies 1 reposts 15 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:26 UTC

While the final full chapter, “Color,” discusses how artificial pigments, including many made from the industrial byproduct coal tar, transformed the broader chromatic world - along with Van Gogh’s palette - in the 19th century

1 replies 0 reposts 15 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:24 UTC

In chapter four, “Water,” I discuss Van Gogh’s proximity to despoiled waterways, from the period of his childhood—which historians tell us saw a marked increase in industrial water pollution in the Netherlands—to those nearby his famed Yellow House in Arles, in the south of France

1 replies 1 reposts 15 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:18 UTC

The book's third chapter, “Fire,” examines Van Gogh’s abiding interest in gaslight during his time in Arles, including in such iconic works as The Night Cafe and Starry Night over the Rhone

1 replies 1 reposts 18 likes

Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 14:16 UTC

In chapter two, “Earth,” I treat the artist’s deep connection to mining and excavation, particularly in his early experience in the Belgium coal mining region of the Borinage, known as the Pays Noir (the Black Country) due to the heavy shroud of black soot & dust that covered the terrain

1 replies 1 reposts 17 likes