Emile H Mathis Gallery – an intuitive perspective

October 12, 2024October 12, 2024

modern IMPACTS Celebrating 50 Years Of The Rosenberg Collection At UWM!

The Emile Mathis Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee opens the 2024/2025 season with a celebration of a generous gift of 20th Century Art from Henry and Blanche Rosenberg. The show is curated by gallery director Leigh M. W. Mahlik and encompasses the entire span of the Rosenberg’s collection. Primarily anchored in prints or other works on paper, Mahlik has also included a number of paintings and small table top scaled sculptures.

Visiting this show is incredibly rewarding. Most of the major European artists of the period are represented. And the work is certainly museum quality but the scale is a more personal size and invites you to spend some time getting familiar with it. Something that isn’t always available when viewing work of epic proportion. When I visited a second time, part of my intent was to take photos of work that spoke to me that I wanted to post with the article and hoped that they would speak to you. Unfortunately I got carried away and will have to make choices now so that I don’t overwhelm you with visuals. After all, I do want you to visit the gallery.

But the Rosenberg’s clearly had an eye for design. Although these works aren’t necessarily well known they are clean and crisp in design, and exhibit the exquisite draftsmanship that these artists are known for. And color is also a focus of many of these works. But there are some abstract pieces here that stand out too. This is a captivating show. And the best part it is easily accessible and free to the public.

My initial intention here was to quote a bit from Leigh Mahlik’s wall text about the show. But rather than try to edit it and retype it, I am just going to post a photo of the introductory text here. As it mentions, the collection has been instrumental in the educational mission of UWM and the Art History Department (which I understand is celebrating its 60th Anniversary this year). And with that in mind, Mahlik has also included short histories on the various ‘isms’ exhibited here…the show and the collection is certainly a delight!

I urge you to take the time to visit the Emile Mathis Gallery and enjoy this marvelous show. The Mathis Gallery is on the ground floor of Mitchell Hall which is on the corner of Downer Avenue and Kenwood Boulevard. The gallery is in the southwest corner of Mitchell but there is clear signage on the first floor at the entrances pointing you in the right direction. The Gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 10 AM to 4 PM and admission is free.

Modern Impacts: Celebrating 50 Years of the Rosenberg Collection at UWM continues through November 14th, 2024.

So there, I have given you plenty of links for more information. I will include one more here that is my take on the gallery as a whole: A Place For A Muse: The Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery @ UW – Milwaukee.

And now, I will include a few photos of the work that I loved from the show. I hope you enjoy them and then make plans for your visit!!

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Landscape, pastel drawing, c 1917

Maurice de Vlaminck, landscape, gouache, 1925/27

Barbara Hepworth, Sphere and Hemisphere, bronze, 1962

Maurice Utrillo, Orchampt Street, lithograph, 1925

Edmund Lewandowski, untitled, lithograph, no date

And yes, there are Picassos! Several of them but this one is particularly fun:

Pablo Picasso, Still Life With Caged Owl, oil on canvas, 1947

July 21, 2024

Post #501, Four Years, and I Find Out I Am A Theater Critic!

WOW! Jane Eyre, The Musical, At The Lake Country Playhouse was my 500th Post here on An Intuitive Perspective. WOW! Yeah, I know not all of them are scintillating and insightful commentary on the arts but the Monday Music feature instead…but I hope you are enjoying all of it! And I apparently lost count and missed our 4th Anniversary on March 20, 2024…you do lose track of time when you are having fun. And now, I am a theater critic as well!

So, how did I get here? I retired from my career as a computer programmer in 2018. And back in 2010 I was invited to contribute to someone else’s blog and I enjoyed the writing and comments and such. It was on another topic, not the arts.

And then I had an opportunity to work with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater as part of their Social Media Club. A little social group who were invited by the Rep to attend their performances and then comment on our experiences across social media. And to share and re-share the Rep’s various social media posts. I really took that to heart and wrote some pretty extensive and detailed reports on Facebook that I referred to as a ‘response’. That was a lot of fun and I started doing similar posts around other events.

And then I started to tire of my participation in that other blog but knew that I didn’t necessarily want to stop writing so I started An Intuitive Perspective. And the first thing I did was republish all of my older items from Facebook and then proceed with my new content. And once published, I share the link around a variety of social media including of course Facebook. That’s the bare facts…but how did I become a theater critic?

Well I was writing ‘responses’ to the shows that I was seeing at the Rep and as a long time subscriber at the American Player’s Theatre in Spring Green. And then a dear friend from the Social Media Club, Kimberly Laberge, Artistic Director at Kith & Kin Theatre Collective, invited me out to Hartland to experience the presentation of Cabaret that she was directing at the Lake Country Playhouse. It was an amazing play and an amazing cast and a cozy jewel box theater and I have been invited back again and again and I am in awe of the quality of the plays that they take on and the high level quality of each and every presentations.

And then somehow, I wish I remembered the history here, I also became involved with First Stage, which is a children’s theater in Milwaukee, that presents full blown musicals in the Todd Wehr Theater in the Marcus Performing Arts Center and smaller more serious fare in the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center. The PAC shows blend a cast of adults and young people in shows that will appeal to all ages…and I love them…and I love to watch the reactions of the youngsters in the audience as they experience real theater featuring their peers and their stories. And the other venue generally features the First Stage’s Young Company, high school age actors presenting more complex stories in an in the round black box theater…things like an adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People or Shakespeare’s Henry IV (part 1). I hope that we see many of these young actors playing at our local adult theaters eventually.

And I have been invited to see any number of other small theater groups put on amazing theater in small theater settings that I didn’t even know existed before now. And I am so grateful for the experience.

Now one thing that I regret. I had started an idea to present posts about smaller art museums around the state and mid-west under the title A Place For A Muse. I have only written two so far. I need to do better.

And what is this bit about being a theater critic? Well, as I said I have always labeled my articles and posts about theater as responses because I hadn’t studied theater or criticism directly. So I didn’t feel confident using the term review. But after attending the Lake Country Player’s presentation of A Rock Sails By, and talking with director James Baker Jr and lead actor in Rock (and Artistic Director of LCP ) Sandra Baker-Renick, I was convinced that what I write is in fact a review…and that is what they will be from now on! So I am a theater critic now, I guess!

So thank you to all who visit here and read my scribblings. And thank you to all of the theater people who have adopted me and allowed me to see your marvelous shows and write about them with abandon. It has been a very rewarding four years…and I hope we can continue!!!

May 1, 2024

What The Folk? American Objects From The UWM Art Collections!

This is a very exciting and challenging show and I apologize for taking so long to post about it. What The Folk? is a show of American Art Objects selected from the UWM Art Collections by curators Professor Kay Wells and Gallery Director Leigh Mahlik as well as students from Prof. Wells art history class on American Folk Art. The show is in the Emile H Mathis Gallery in Mitchell Hall and runs through May 9, 2024. The gallery is open from 10 AM to 4 PM next Monday through Thursday and admission is free and it is open to the public. If you want some additional background on the Mathis, check out my earlier post here.

The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee is fortunate to have an extensive collection of objects that fall into the various categories that make up the broad arena of Folk Art. This particular show focuses on American art objects, but of course not all Folk Art is American.

What The Folk? presents us with objects in all media, from paintings to sculpture, from assemblages to collage, from paper silhouettes to tin cutout street scenes and table top dioramas. All in a panoply of color and style…and just a joy to behold. But it’s not just the visuals that inform here. There is a clear explanation of the sub-genres considered part of Folk Art written on the walls of the exhibit: Outsider Art; Americana; Visionary Art; Self Taught Art. So at this point I am going to stop writing and just show you a few of my favorites from the show!!