Author Archives: Linnea

Transitions

Posted on by

Lots of transitions this past week, from flying out of Mexico and landing in New York in the evening to the glimmer of city lights…

To a new (temporary) home by a different ocean in a rather chilly, wet climate….

Interspersed with lots of long subway rides…

Into Manhattan, which hasn’t changed a bit.

I’m going through a bit of reverse culture shock. Even now that I’ve gotten some clothes out of storage and settled into a new space and seen old friends, I still answer people with a “si” instead of a “yes” and am overwhelmed by the subway at rush hour. This week should be a bit easier, so hopefully I can tell you about my (incorrect) assumption that visiting the New Museum’s Skin Fruit exhibition would help me ease into things by reminding me how much I love the art scene here.

Biggest Art Theft Ever??

Posted on by

Workers at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris noticed a broken window before noticing the 5 missing masterpiece in what was probably a commissioned art heist this morning. Picasso’s ‘Dove with Green Peas’ (1912), Matisse’s ‘Pastoral’ (1906), George Braque’s ‘Landscape with Olive Tree’ (1906), Amedeo Modogliani’s ‘Woman with a Fan’ (1919) and Fernand Leger’s ‘Still Life with a Chandelier’ (1922) were taken. Read more about it here.

I love a good art theft–I just finished a novel about an art theif after all–and what a loot! If it weren’t for the fact that now I’ll never be able to view the works myself, I would be impressed. Currently I’m just jealous.

Julie Heffernan’s Constructions of Self

Posted on by


My article has been included in the new edition of Escape Into Life Magazine about the paintings of Julie Heffernan:

Julie Heffernan creates sensuous figurative paintings, like co-Yale MFAS, John Currin and Linda Yuskavage, but her luminous oils are patently unique among them and most working artists today. A Victorian impetus to conjoin, edging toward pastiche, creates artfully staged Surrealist environments. They avoid the mawkish or macabre by virtue of an evocative 17th century Baroque styling and the dignity with which she handles her primary subject, herself. Good construction is essential to the success of such works, built of disparate things suggesting disparate philosophies and ages. Yet the finished product is seamless, making it easy for the viewer to willfully suspend disbelief in the face of rampant artifice.

Heffernan currently has a show up at PPOW (which I have yet to actually see) in NYC, so go check out her fantastic, intriguing work if you have the chance. Her “Booty” show in 2007 made such a lasting impression on me I wrote this piece years later.