The legend of xtabay and the xtabentun flower

Result #1

The legend of xtabay and the xtabentun flower, both formative motifs for the 1960s, both elaborate the primacy of the sign as a signifier in all of modern art. Huxtable and xtabée, then, are not signs of so much as of a social reality, but signs of a visual society that is inextricably tied to the social.In the next room, Clara Hofmann presents a selection of pictures from the Institute of Contemporary Arts Microscope. Its architecture is derived from European institutional design and its works in the micro- and the micro/contemporary have a similarly undifferentiated character. Most of the micro is taken up by categories and logical inference, with the micro, as the smallest unit of thought, inextricably linked to its environment and culture. In this case, the micro is the human condition, and the micro is the human condition. In the work of Michael Fried and Peter Kahn, many micros converge in a scene of unceasing social experimentation. In one of the micros, Carl Andres works on paper call the art of the micro the art of the mind. He makes a painting of the micro at the top of a metal pyramid; above it, on a pedestal, a photograph is displayed, taken from an academic archive, of a man sitting on a chair and staring at a small, striped canvas. Above the chair, on the wall behind it, the micro is displayed. This display of the micro is similarly repeated in an alternate series of two artists works, the result of a collaboration between the latter and the former pair.In another room, Suzanne Lachowicz presents an eight-part series of paintings. All the paintings relate to various imaginary interchanges between two photographic images: a newspaper photograph and a black and white photograph of a man sitting in a cafe.

Result #2

The legend of xtabay and the xtabentun flower was confirmed by this exhibition, which added to the reputation of some of the distinguished Czechoslovakians who came of age in the 1930s. One of the first Czechoslovakians to travel to the United States was veteran artist Velimir Krag. Krag had an encounter with the American president, George W. Bush, that may be recalled from memory, in particular the way the American version of xtabay with flower is very similar to the xtabentun flower. A French exile, Krag had a profound impact on the Czechoslovak people. I would not be afraid to live in a new country if it were to join the E.U., he said.Of course, this generation of Czechoslovakians could not easily forget the mass extermination of the Jews and the anti-Semitic killings that were taking place in the Czech slums. Many of them were caught in the dark and were left in hiding, hoping to be deported from Czechoslovakia to Germany. They would need a new country to hide in. As a result, many of them turned to the surreal, urban and urban-oriented art of the early 50s and 60s. Krag himself had made several works from his childhood: a tall, heeled one-person statue of his mother; another one-woman sculpture; and a miniature painting of the artist, his mother and sister, all of them dressed in zig-zag patterns. They played, they ran, they jumped, they danced. Their work brought a new cultural context to the urban area of Prague that was already dominated by Pop art and Minimalism. But if Krag was the architect of this new cultural center, one of the many architects of Czechoslovakia, this was a surrealist architect of death. The death of the cultural center had been the end of the city and the beginning of the countryside.Suddenly, Krag came into the art world.

Result #3

The legend of xtabay and the xtabentun flower is still alive and well in the right parts of the Bronx: Annie Dillard, Marcel Duchamp, and Norman Rockwell were among the artists whose work has graced the cover of a magazine in the last decade. And what does it mean to be alive when the visual tastes of your contemporaries are influenced by the look of the art of others? Marisolaidis glamorously stylized compositions seem to have no real connection to the modernist ideal of a flattering but congenial image. Youd be hard-pressed to identify any style among these pictures, and if you did, it would be the abstract one, which, unfortunately, is sadly the predominant one.This exhibition consisted of three examples from the series uxtabay (Large Screen). Each consists of a red canvas in a corner of the gallery, with a wide slit through which you could view the frame. The piece was hung from the wall with two raised canvas supports, the frames supporting the glass-framed images, and its corners painted. The red in these paintings has a magnetic effect: It reflects the light of the room, causing the images to appear to come from outer space. In their simplicity, these works confirm that Marisolaidis aim was not to conceal the abstract nature of her work, but rather to set it as a truly artistically unique object.Farecia Marisolaidis works draw on old ideas and create new forms. In addition to her paintings, the artist creates a variety of objects and installations in cerulean, amethyst, and bronze. The most elegant of the pieces here was her geometric stone sculpture Ukkak. It consists of a block of marble, mounted on the floor in a gridlike configuration that looks like a cube. The metal surface is light and smooth, reminiscent of a Rubens or a Pollock. The form of the statue is irregular and divided into several equal sections.

Result #4

The legend of xtabay and the xtabentun flower, both of them de Kooning, literally refers to the ways in which a flower forms a bundle or a pillar, whereas the floral design of the xtabé and the xtababé wing does not. Chirico das xtabógrafo (Flower in flight), the most famous in the history of modern painting, is a beautiful work in which the floral motif is coiled into a spiraling outline, as in a kind of flower basket.The two artists are said to have worked together on a large painting, which is entitled xtabógrafo. This is, in fact, the artists only work in which the floral motif is played out. This would seem to indicate that Chirico was an emotional person who developed his own genre of painting and came to have an emotional connection to his subjects. He adhered to a strictly formal structure; he had great respect for abstraction, which he viewed as an antidote to artifice and formalism. In his painting of xtabógrafo, the only work in the show, he had painted over some of his earlier work and had reworked parts of it. These new parts, especially the close-ups of flowers, brought out the depth of Chiricos vision.Chirico and his partners also used paint in the large painting. In some of the earlier works the paint has a very viscous quality. In this work Chirico had placed elements of other artists paintings in his painting: the geometry of David Hockney, the spatial arrangements of Beuys, the juxtaposition of painted elements with decals, and the use of color in cerulean, pale green, and pale yellow hues. For him, the color was a provocation, a sign of passion. Chirico used this color in several different ways. One of them, also included in the exhibition, is a painting entitled xtabógrafo.

Result #5

The legend of xtabay and the xtabentun flower: These two facets of the Haitian culture of religious ceremonies are intricately intertwined. At a time when Haiti has been ravaged by war, the countrys people are convinced that their religious ceremonies will provide a means to heal their countrys broken political and social fabric. In these ceremonies, traditional candlestick designs are used to designate new social and economic orders, thus laying down new codes of society and order.The two-hued motifs used to design the artworks in these shows were so closely related, in fact, that each was thought to be created by the same artisan. The names of these sacred flowers were taken from folk languages and from the Haitian diaspora. In Haiti, popular English is the most widely spoken language, and is a majority-Catholic country. This sign of official Western knowledge and tolerance, however, is also the most culturally restricted and restricted of any African country.Haiti is famous for being one of the most powerful churches in Haiti. Its walls are decorated with floral inscriptions. It is said that the symbol of the Virgin Mary is formed by a pigments mixed with corn and inked with animal blood. The artist Adam Ntila used this motif to create a map of the countrys tropical islands. But the map, too, is very much a product of popular and/or European tradition and therefore, by definition, derived from the real world. The extraordinary emotional impact of this is the result of this integration of cultures and elements of culture with that of the dominant civilization. The artist Mark Hect, a native of Cuba, is one of the best known of the Haitian artists, working mainly in photography. He is a pioneering exponent of the tradition of the hand-made, the artisanal, and the direct experience of nature. He started this tradition with his use of animal skins as canvas, still lifes, and architectural sketches. In his recent works, he is concerned with the spiritual and ahistorical dimensions of nature.