An exhibition I would not miss...

Loretta Lux, At The Window, Ilfochrome Print, 2004. Image ripped from Yossi Milo Gallery

I will be watching out for this one... The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY will be hosting an exhibition close to my heart.. Of course this is in the heart of the Hamptons and may not be meant for the hoi polloi, it does seem to resonate with smaller fry like us...

All the More Real: Portrayals of Intimacy and Empathy is on from August 12 through October 14, 2007.

All the More Real: Portrayals of Intimacy and Empathy considers the various strategies artists use to provoke or deflect an emotional response from the viewer. Composed of realist and hyperrealist imagery, the exhibition is not concerned with realism per se, rather it is focused on the drive behind realistic imagery: the effort to capture the essence of the thing itself. Concentrating on major themes such as birth, childhood, intimacy and self-identity, All the More Real presents a range of responses to these experiences, from emotional expressionism to ironic detachment. Co-curated by the artist Eric Fischl and by the museum’s Robert Lehman curator, Merrill Falkenberg, this exhibit is bound to touch some nerves — as it was no doubt intended to. Mr. Fischl, a part-time resident of Sag Harbor, has received international renown for his intensely psychological paintings depicting suburban America through the voyeuristic lens of frank sexuality.

The show will include work from more than 30 artists, from Gustav Klimt to Jenny Saville (born 1970), a rising star in the contemporary art scene. The artists selected are allied in their ability to depict the human form with a particularly heightened and immediate sense of mortality and an unsettling vulnerability.

In the juxtaposition of Alice Neel’s painting “Pregnant Betty Homitzky” with Ron Mueck’s sculpture “Mother and Child,” one can see this curatorial theme. Ms. Neel called herself “a collector of souls,” and the emotive glance of her subject here proves this sentiment. Mr. Mueck’s sculpture, in silicon and fiberglass resin, is a painstakingly detailed depiction of a woman who has just given birth, making an audience event from a traditionally private and personal moment. The work is grouped to illustrate how many artists use varying techniques to characterize a universal subject.

Among the other artists showing would be Diane Arbus, Chuck Close, Lucien Freud, Gustav Klimt, Loretta Lux, Egon Schiele and Cindy Sherman