On the crest of a wave

If David Hockney has now been anointed Britain's Greatest Living Treasure, then there is little doubt who is the greatest master of the past.

J M W Turner is beloved not just in his home country as the supreme English water colourist but internationally as one of the true giants of art. We like him here for the extraordinary way in which he pictured the sea and the scenery suffused with light and mist and mood. Abroad, they admire him most for the way that he pushed painting, in oil as in watercolour, to the extreme edges of representation to the point where it became virtually abstract.

You can see that point and Turner's constant experiments with effect in a glorious show of some 80 of his works at the new Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, built on the spot where Turner came every year to stay in the boarding house run by his mistress, Mrs Booth. Opened last year, it's a space, designed by David Chipperfield Architects, full of light and height. Both are needed for Turner's later work, where space and light themselves become the subject of his art.

So far, Turner Contemporary, a group founded 10 years ago, has concentrated almost exclusively on modern art from here and abroad. This is its first exhibition of its namesake and one, fittingly perhaps, which has been curated not by themselves but by the directors of the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg and the Muzeum Narodowe in Krakow in Poland, where it has already been shown before arriving here.

All to the good, one might say. The temptation of a home-grown exhibition would have been to concentrate on Turner's work done in Margate and the north Kent Coast, which he loved. But, while this show does include half-a-dozen of his local views, including some brilliant studies of the skies and clouds viewed from the harbour, the curators this time have ignored place and gone for what makes Turner incomparable as an artist: his determination to capture nature itself in all its moods and energy.

Its title, Turner and the Elements, says it all. Turner, so the thesis goes, lived at a time when science was breaking down all the old divisions of nature – in this case the four classical elements of fire, water, earth and air – and replacing them with a nature far more fluid and dynamic. Turner was the artistic expression of it.

That may well be a somewhat over-didactic view of a man so resolutely down to earth and taciturn as Turner, an old grouch if ever there was one and mean to boot, if the recollections of his mistress are anything to go by. Turner knew and was friends with scientists of his day and he was certainly interested in theory, particularly of colour. But it is hard to see him driven by the theories of science. What he set out to do, from his early days of embracing the romantic theories of the "sublime" in nature, was to depict sensation – the sensations experienced at sunrise and sunlight, in storm and dead calm, in rain and mist.

The division of the works into the four elements proves, however, a surprisingly effective way of witnessing his ambition as he develops and pushes his skills. You start with "earth" and the classic watercolour views of mountain and gorges, in which the artist expresses the sublime in the majesty of nature. But as his art progresses, the outlines are blurred and the forms dissolve into each other in the fluidity of the watercolour and the confidence of the brush.

With "fire" it is the same. The paintings start with the depiction of the event, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the burning of the House of Commons. But by the end it is the colour and energy of the fire itself that obsesses the artist, while with "water" and "air" the progression from observation to pure sensation is even more complete.

Move on into the room of "fusion", when Turner abandons all divisions between components, and you are taken into works so far ahead of their time that you have to look twice at the dating to believe them. In watercolours such as Colour Beginning of 1820 and the The Rainbow of the same period or Mont Saint Michel of 1827, you are privy to a mind that is attempting (and succeeding) to find a means for painting to express the essence not the appearance of nature. Of course, these are colour sketches, the workings of a mind experimenting with technique, not the finished products. There is always a danger with Turner in reflecting backwards a modern vision of a man whose aims were often more conventional and backward looking.

But if you doubt Turner's intentions, a final section shows this extraordinary artist translating what he was experimenting with watercolour into the much less malleable medium of oil. Paintings such as Stormy Sea with Dolphins of 1835-40 (spot the dolphins if you can), Shade and Darkness – the Evening of the Deluge from 1843 and Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth of 1842 are just stunning in the clear light of the Turner Contemporary building. They have titles. Turner has even added "the author was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel left Harwich" to his snow storm scene. They have subjects. But in the end they are beyond that. They are as near as you can get to abstraction without going the full hog. No wonder the American abstract expressionist, Mark Rothko, revered him and donated nine of his Four Seasons paintings to the Tate to hang near the Turners.

Marciano friend is also a gifted artist

As Brockton prepares to honor homegrown boxing legend Rocky Marciano, a boyhood friend and his art are also getting some overdue attentions.

John Jantomaso, 91, whose “best pal” was Marciano trainer Allie Colombo, started painting when he was selected in middle school as one of two students to receive free lessons from the art teacher at Brockton High School.

“I did an oil with him,” said Jantomaso. “We had it three-quarters done; we went to continue it, and somebody stole it.”

His teacher felt so bad about it he made Jantomaso the subject of a portrait that continues to hang in the living room at his Westwood Avenue home.

After marrying at the age of 26, Jantomaso began to lose interest in his artistic endeavors and did not paint or draw for more than 40 years.

That changed three years ago after health problems forced him to give up golf, one of his favorite pastimes.

“My health stopped me from playing golf the way I used to,” said Jantomaso.

“I had to consume my time in another manner, and I said, ‘I’m going to start drawing’”

Jantomaso’s work is heavily inspired by photographs he sees in magazines. In a three-year period, he has sketched famous figures such as Halle Berry; Tom Brady; Ronald Reagan; golf writer and Brockton native Herbert Warren Wind, who coined the term the “Amen Corner” and, of course, “The Rock from Brockton.”

Phil Sheppard, the executive director of external relations at Massasoit Community College, had a chance meeting with Jantomaso at Thorny Lea Golf Club and was amazed when he saw his work.

“It absolutely took my breath away,” said Sheppard. “He does marvelous work.”

Sheppard recently brought a group of art experts from the college to Jantomaso’s basement studio so they could see the quality of his work.

“Representing the college, representing myself, I want to do something to honor John to honor his work, particularly this year with the Rocky Marciano statue coming to Brockton,” said Sheppard, “He’s a Brockton institution.”

Brockton is planning a serious of events to commemorate Marciano, culminating in the statue dedication ceremony at Brockton High School on Sept. 1.

David Hockney's Yorkshire

It might seem unlikely but the west coast of America and the east coast of Yorkshire have something in common. According to David Hockney, it's "big skies" and you get a sense of what he means at his new exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Better still, if you go to the Yorkshire Wolds, not only do you see what he means but you're also rewarded with an unheralded and unspoilt slice of England.

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture is both a celebration of the artist's return to his roots and of a subtle, spacious and remote landscape. Hockney once drew inspiration from the exotic climes of Los Angeles, but for several years he's been back in England, living and working in Bridlington (he was born in Bradford). Explaining what drew him to East Yorkshire and the Wolds, he said: "It's a landscape that I've known since childhood [he used to work in the fields and cycled the roads as a teenager], so it has meaning, but I never thought of it as a subject until 10 years ago. It is full of lovely little valleys and not many people."

Perhaps surprisingly, it's a region that never previously troubled great landscape painters such as Turner and Constable, but this exhibition at the Royal Academy, comprising some 150 works, the majority inspired by East Yorkshire and dating from the past four years (and quite a few from the past 12 months), shows the area in a new light.

Clearly Hockney, now 74, has been energised and enthused by the task, which has allowed him to explore his fascination with landscape and the seasons, and to capture them in a variety of media, from oil and watercolour to iPad, computer and on film.

I began my Hockney trail away from the Wolds in West Yorkshire at Saltaire, not far from Hockney's birthplace. Here Salts Mill, a beautifully restored Victorian textile mill, houses the world's largest permanent collection of Hockney's work.

The mill, a painting of which features in the RA exhibition, was the brainchild of Titus Salt, a Nonconformist mill owner and philanthropist who also built houses for his workers – still there and now privately owned – a fine Italianate church, a school, a hospital and a lovely park. Sobriety and hard work were all he asked in return.

In the 1850s, Salts Mill was the largest factory in Europe and the fact that it is still standing proud is down to the foresight of the late Jonathan Silver, an entrepreneur and friend of Hockney who bought the building in 1987 and created what it is today: a gallery and arts centre run by his family with several high-end shops, a restaurant and a smart café.

Like Hockney, Silver was born in Bradford and it was he who was instrumental in getting the artist to use Yorkshire as a subject once again. That was back in 1997 following a prolonged stay in his home county by Hockney, who then painted the Wolds from memory when he returned to Los Angeles.

However, it is not just the landscape that is eye-catching. As we wound our way through the lanes we passed a host of architecturally impressive villages, such as Lund (home of The Wellington, an excellent pub), South Dalton (where you'll find the Michelin-rated Pipe and Glass Inn, recently voted the UK's pub of the year, and St Mary's Church with a spire once described as "an arrow in the breast of the Wold"), Londesborough (fine parkland) and Warter (outside of which Hockney painted his vast canvas Bigger Trees Near Warter, currently on show at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford).

There are country houses too, none better than Sledmere House, owned by Sir Tatton Sykes, whose family have been important players in the region since the middle of the 18th century. Although gutted by a fire in 1911, the Georgian house was beautifully restored and Hockney, a friend of Sykes, celebrated his 70th birthday there.

Not to be outdone, the estate village of Sledmere itself is another attraction, with its immaculately kept red-brick houses and a fine pub, The Triton Inn.

Leaving Saltaire and heading across Yorkshire towards the Wolds – a crescent of chalk hills and dry valleys running from the Humber Estuary to Flamborough Head – you begin to discover what Hockney sees in the area: a "spatial experience", as he has put it.

Edith Devaney, co-curator of the RA exhibition, said the reason he left England was for "the light and space of America's west coast. Now he has come back and found it here." West Yorkshire may be wilder (and attract more people), but here on the east coast this undulating, manicured, arable landscape offers a kind of freedom and wide-open views, while the changeable weather, distinct seasons and light (because of the proximity to the North Sea) have also fuelled the artist's vivid imagination. It's also a region that Hockney defends passionately; last year saw him attacking plans to build several "ugly" wind turbines in the Wolds.

With many foot and cycle paths, it's not a difficult place to explore but we did it an even easier way – by car. In the company of two engaging locals, David and Susan Neave, historians and friends of Hockney, I headed for the particular spots that have inspired him, driving along Woldgate, a quiet country road, that has been a fruitful source of work: The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, for example, forms the centrepiece of the RA show and comprises one huge oil painting and 51 iPad prints.

Presidential Portrait Stolen From Southgate House

A former American president has gone missing from the Southgate House. Owners say someone took off with an original oil painting of Andrew Jackson.

The painting is believed to have been taken sometime between December 15th and 16th.   Local 12 News Reporter Rich Jaffe has more on the mystery of the missing man.

The painting is part of a collection of 8 portraits of Presidents who were believed to have visited the Southgate House during the life of it's original owner, Richard Southgate. The paintings were commissioned by the most recent owner Ross Raleigh...and no one can figure out how something so big made it out of there when the place was full of people.

The set of Presidential portraits hung in Juney's Lounge on the first floor of the Southgate House. The missing portrait used to hang in the middle of a wall, above the bar's piano. It's an oil painting of President Andrew Jackson and it's surrounded by an ornate wooden frame. Painted by Kentucky artist Jerry Bond, it's hung there since they were painted in the late 80's early 90's and "We've never had anything happen to the paintings before."

Ross Raleigh commissioned the paintings because the artist was a personal friend and he wanted to share the buildings history with his faithful patrons. The portrait somehow disappeared between 7 pm December 15th and 5 p.m. on December 16th during business hours. Adding to the mystery is the fact that while the club was open there was a bartender in the room, and a security guard at the front door. "We all sat there...how did this happen, how did they get it out...why did they want to do it? Did they particularly want Andrew Jackson as opposed to the other Presidents because out of all of them Abraham Lincoln would be the most desirable to a Presidential painting collector."

Knowing the club was closing, the speculation is someone wanted their own personal piece of memorabilia. But the theft was a double blow to the club owner Ross Raleigh. "We were having to leave the building, he had Jerry paint these specifically for him. Jerry passed away in 2004 so it's not like he can have him paint another one for him so it was very heartbreaking for him."

Raleigh tells me the painting's worth about $3500 but clearly the emotional value of it since it was done by his friend is a lot higher. The owners considered taking the paintings down just before the theft, but they wanted patrons to be able to enjoy them through the last evening. Southgate House closed on New Year's Eve.

Sentimental journey

Ah, sentimentalism, it is a balm, it is a trap. It is the comfort food of emotions, the ready pleasure of the fattening bite that we forgive even as it turns to flab. If only it worked so well in art, where even a little flab is enough extra weight to bring you crashing down from the wall.

It’s one thing to have sentimental feelings when seeing a piece of art — say, you see a painting of a farm, and you grew up on a farm so you savour a moment of nostalgia, though your feelings will not be shared when the painting is seen by the next person, who did not grow up on a farm.

The trouble begins when there are no layers other than sentimentalism or nostalgia, and the singular purpose of the painting is to evoke sentimental feelings, to churn up the comfort-food of warm memories. That’s why I cringed when I read the news release for Crystal Beshara’s exhibition of new paintings at Orange Art Gallery in Ottawa. The release says, “It is with this brand new body of work that she shares a cosy slice of nostalgia.”

When I read the words “new paintings” on the same page with the words “cosy slice of nostalgia” I want to run away, fast and far. I’m glad I didn’t, because Crystal Beshara is learning to tame her sentimental heart, and the artistic growth can be seen in the paintings — some strong, some not so much — now at Orange Gallery.

Beshara grew up on a farm in the Ottawa Valley and those memories are, naturally enough, impressed into her work. All of the paintings in this exhibition, which is titled Winter’s Promise, reflect farm life, from the portraits of owls to the larger paintings of cattle that are the centrepieces of the show, and the latter do it most successfully.

The smaller painting Barn Owl is oil on wood, with most of the board left bare, which forces the eye to focus strongly on the owl itself. To withstand this scrutiny the owl needs a fine detail that it lacks, so the whole thing has an unfinished look, as if the artist hoped its presence alone — the owl’s sentimental place as a character of barn life — would be compelling.

Another oil on wood, titled Jersey , shows a floppy-eared, doe-eyed calf also set against a background of bare, negative space. The image veers dangerously towards cute, which has in the past been, depending on your perspective, a good or bad thing in Beshara’s work. Hey, I like cute as much as the next person, but in its place. Cute is not profound or even meaningful in any way and, therefore, it is not the basis of compelling art.

That’s not a problem in another of her bare-board paintings, titled First Frost, which is a close-up of a dead sunflower in the field. Here the aspect of farm-life shown is inevitable death, and cute is replaced by melancholy, which is always more interesting. Beshara’s sunflower is well composed, though the painting was undermined by the touches of gold-leaf that reflected the gallery light in a most distracting fashion.

She uses gold leaf elsewhere to better effect and, like all the most successful paintings in the exhibition, it is not on wooden board but on canvas. The larger painting Into the Mist , shows a heard of cows crossing a stream and slowly disappearing into the icy mist over a frozen field. Here Beshara presents a scene that is at once nostalgic for her but still offers something substantial to the majority of viewers who did not grow up on a farm.

She hits all her high notes with her large paintings of cows. Winter Storm shows three rather woolly cows (don’t ask me what kind, I’m a city boy) standing in the greyness of a winter storm and staring — silent and placid — at the viewer. I could almost feel the cold, moist air, and the cocoon-ish effect of standing outdoors in a snowstorm. Beshara has allowed a few drips of grey paint to flow from the sky down over the snowy ground and here the deliberate lack of finish is more effective, as if to knock the viewer out of a reverie.

Black Angus (40 by 60 inches, oil on canvas) is the centrepiece of the exhibition and deservedly so. Here a single, black cow stands before a leafless woodland wrapped in icy mist and next to a dirty, half-frozen pool of water. Beshara has painted the water with broad, messy strokes and it creates an intriguing contrast with the detail on the rest of the canvas. The painting isn’t cute and it sure isn’t cosy, but it is compelling. It may be sentimental and nostalgic, but it’s more than that and it’s Beshara’s best work to date.

'We don't think it's a painting of Emily'

The Bronte Society has cast doubt on claims a painting being auctioned in Northampton this month is a portrait of the famous literary figure Emily Bronte.

Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Bronte Parsonage Museum, said the society doubted the provenance of the oil painting and would not be bidding on it next Thursday.

“We are not 100 per cent convinced it is Emily. There isn’t enough provenance on the painting and there is an element of doubt about it,” she said.

“There are two portraits of Emily, both in the National Portrait Gallery, and they don’t bare a striking resemblance to this one. The experts are saying the woman in the painting is wearing the kind of clothes Emily would have worn, which probably thousands of other women of that period were wearing. They have done a huge amount of research on that painting but we are still not convinced.”

But art experts, who have assessed the picture, say there is strong evidence to suggest it could be of Emily Bronte.

The oil painting, which shows a young woman wearing a straw bonnet held in place by a silk scarf, was painted earlier than previously thought.

The picture, recently given to auctioneers J P Humbert of Northamptonshire by a retired headmaster, was found to have been painted circa 1840, making it contemporary with the age of the possible subject – Emily Bronte died in 1848.

It is almost identical to a print of a portrait of the writer published in the July 1894 issue of The Woman At Home, which itself was attributed to Charlotte Bronte. It is thought the artist responsible for the newly-found picture may be John Hunter Thompson of Bradford who was a portrait artist and friend of Emily’s brother Branwell.

As well as that, written on the back is “Emily Bronte – Sister of Charlotte B... Currer Bell”, and on the backing paper “Emily Bronte/Sister of Charlotte Bronte/Ellis Bell”. Currer and Ellis Bell were the pen names of Charlotte and Emily Bronte from the winter of 1845 when the sisters published their poems and adopted pen names.

Auctioneer Jonathan Humbert said the attribution confirms that the portrait is earlier than previously thought.

“After much research, we are confident this portrait, recently discovered, is of Emily Bronte,” he said.

“So many factors support this contention and, as such, this represents a very important study of one of English literature’s most perennial figures.”

The oil on panel painting is set to go on sale at JP Humbert Auctioneers in Towcester, Northants, at a provisional estimate of 10,000 to 15,000.

The sale coincides with an auction where the society will be bidding for a rare Charlotte Bronte manuscript the Young Men’s Magazine.

China paints a new commercial world of art

Yang Chao Fu has a half-finished painting taped to the wall of his small shop on the outskirts of Shenzhen. As he speaks, he leans back on stacked piles of completed canvasses, while others hang above him – pastoral vistas, galloping horses, angels, Parisian street scenes.

But Mr. Yang is no starving artist. Outside on the pavement, six more oil paintings hint that Mr. Yang has little but money as his muse, like most of the other owners of so-called galleries here. Each canvas laid flat on the ground is identical – a vase with purple and white flowers – and each corresponds to one of the many photographs scattered across Mr. Yang’s desk. These images were sent by a gallery owner in France, who has ordered 200 such paintings at roughly $26 (Canadian) apiece.

“I’m sure he’ll sell them for at least 100 [$137],” Mr. Yang says as he leans up against a stack of oil paintings produced by his artists-for-hire – which include impressionists, realists and those who excel at classical Chinese painting. “I have about 10 workers who paint for me, who work everyday. They get paid by the painting.”

There are about 1,100 stores like Mr. Yang’s here in Dafen village, which has grown since the late 1980s from a small community of 300 people on the outskirts of Shenzhen into a bustling nexus for a global trade in oil paintings. Though far removed from the fine-art auctions of Hong Kong, the flurry of commerce in Dafen is one of the most brazen manifestations so far of the world’s appetite for buying Chinese art.

This so-called “village” is now on Shenzhen’s subway system, employs about 6,000 painters and is located only a few hundred feet from a gigantic Wal-Mart – a fitting commercial signpost for this market of pre-painted Van Goghs, celebrity portraits (mostly Chinese politicians), classical Chinese paintings and renditions of modern Chinese painters’ now-iconic styles, such as the wide-mouthed cartoonish grins of artist Yue Minjun.

Tucked inside a tiny cubby hole painting space, 31-year-old Bao Jin Song explains that the buyers roaming past the framers and government-erected statues of European artists in the alleyways and streets here vary widely. Some are members of the middle class or the Chinese nouveau riche, who are interested in custom-painted family portraits to hang on the walls of their new suburban houses; others are hoteliers seeking oil paintings in volume, or business people interested in festooning their workplaces with portraits of Chinese leaders.

When Mr. Bao arrived here in 2004 after graduating with an undergraduate degree in painting, Dafen was a simple village, and success wasn’t assured despite the government’s obvious interest in promoting it as a tourist site. Now, as he dabs his brush at a mock Mona Lisa and people drift by into nearby cafés and restaurants, casually inspecting massive gold frames and paintings, Mr. Bao says he enjoys the steady hours and regular work that come with Dafen’s unapologetic concentration on profiting from art.

“I live across the street from Wal-Mart – I come here and paint during the day so people know I do it,” Mr. Bao says. “When I’m painting by myself – not for orders – I also paint what I think would sell.”

And sell it does. In 2010, the industrial-strength painting output of “Dafen Oil Painting Village,” as the government refers to it, reached 550 million yuan – roughly $86-million. Spinoff and related industries in the district were double that, at around 1.2 billion yuan. More than 60 per cent of the orders come from foreigners.

New Exhibit of Oil Paintings on Display at Frances Anderson Center

Beginning today, oil bar paintings by K Robinson can been seen thorugh Dec. 14 at the Frances Anderson Center in Edmonds.

The exhibit is sponsored by the Edmonds Arts Festival Foundation and the Edmonds Arts Commission.

According to Kris Gilliespie, cultural services assistant for the City of Edmonds, oil bars are basically oil pastels. Unlike chalky pastels, there are also oil pastels which are more like crayons—they give a depth of color and stability and texture that is different from chalk pastels or paints.

In the display case exhibit “Color of Light,” Robinson demonstrates a progressive study of how to express an idea using different formats and media. “I was inspired to find a way to show these elusive effects of light that changed with the seasons, weather, and time of day," she said. "The medium of oil pastels has the color intensity of oil paint but also allows for interesting strokes, overlays, and weaving of color.”

“Beach Walk,” displayed in the EAF Museum gallery, includes representative pieces from an ongoing series of oil bar paintings inspired by walks along the shore in Virginia and North Carolina. The artist says that the techniques possible with oil bar “express well the scintillating energy … felt at the edge of the ocean.”

Robinson grew up in Virginia, graduating from the College of William and Mary with a bachelor's in fine arts. Adding a architecture master's from the University of Pennsylvania, she practiced architecture for many years in Washington, D.C.

She reconnected with painting in the 1990s in California’s Bay Area and chose to work in plein air oil painting and botanical watercolors, painting with the Glover Group, painters perpetuating the legacy of the Society of Six with artist and teacher Pam Glover.

After moving to Seattle in 2003, Robinson continued her study and painting at Gage Academy, working with mentors Mitch Albala, Margaret Davidson and Tom Hoffmann. In 2008, she became a member of 49th Street Studio in Ballard where, with the influence of years of sailing and living on the water, she continues to draw inspiration from the constantly changing coastlines, luminous skies and endless waterways of the Pacific Northwest.

America' at LACMA

As tinderboxes go, few are more potentially volatile than the politics of race and sex. Mix the two together, and the possibility for explosion rises exponentially.

In Glenn Ligon’s art, expertly surveyed in a traveling exhibition newly arrived at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the mixture is made. An explosion, however, never comes. What arrives instead is something different — something better, more cogent and worthwhile. Like all good iconoclasts, Ligon chisels open a space for contemplation from a place that is too often inaccessible and locked-down.

The Bronx-born artist, 50, began as a painter. Although the show includes sculptures, prints, drawings, mixed media and even neon signs, painting remains a core activity. Take the beautiful recent neon sculptures in the final room, which play with the word "America," flipping around its letters to show  darker sides. Painting's usual support of stretched canvas is replaced by gas-filled and electrified glass tubing, parts of which are painted black to achieve various poetic effects. They're as much paintings as the canvases in the first gallery.

Those grew out of Ligon's youthful dissatisfaction with gestural abstraction. (The show is installed in a loose chronology, beginning around 1985.) A standard trope in postwar American abstraction drew an analogy between a painting and the human body — between the support as skeletal structure for a skin of paint. Ligon sent it spinning.

Mixing oil and enamel, "Untitled (I am a man)" derives from the defiant placards worn in 1968 by striking sanitation workers in segregated Memphis, Tenn. To the general indifference of city leaders, two men, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, had been crushed in a malfunctioning garbage truck. Their mangled bodies gave physical heft to protesters' large signs: "I AM A MAN." The existential outcry was held aloft on sticks or attached to the marchers' chests.

Ligon's painting features identical typeface painted on a white ground. Look closely, though, and the white surface is layered over a black skin of under-paint. The surface is smudged, worn, cracked -- evidence of use, as in those disruptive weeks in Memphis, but also a sign of tattered purity.

The artist, black and gay, painted it in the final full year of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Reagan had launched his first term's campaign with a notorious states' rights speech delivered in Philadelphia, Miss., site of a famous civil rights era triple-murder. Once in office, he remained silent about AIDS until the epidemic had ravaged the gay community, leaving more than 20,000 dead.

A wry and poignant Ligon drawing (executed with Michael Duffy) from 2000 masquerades as a  millennial condition report on that earlier, intentionally "damaged" painting. Identifying every crack, spot and stain on its surface, he reports on a condition much larger than his art's.

Take the recent Arab Spring, where signs were spotted in Libya declaring “Ana Rajul” — Arabic for "I am a man." Ligon's painted 1988 sign, midway between past and the present, retains the capacity to jolt.

Ligon's fusion of art, language and the body soon expanded. Using black oil stick and stencils, recalling Jasper Johns' technique, he painted on wood doors covered in white gesso. The format subtly scales the painting to a viewer's body. In one, the word "passing" is repeated nearly 400 times, legibly across the top but clogging the stencil to become steadily more clotted and indecipherable as it cascades down the surface.

Passing — through doors, between rooms or, metaphorically, from life to death — is smudged with racial and sexual overtones, as in passing as white or straight to survive. A physical roughness in these works eventually gives way to sensuous elegance, especially in the 1990s, when Ligon began to mix coal dust into ink. The tactile surface gains a subtle, light-reflective sparkle, echoing Andy Warhol's use of diamond dust in paintings. The painting's body luxuriates in its own skin, gorgeous and scarred.

An essential pivot comes in the second gallery, where Ligon's "Notes on the Margin of the Black Book" is installed across two adjoining walls. He separately framed 91 erotic photographs of black males cut from Robert Mapplethorpe's 1988 "Black Book," installing them in two horizontal rows. Between them are two more rows of printed snippets of text, 78 comments on sexuality, race, AIDS, art and the politically inflamed controversy over Mapplethorpe's work launched by then-Texas Congressman Dick Armey.

Some, like twisted quotes from the late ambassador and art collector Walter Annenberg and New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer, make your jaw drop, partly because of the speakers' social and cultural power. Others, ranging from celebrated author James Baldwin to anonymous bar patrons, turn your head around in more intellectually expansive ways.

Ligon's piece, a sensation when shown at the 1993 Whitney Biennial, remains powerful today. Then, it erupted in the immediate aftermath of Patrick Buchanan's "culture war" battle cry at the Republican National Convention; now, coded racial animus and homophobia still course through presidential contests.

Ligon adroitly ruptures hardened positions. Note that the number of photographs (91) doesn't match the number of short texts (78). We're used to reading texts as descriptive photo-captions, but that can't happen here; the texts and photos don't match up.

Instead, these words and images slip and slide, the friction between them sending sparks and emitting light. The binary of words and pictures is banished -- along with black/white, gay/straight, naked/nude, liberal/conservative, art/porn, innocent/obscene. Human desires aren't so easily described. This is political art of the most thoughtful, least didactic kind, rewarding the extended viewing it requires with a shot of deep humanity.

The exhibition, with 79 works, has been trimmed from the 104 in its debut last spring at New York's Whitney Museum, where it was organized. But it's beautifully installed, giving a thorough accounting of an important artist at mid-career.

9/11 tribute oil painting on permanent display at Fall River Public Library

With the 10th anniversary of 9/11 past, there will always be a reminder of that emotional day at the Main Fall River Public Library.

A new oil painting by artist Tiago Finato was commissioned by Library Administrator Paula Costa Cullen and now hangs in the library’s main lobby. Unveiled on Sunday, “Human Emotion at a Moment in Time” took Finato more than a year from concept to creation.

“It is an interpretational canvas,” Finato said. “There is nothing direct. Notice, there (are) no officials such as police or firemen. There is no need for recognizable uniforms because they have the same emotions.”

Finato created the 6-by-7-foot art piece on linen canvas.

The painting uses many different techniques and details to highlight the tragic nature of 9/11. It starts with a patch of blue sky in the upper left corner as a reminder of that day started, before it was taken over by smoke and chaos.

The focus is on a man who has passed at the center of the painting. The people around him are diverse in their ages and ethnicities, but are bonded by the sorrowful events.

A red-robed angel is there to bring the souls to heaven.

The little girl in the painting represents the innocence of those born since the attacks. Finato used gold-colored paint around the child to signify the wealth represented by the World Trade Center.

Finato used an impressionistic style to create the “Human Emotion” painting, with bold brush strokes.

“The painting needed to show a bit more of the rough brush stokres than the classical, traditional European smooth strokes that I usually use,” Finato said. “This allows for more energy and emotion to be displayed in the painting.”

Finato, the president of the Greater Fall River Art Association, is predominantly a portrait artist and has painted the likeness of Mayor Will Flanagan. That painting hangs in Government Center.

Finato, an award-winning artist, was voted First Place People’s Choice Award Favorite Artist three times during the Bristol Independent Galleries Art Stroll. This year, Finato earned the same first place award on two occasions.

Finato’s portrait of the infamous Lizzie Borden won first place in a National Open Juried Exhibit at the Bristol Art Gallery.

Finato is represented by the Bristol Art Gallery and the Royal Gallery, both in Rhode Island. As an event winner at the Bristol Art Gallery, Finato is also featured in its “Gallery Corner."

“Human Emotion at a Moment in Time” was sponsored by BankFive, Bogle & DeAscentis PC, Borden & Remington Corp., Collins Construction Co., First Bristol Corp., Insurit Agency, Bob Karam, Michael Biszko and Alan Biszko.

“When I was contacted ... about this project, I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to get together with local business leaders and present an amazing gift to the community,” said Bill Eccles, president & CEO of BankFive. “There was no hesitation from any one of the donors when I approached them about the idea of a meaningful painting memorializing 9/11. This painting will be like no other painting at the library, as the sad events of 9/11 affected our whole country.”

A native of Brazil, Finato came to Fall River in 1999 to further his education. He resides in the city and keeps an artist studio on the third floor of the Greater Fall River Art Association, 80 Belmont St. He offers classes to new and advanced painters. Visit www.greaterfallriverartassoc.org for information.

“Human Emotion at a Moment in Time” will be on permanent display at the library, 104 N. Main St., during regular business hours.

mPowerSolar Inc Named TiE50 Finalist

mPowerSolar has been named as TiE50 Finalist, as a leader in entrepreneurship, innovation, and management excellence. The TiE50 awards will be presented at TiEcon 2011, May 13 – 14th, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. The finalists chosen from over 1,619 nominations, represent the most promising startups of 2011.

mPowerSolar developed the industry's first micro-inverter platform Altior TM to significantly lower the LCOE (Leveraged Cost of Electricity) for Solar PV installations. With a mission to accelerate Solar PV's journey to grid-parity mPowerSolar has adopted a platform approach to deliver high performance and reliable power conversion solutions for the residential and commercial installations.

mPowerSolar recently introduced the Altior 300-208V the industry's first 3-phase micro-inverter for commercial installations. Targeted at the urban rooftop, Altior 300-208V micro-inverters would help installers put up 10KW-50KW systems in the shortest possible time. Altior micro-inverters deliver a 15% increased efficiency when compared to the traditional centralized inverter solutions for commercial rooftop With an integrated cable assembly that includes the ground wiring Altior micro-inverters significantly lower the installation time and cost. In addition a comprehensive monitoring and reporting system complete with a touch screen LCD display and web application makes the Altior platform offers a complete solution for commercial Solar PV installations.

“We are thrilled to be recognized by TiE, a highly respected global network of leading entrepreneurs, as one of the most promising startups of 2011,” said Surya Potharaju, CEO of mPowerSolar."To make it to the TiE50 Finalist in the competitive Energy segment is very exciting for 18 month startup like us."

“mPowerSolar's innovation in Energy segment has helped secure the finalist position and established the company as a serious contender for a TiE50 Award this year,” said Vish Mishra, president of TiE Silicon Valley. “TiE Silicon Valley congratulates mPowerSolar for its selection as a finalist from the more than 1,600 entries we received this year.”

The TiE 50 judging process was designed with meticulous planning, screening and judging by a list of over forty prominent entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, corporate executives and other domain experts. TiE is also pleased to acknowledge the nominee companies and those who publicly voted from around the world and contributed to the TiE50 selection process. TiE50 winners will present their companies in a live showcase over the two days of TiEcon 2011, on May 13th and 14th in Santa Clara, CA.

TiEcon 2011: Innovation Reigns, will feature session tracks and keynote speeches focused on key market segments: Cloud, Mobile, Social, Energy and Life Sciences. Fifteen panel sessions will cover the hottest issues for industry participants, customers, and investors in these high profile industry sectors. Keynotes at TiEcon 2011 include: Steve Case, Co-Founder of AOL and Chair of the Startup America Partnership; Sal Khan, Educator and Founder of the Khan Academy; and Vinod Khosla, Founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, Founder of Khosla Ventures.