Anna Magdalena Bach was Johann Sebastian Bach’s second wife, mother of 13 of his children, the copyist of his manuscripts and herself an accomplished musician. When I became interested in using J.S. Bach’s music as the basis for a new body of work, her name repeatedly caught my eye in my background research. Then I ran across an article describing how an Australian researcher has theorized, based on foren
If you only have time for a brief art ramble this week, be sure to stop by Pentimenti Gallery and take a look at Rebecca Rothfus’ drawings in the Project Room. The seven pencil-and-gouache landscapes in “Towers” pull together contrasting elements of human construction and natural landforms, balancing delicate details with flat colors and a blank-paper wash of sky. They exist comfortably as individual pieces, but in t
Imagine a field of wildflowers viewed from above. Now flatten the flowers into solid, bold colors of varying sizes, eliminate all background elements, rearrange them into circular patterns, print them on enormous sheets of paper, and hang them on a wall – you’ll have something similar to Polly Apfelbaum’s current show Big Love at Locks Gallery in Old City. It’s dazzlingly vibrant, decoratively detailed, and, well, fl
If you had asked me last week about the art of 19th-century French painter Pierre-August Renoir, I would immediately have thought of picnics and dances, rosy-cheeked children and voluptuous nudes. However, after seeing “Renoir: Landscapes,” an exhibition currently on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I now have a sense of the broader scope of his work and his life-long attachment to impressionist