Summer Arts Guide: Visual Arts
Granville Redmond (1871 - 1935), Flowers Under the Oaks, Oil on canvas, Private Collection, Courtesy of The Irvine Museum
Here are some of Portland’s visual arts highlights for July and August (see theater and music highlights):
Summer Exhibitions - closing dates vary
Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.
The Portland Art Museum’s summer shows have a mostly modernist to post-modernist feel (painter Gerhard Richter, an installation by Bruce Nauman, various work by the late L.A. artist Mike Kelley, a major exhibition of Ellsworth Kelly’s abstract geometries), but they also have some Impressionist crowd-pleasers.
For starters, a tasty little collection of five Claude Monet paintings has been assembled, and a 60-painting show of the best of the California Impressionists (Franz Bischoff, Emil Kosa, Phil Dike, Edgar Payne, William Wendt, Guy Rose and Granville Redmond) can take up most of an afternoon all by itself. Finally, 70 important photographs from the museum’s photography collection (which has existed formally for 70 years) shouldn’t be missed.
Sarah Horowitz, “Effigies” - through Sept. 7
Oregon Jewish Museum, 1953 N.W. Kearney St.
Horowitz’s exquisite drawings and prints based on botanical subjects, often vines and brambles, are usually on display at the Froelick Gallery. This show is taken from her artist’s book, which illustrates a poem by Paul Auster.
Saul Steinberg - through Aug. 10
YU, 800 S.E. 10th Ave.
The late New Yorker illustrator and cartoonist is represented by 200 of his weird and wonderful drawings for the magazine, dating back to 1945. Deft and Dada, his work is immediately transporting.
Pearl District
Portland has two great art walks, and the one closest to downtown is First Thursday (meaning it’s held the first Thursday of every month), centered in the Pearl District and featuring some of the city’s most established and most innovative galleries. The other, Last Thursday, is more of a street festival. Both art walks are as much about the scene as the art, especially in the summer, when the galleries often go for multi-artist shows.
Central Eastside
This gallery walk is First Thursday’s cheekier sibling, mostly because the galleries and the art tend to be rougher and tougher. It also puts you in one of the city’s centers of alternative culture.
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