Fine Arts News

Artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi, seen here in his New York studio in 1940, exhibited with Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper. But his work was quickly forgotten after his death in 1953.

In 1906, 16-year-old Yasuo Kuniyoshi came to the U.S. alone from Japan. He made his name as a painter and at 40 he was showing his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But there was one thing Kuniyoshi longed for that he was always denied: American citizenship. In fact, he was classified as an "enemy alien" during World War II.

Kuniyoshi died in 1953 and after that pretty much disappeared from public memory. But Tom Wolf — guest curator of a Kuniyoshi exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum — says don't overdo the hardships. "He was a fun-loving guy," Wolf says. "He was a party animal, he had tons of friends, other artists loved him and he was so thrilled that he was able to became so successful. So it wasn't all suffering and tragedy."



Curator Joann Moser says the peach in Kuniyoshi's Boy Stealing Fruit (1923) is likely a reference to a famous Japanese folktale.

And Kuniyoshi was successful in his lifetime — right up there with Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper. "He exhibited with these people, he won prizes," says American Art Museum co-curator Joann Moser. But, she adds, after Pearl Harbor, things changed: "When he walked down the street, he looked like the enemy."

And the anxiety of being Japanese-American during World War II shows in his work. The colors are somber; the faces he paints — highly stylized, flat and folk-artish — are often fearful; and babies and children are never cuddly. His Boy Stealing Fruit from 1923 stares warily, a banana in one hand while the other reaches for a peach.
"There's a very famous Japanese folktale about a little boy and a peach," Moser says. "And so I think that is a reference to his Japanese childhood."

The chubby child could be cute, but he's not. Neither is the baby on his mother's shoulders in another 1920s canvas — Child Frightened by Water. Even Kuniyoshi's bright fuchsia paintings from the 1950s have grim details — a reference to death on the Fourth of July or a scary face behind a colorful mask.



The child in Kuniyoshi's Child Frightened by Water (1924) could be cute — but he's not.

It's easy to see biography in Kuniyoshi's work. The fun-loving party animal had lots to deal with, and anti-Asian prejudice went back a long way. In 1919, Moser explains, Kuniyoshi married a white American woman who then lost her citizenship for marrying an Asian man.

During the war, Kuniyoshi wasn't sent from New York to an internment camp like the West Coast Japanese were, but there were restrictions. "His camera was taken away from him," Moser says. "His binoculars were taken away. His bank account was frozen."

But Kuniyoshi was devoted to America and deeply patriotic. "So when the Department of Defense asked him to do some drawings for propaganda posters," Moser says, "he was eager to do that."

He sketched a mother and child hanging from a tree as a Japanese soldier leaves the scene. In Clean Up This Mess, a woman's hand discards a bag filled with Japanese symbols, like a flag and a samurai sword. The posters never got made, but the anti-Japanese sentiment was clear. It must have been difficult for Kuniyoshi repudiate his roots.
"I think he was very torn and it was a terrible period in his life," Wolf says.

"The Artistic Journey of Yasuo Kuniyoshi" (at the American Art Museum through the end of August) is Kuniyoshi's first retrospective in more than 65 years. Abstract expressionism and newer movements nudged him off the art scene after he died in 1953. Curator Joann Moser says this show is a reminder of Kuniyoshi's American experience.

"He was really one of the most highly respected and esteemed American artists," she says. "So within artist circles, he functioned very well; he had many friends. But outside the artist circles, he remained a 'Jap.' "
Over the years, the Japanese have bought up Kuniyoshis work and he's become a popular artistic prophet in his native land.


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Paul Durand-Ruel, shown above in his gallery in 1910, acquired some 5,000 impressionist works — long before others were buying them.

It might seem unusual for an exhibit to focus on a man who sold paintings rather than the artists who painted them. But there was one particular 19th century Paris art dealer who shaped the art market of his day — and ours — by discovering artists who became world-wide favorites. He's now the subject of a major exhibition in Philadelphia.

Paul Durand-Ruel was quite the shopper. He was the first buyer of Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, Monet's Stacks of Wheat (End of Day Autumn), some 100 works in the Musée d'Orsay's impressionist collection in Paris, and more than than 100 paintings in Dr. Albert Barnes' Foundation in Philadelphia — all purchased from Durand-Ruel.

Fishing for fine art: Gyotaku, the art of making inked prints from real fish, originated in 19th century Japan. Above, three examples from modern Gyotaku artist Heather Fortner (from left): Under the Rainbow Rainbow Trout; Little big skate and Primary colors butterfly ray.

Fishing lore is full of tales about "the one that got away," and fishermen have been known to exaggerate the size of their catch. The bragging problem is apparently so bad, Texas even has a law on the books that makes lying about the size or provenance of a fish caught in a tournament an offense that could come with a felony charge.

But in 19th century Japan, some enterprising fishermen found a foolproof way to record trophy catches. (Some versions of this origin story suggest they did so at the emperor's behest.) The method was known as gyotaku, or "fish rubbing," and allowed fishermen to print inked fish onto paper — creating a permanent record of their size. They used a nontoxic sumi-e ink, a black ink traditionally used in both writing and painting which could be easily washed off. Once the print was made, the fish was either released, if it was still alive, or sold at market.

At first, these prints were rudimentary, but they soon became works of art. Fishermen began adding details like eyes (which don't show up in a print) and enhancing other parts of the image. Over time, gyotaku became an established art form with two printing methods: direct and indirect.

Gyotaku artist Heather Fortner explains that in direct printing, the ink is placed directly onto the fish, using it almost like a stamp on the page. Indirect printing is the "finer art form," she says: The paper is glued to the fish and ink is tamped gently onto the page, "like a gravestone rubbing."

Though gyotaku artists traditionally used sumi-e ink, today, anything from India ink to acrylic is considered fair game.


Oregon pomfret, by Heather Fortner. "I have always loved the ocean and anything from the ocean," Fortner says, adding, "Gyotaku allows you to express an appreciation for the natural world by partnering with the finest artist in the world: Mother Nature."

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The Broad Museum, on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, opens Sunday. Admission is free.

Los Angeles is getting a new contemporary art museum, courtesy of billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and his wife Edythe. Their free museum opens Sunday.

Surrounded by the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Music Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Broad is already an architectural landmark, with its honeycomb-like exoskeleton.

"This shell of sorts, this light filter, this amazing sculptural structure ... enrobes the museum," says Joanne Heyler, the museum's director and chief curator.

Traveling up through the middle of the building in the round, glass elevator you can peek inside what's known as "the vault"— an entire floor storing the Broads' collection of more than 2,000 paintings, photos and sculptures.

On the top floor, diffused natural light pours in through skylights. There's work here from Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman and Chris Burden. There's an entire room for Takashi Murakami. The collection includes a lot of L.A. artists, Heyler says.

Despite the insane art market, the Broads have no trouble purchasing the art they like. "It's simple," says Heyler. "If there's a work of interest, we acquire it. There's no committee process. There isn't a long, drawn-out bureaucratic process to follow."



Eli and Edythe Broad have been collectors for more than 40 years.
From his office in L.A.'s Century City neighborhood, Eli Broad, 82, can look out over the many of the cultural institutions he's helped fund — the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and now, his museum.
"We want this to be a gift to the city of Los Angeles," he says. "We've been collectors now going on 45 years."

Broad says building his museum took longer and cost more than he thought it would. But he wanted a permanent home for his collection so people could see it and enjoy it.

"We wanted to share it with the broadest possible public," he says. "That's why we have free admission."
Forbes estimates Eli Broad is worth $7.4 billion. He made his fortune building suburban tract homes, and also running an insurance company. He and his wife bought their first artwork — a van Gogh drawing — and then quickly switched to collecting contemporary art. He says they liked buying works with social or political meaning. And along the way, they've gotten to know the artists personally.



With skylights and the "interior veil," light streams into The Broad's third floor galleries.

He remembers artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of a drug overdose at age 27, smoking pot in their powder room. He says the first time he saw Basquiat's work in New York he was drawn to it "because it wasn't just graffiti, it was very thoughtful," Broad says.

He recalls seeing Cindy Sherman's work for the first time in a gallery on Mercer Street in New York. "We followed her career and have 120 of her works," he says.

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Sultan Al Qassemi says, "I don't buy artworks that I think are pretty ... I buy art that is politically meaningful." That art includes Yemeni photographer Boushra Al Mutawakel's Mother, Daughter, Doll series.



Akhram Zaatari Untitled (Plane 6), 2013, by Akram Zaatari, Lebanon.



You Are Love, 2008 by Chant Avedissian, Egypt.



Old McDonald's, 2014, by Farah Al Qassimi, United Arab Emirates.

Wealthy art collectors often spend millions of dollars on trophy pieces by European masters, then keep them hidden from view. Not Sheikh Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi: He spends his fortune on artworks by living, Arab artists, then shows them to as many people as possible.

Al Qassemi is a bit of a paradox. He's a member of an Arab royal family, but he recently showed up at NPR's New York bureau by himself and casually dressed, looking more like a grad student than a sheikh. While clicking through the artworks on his Barjeel Art Foundation's website, he emphasizes his collection's diversity. "These [artists] are from all over the Arab world: Syrian, Iraqi, Kuwaiti, Egyptian, Jordanian, from the [United Arab Emirates] and Lebanon," he says.

I don't buy artworks that I think are pretty and aesthetically appealing. But I buy art that is politically meaningful.

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi

Al Qassemi's collection consists of more than a thousand works, but he's perhaps better known as a media personality than an art collector. A regular commentator on the Middle East, he's been interviewed about finance on Bloomberg TV, and unemployment on CNN. He's written for The New York Times and Foreign Policy, and during the Arab Spring, he tweeted constantly, translating Arabic speeches and reports into English. Time magazine wrote "to the extent that the revolution was tweeted, much of it came through the feed of Sultan Al Qassemi."

And when it comes to the sheikh's art collection, he has an almost activist sensibility. "I don't buy artworks that I think are pretty and aesthetically appealing," he says. "But I buy art that is politically meaningful."



Mona Hatoum's Witness recalls the destruction caused by Lebanon's long civil war.

In other words, he buys art like Witness, a porcelain sculpture by the Palestinian-British artist Mona Hatoum. Al Qassemi says it's a miniature replica of a famous statue in downtown Beirut that is riddled with bullet holes from the long, Lebanese civil war. "And Mona Hatoum created this work wanting to capture forever the destruction that this civil war had on the arts and culture, but also the psyche of the Lebanese," he says. Hatoum's piece is now on display at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto as part of the exhibition "Home Ground: Contemporary Art From The Barjeel Art Foundation."

Another work in Al Qassemi's collection is Memorial, a haunting black and white video installation by Iraqi artist Adel Abidin. With a kind of magic realism, Abidin uses cows as a metaphor for human suffering during the 1991 American invasion of Iraq. It shows a cow separated from the rest of its herd by a Baghdad bridge that's been bombed. At one point, the cow takes a running leap at the bridge and tries to jump to the other side, but doesn't make it.

Abidin, who was a teenager in Baghdad in 1991, says he and his family crossed that bridge over the Tigris River almost every week to visit his grandparents. When he heard it had been bombed, he rode on his bike to see it. On the fallen part of the bridge, there was a dead cow. He has no idea how it got there.

"I'd never seen a cow in the center of Baghdad — it's a very urban city, you don't really see cows in it," he says. "So I was thinking, 'Would the Americans [drop] the cow? How did the cow end up there?' And this stayed in my mind until 2009. Then I came up with a scenario of the death of this cow."
Abidin says the image of a cow risking its life to cross the bridge is meant to communicate human social need, and "that we always need to be with others. ... We don't function alone."



Sultan Al Qassemi says sharing provocative, emotional artworks from the Arab world helps take the narrative away from extremists.

Nada Shabout is director of the University of North Texas' Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute. She says that with so much of the Arab world "in flames," Arab artists need to get their messages out — and they need patrons like Sultan Al Qassemi to help them do that. "He's been a very generous collector in terms of opening up his collection to graduate students, to scholars, so we can, in fact, engage and write these, you know, different narratives," she says.

Adel Abidin agrees. And he says Al Qassemi does his homework. "I don't think he aims for the easy stuff, you know. He's a good researcher, actually; he digs out for information. It's not like what he hears, he says, you know — he has to check it out."

Al Qassemi wants other people to check it out, too. In addition to Toronto, London's Whitechapel Gallery is also hosting a show from his Barjeel Art Foundation.
Nada Shabout says it certainly helps that Al Qassemi is a wealthy member of one of the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates. But, she says, you'd never learn that from him. "He never really puts himself in the family. And it's [rare] that you would find an article where he is referred to as 'sheikh,' which, you know, is the equivalent of emir, prince. So he likes to sort of think of himself as an ordinary man even though we know he's not," she says with a laugh.

Class aside, Al Qassemi says he's driven to share artworks that are provocative and emotional responses to difficult issues. He believes they help counter the brutal images of destroyed neighborhoods and beheadings so prevalent in the news. "We are taking the narrative away from these extremists," he says. "We are building bridges of communication with the western world and the eastern world. And I think that art is a global language, much like music, and that people will identify with artwork even if they don't understand the history of the Middle East. So it's very, very important."

Making it possible for these Arab artists to keep working, and for the rest of the world to learn their stories is, for Sultan Al Qassemi, what being an art collector is all about.


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The Rising Tide, on the shore of Thames River in London. Each horse is a hybrid — half animal, half oil pump.



Of the four sculptures that comprise The Rising Tide, two are businessmen or politicians — including this one with arms folded and eyes shut tight.



At high tide, the four sculptures of The Rising Tide are almost entirely submerged.




The Silent Evolution, by Jason deCaires Taylor, in Cancun, Mexico.

You probably never will see most of Jason deCaires Taylor's public art projects firsthand — at least, not without goggles and fins.

Most of his sculptures stand at the bottom of the sea. His life-size statues — ghostly figures of men, women and children — seem to walk the ocean floor as they hold hands, huddle, even watch TV.

But his latest art installation is an exception: You can fully see it (if only twice a day). The Rising Tide, a set of four horseback riders standing in the river Thames in London, is completely visible only at low tide, when the water recedes.

As he tells NPR's Scott Simon, his style gives rise to a curious fact: Between the elements, the tides and the life that grows up all around them, his works are never quite the same from one moment to the next.


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Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov poses for a portrait at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City in July. The center, a multidisciplinary practice and performance space, opened in 2005.

When Mikhail Baryshnikov says, "I'm really afraid to get bored with myself," he means it.
As one of the greatest ballet dancers in history, he's captivated audiences around the world. He was also artistic director of American Ballet Theatre, has danced to his own, had a run as Carrie Bradshaw's part-time lover on HBO's Sex and the City, and so much more. (His list of credits and awards is long and eclectic.)

Today, at 67, Baryshnikov is still creating art of all kinds around the world. And on Monday, a gala in New York will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a space he created to give artists the freedom to explore and take risks.



Dancers from the Dance Heginbotham company rehearse at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in July.

Creating An Artist Nirvana

With such an exceptional, international career, you'd think the sign in front of his arts center would have "Baryshnikov" in lights, but actually you can barely see it. "Misha didn't want this place to be called the Baryshnikov Arts Center," says Georgiana Pickett the center's executive director. "He wanted it to be more global, and some wise people told him, 'That's not a good idea. Let's put your name on it.'"

Baryshnikov's idea was to build a place where artists from different disciplines would come together. He had no interest in it being dance-only.

"Another dance company? Really, we are packed," he says, referring to the numerous dance companies that call New York home. If he was going to create something for artists, at the top of his list was space, light and privacy — elements, he says, that are so important to the creative process. "Art-making is not a factory, with a few exceptions, of course, you know like Jeff Koons or Andy Warhol. It's a very slow and very fragile process. It took me 25, 30 years to really understand what actually it takes."

Baryshnikov put up $1 million of his own money to build the center. With help from a small group of donors, he bought a portion of a six-story building in New York's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. Today, after extensive renovations, the center has two state-of-the-art theaters and four studios.

For the artists lucky enough to get a residency, it's nirvana.

'In The Middle Of Possibility'

Vocalist and songwriter Somi is rehearsing in a light-filled studio that overlooks the Hudson River. "This is such a glorious space because you've got these high windows and you're surrounded by the city," she says. "And being in the middle of New York, right, it's like you're in the middle of possibility."



Vocalist Somi, right, and guitarist Liberty Ellman practice at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

But "possibility" in the middle of New York is wildly expensive and most artists can't afford to live in the city. Executive Director Georgiana Pickett says, "It's one of the reasons we exist ... because New York is experiencing a hemorrhaging of its cultural capital. You know, people are leaving. They can't do it anymore."

Baryshnikov is more sanguine. "It's no secret that in '70s and '80s New York City [was a] friendlier city for younger people, and more affordable," he says. "And it's tougher and tougher."

But he believes it's still a dynamic and inspirational place to be an artist: "I really believe that, still, the magnet is right here — and not just in Manhattan, but around New York City. And still artists around the world [look] at us with a kind of envy that we are here. They want to be here at least for a few weeks at a time to practice their art."

There are also deeply personal reasons Baryshnikov chose to create something permanent in New York. When he defected from the Soviet Union in 1974, New York became home. He says the Baryshnikov Arts Center is "a kind of civic duty."

Downstairs in the center's Jerome Robbins Theater, choreographer John Heginbotham is rehearsing a piece with his new dance company. (He met Baryshnikov when he was a dancer with the Mark Morris Dance Group.) Heginbotham is stuck on a part. "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know," he tells his dancers, shaking his head. When Baryshnikov stops by, he can't resist asking him for help.



Top: Choreographer John Heginbotham watches his dancers rehearse at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Bottom left: Dancers in the Stephen Petronio Company rehearse. (From front to back: Jaqlin Medlock, Gino Grenek, Emily Stone and Joshua Tuason) Bottom right: Choreographer Stephen Petronio illustrates an idea to his dancers.

"Misha?" he says.
"You're the boss," Baryshnikov replies.

Heginbotham says this creative laboratory is really a gift from Baryshnikov to other artists: "He could've just been a great ballet dancer, but he is such a curious and investigative person that he has taken that and put it into creating work and helping other people create work. He betters himself all the time and he encourages us to do that too."

Building Something That Will Last

The nonprofit center generates income by renting space, fundraising and selling tickets to performances in its two theaters. Many big donors who've supported Baryshnikov throughout his career have contributed generously to the center's ambitious goals.

Rebecca Thomas, a consultant to arts nonprofits, says there's a "spotty" history of arts organizations that are closely linked to one person: Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey's companies both struggled to adapt after their deaths. According to Thomas, "When we oftentimes see challenges is when that particular leader moves on for whatever reason, because sometimes the donors and the board members do too."



Mikhail Baryshnikov says he created his Baryshnikov Arts Center as a kind of thank you to New York, the city that became his home after he defected from the Soviet Union in 1974.

Georgiana Pickett and the rest of the Baryshnikov Arts Center staff think about that all the time. "We are trying to build something here that's going to last without Misha," she says. "You know, it is his vision and it is his legacy, and that is the right word. But he's not going to live forever. None of us are. And so we're trying to build something here that's going to last."

'It's Nice To Go Back ... But I'd Rather Look Forward'

At 67, Baryshnikov is still plenty active. He just made for the clothing company Rag & Bone, turning and curving his body in a kind of duet with street dancer Lil Buck, and he's touring a solo theater piece based on the writings of Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

He admits he's always been restless for new challenges. "[The] unknown, it's always much more intriguing and appealing. ... Like [a] new dish in a restaurant which you never taste or a new music composition, a new film and a new book," he says. "It's so much more interesting than [going] back to ... square one. ... Sometimes it's nice to go back, you know, but I'd rather look forward."

Maybe Mikhail Baryshnikov was right about not wanting the center he founded 10 years ago to bear his name. As he puts it, what happens inside the studio — that "fragile" art-making process — is much more important.

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Shahzia Sikander, pictured here, created the film Parallax (also pictured) to explore the layers of history and change that are remaking parts of the Middle East and South Asia.

Shahzia Sikander is one of the contemporary art world's most celebrated stars. She's projecting her hypnotic video installations onto Times Square billboards; she's led exhibitions at major art museums across the world; and she was recognized by the MacArthur Foundation as a "genius" fellow in 2006. The Pakistani-born artist says art has always been a "ticket to life," but what distinguishes Sikander's art from her contemporaries is her training in a centuries-old handmade form of Islamic art — the bejeweled world of Indo-Persian miniature paintings.

The Finest Pictures With The Finest Lines

While the Renaissance masters were going big, the royal ateliers of India's Mughal dynasty were going small. Miniature painting thrived in the 15th- and 16th- century courts of India's Islamic kingdoms. Sometimes as small as 3 inches by 3 inches, these paintings were highly decorative, graphical pages that wove stories of heroism, lovers and political intrigue into gilded works of art. Artists followed stringent rules, and in addition to years of training, the craft required incredibly precise techniques. Pakistani art historian F.S. Aijazuddin says, "For the finest pictures and for the finest lines, they would use what was called an ek baal, which was a single hair — a single squirrel hair — to achieve the finest line."



Traditionally, India's miniature paintings told stories of heroism, lovers and political intrigue through gilded works of art. Sultan 'Ali 'Adil Shah II Slays a Tiger (ca. 1660) is part of that tradition.

These miniature paintings are often at the center of the world's leading collections of Islamic art. Navina Haidar curates one such collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She says miniature paintings are "dependent on tremendous technical finesse. As an artist, you are trained by your father, your forefathers, in a workshop setting to create a world that's miniaturized in its scale but absolutely universal sometimes in its content or in its ambition."
But as the Muslim kingdoms of India faded in the 18th and 19th centuries, so did the patronage and the practice of miniature painting. Then in the 1980s, the artist Bashir Ahmad. revived the tradition by establishing a formal department of miniature painting at the prestigious National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan.

Taking Miniatures To A New Level

As a young art student at Lahore's National College of Arts, Shahzia Sikander says she was fascinated by miniature paintings. And while she acknowledges it was a strict and "craft-oriented way of working," she saw miniatures as a language to say new things. For her graduate thesis, she created a miniature painting that broke the mold: a scroll that was 13 inches tall and 5 feet long and featured more than a dozen interconnected illustrations. More importantly, it was a deeply personal piece depicting the daily life of a modern Pakistani woman.



The Scroll, Sikander's graduate thesis, depicts the life of a modern Pakistani woman.

Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal says that thesis was a breakthrough in the history of miniature painting. "Miniature went in decline only because of absence of patronage, not because of loss of technique — so that technique was there," she says. "So when these techniques were passed on by Bashir Ahmad to younger people — I mean especially Shahzia, Shahzia took it to a new level. I mean, it was her thesis work that was sensational. Everybody talked about her work."
Sikander was invited to show The Scroll and other works at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C. The show lasted one day and she didn't sell a single piece of art, but she spent the rest of her visit knocking on the doors of as many American graduate schools as she could, eventually winning a spot a the Rhode Island School of Design. There, Sikander began the academic process of further deconstructing miniature paintings. She says she often faced questions about her ethnic origins and was frustrated to be reduced to an ethnic artist. After all, at the heart of her ambition was the same ambition as any artist — the burning desire to communicate.

She says, "People want to know ... 'What is that cultural practice? Do you, like, run around catching your squirrel?' So I think some of these topics hijacked [the work], actually. They were detrimental."



Once in New York, Sikander began mixing modern techniques with traditional elements of Islamic art. Unseen is a projection that also features intricate Indo-Persian borders.

Finding A Home In New York

Sikander eventually moved to New York City and began creating a new body of work that integrated her illustrations with her training as a modern artist. She says, "This is the first place that I'd been in my three or four years in the U.S. [where] I wasn't being seen through an ethnic lens. ... So I could be who I wanted to be. ... I felt the same kind of confidence that I had when my work got recognized in Pakistan."

In New York, Sikander began merging components of miniature paintings with modern, abstract designs. The result was a blend of surreal shapes and vivid colors that would be at home in a Salvador Dali painting. But her pieces were also tightly controlled, featuring geometric patterns and intricate Indo-Persian borders.
Glenn Lowry, director of New York's Museum of Modern Art, was astounded by the craftsmanship and beauty of her work. "There is a visual lushness," he says. "She has a capacity to draw that's absolutely breathtaking, so she can make images small or large with such precision that you look at them and you're dumbfounded."

In recent years, her illustrations have moved beyond the page into animation, video and large-scale projections.

Control, Exploitation And Hope In 'Parallax'

Sikander's latest piece, Parallax, is cinematic in its scale and ambition. It's a 15-minute film derived from hundreds of handmade illustrations and paintings. The title of the piece suggests a shifting point of view, disorientation and new ways of seeing. Sikander says was inspired by a drive she took across the United Arab Emirates. She spent that trip reflecting on the conditions facing millions of migrant workers from Pakistan, and both the curse and opportunity of the country's immense oil wealth. The result is a work where colorful flows of paint (echoing oil) collide with layers of illustrations and animated forms. She's interested in the layers of history and change that are remaking this region.



Shahzia Sikander poses with Parallax, a 15-minute film she made using hundreds of handmade paintings and illustrations.

Parallax made its American debut at Tufts University at the invitation of historian Ayesha Jalal. She says Sikander is not an overtly political artist, but by disorienting the viewer she's forcing you to see reality in a new light. "She's not really making a political statement but the way in which she presents her work makes you understand that there is exploitation," Jalal says. "Something is going on here — there's control and there is exploitation but there is hope as well."

Breaking Out Of The Muslim Artist Label

So is Shahzia Sikander making Islamic art? Is she making American art? Or is what she does contemporary? Ruba Kana'an is a curator at Toronto's Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art. She says Sikander evades easy categories, and that is a breakthrough in its own right. "It takes quite a lot for artists from Muslim heritage to lose that sort of hyphen that identifies them," Kana'an says. "You're either [an] Arab contemporary artist or you're [a] Pakistani contemporary artist. Well, many artists want to be identified first and foremost as artists. ... Their work is not limited to or restricted to their heritage."

That's exactly what Sikander has been trying to do since she first tried her hand at traditional miniature painting. She says, "Whether it was the Muslim identity, whether it was the female identity or the Asian identity or the Asian-American identity or the hyphened identities ... I felt all of them were essential to who I was. All of it. I couldn't reject one for the other. I didn't want to be labeled by just one. That's still part of who I am."

And in the process of establishing who she is, Sikander has paved the way for other Muslim artists to break out of the frame.


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Everything at the brand new Cultural Center in downtown Buenos Aires is free — from art installations to symphony concerts. "Culture is an investment for this government, not an expense," says Culture Minister Teresa Parodi.

A new tourist attraction in Argentina — The Centro Cultural Kirchner in downtown Buenos Aires — has been posting some impressive numbers since it opened in mid-May. As many as 10,000 patrons a day are trooping through an ornate, turn-of-the-last-century building that has been converted into what's said to be the fourth-largest cultural center in the world. Remarkably, everything in it is free, from video installations to comedy acts to symphony concerts.



Looking up from below at La Ballena Azul (the "Blue Whale") while its bluish metal "skin" was still under construction. The concert hall is three stories high and actually "floats" — it is mounted on shock-absorbing stilts to protect it from vibrations from the subway nearby.

They call the main concert hall La Ballena Azul, "The Blue Whale," and it swims inside a grand Beaux Arts palace where, for most of the last century, folks in Buenos Aires mailed letters: the former Central Post Office. The Blue Whale auditorium — blimp-shaped, three stories high, holding 1,750 people — floats in what used to be the package-sorting area.

Why "floats"? Because the subway runs nearby, says guide Federico Baggio. "So the vibrations would not enter the symphony hall. It ended up having a whale shape, so that's why they named it like that, but the purpose is acoustics."



A chandelier-like structure made of frosted glass sits above the Blue Whale. It is large enough to house exhibits.

The Blue Whale is the most eye-catching attraction in the new Kirchner Cultural Center, but even it can't upstage its surroundings. The Palacio de Correos, literally the "Postal Palace" — commissioned in 1889 and completed almost 30 years later — was the largest public building in Argentina when it opened in 1928. It's eight stories tall, occupies a full city block behind a French Second Empire facade, and contains almost 1 million square feet of marble hallways, stained-glass ceilings and windows. You can also find traces of original post office fixtures, such as mailboxes and grand marble counters where you could finish and address your letters.

When the new architects changed things, to add, say, elevators, or a boxy, chandelier-like structure above the Blue Whale that's big enough to mount exhibits in, they purposely used different materials: frosted glass, stainless steel. That way you never lose sight of the the ornate beauty of the original building — beauty that enticed President Juan Peron to move his presidential offices here in the 1940s from the nearby Casa Rosada.



First lady Eva Peron's desk now sits in a spectacular vaulted room. Once the office of the postal service director, it was later the headquarters for the Eva Peron Foundation.

And the grandest room — a spectacular vaulted space the size of a banquet hall that had been the office of the postal service director — became the headquarters for the Eva Peron Foundation, which dispensed charity and gifts to impoverished Argentine citizens. That space has been restored as a sort of museum exhibit, with everything from Eva Peron's desk to bottles of champagne, letters piled all the way to the 20-foot ceiling in one corner, dozens of toys, go-carts, and other gifts of the sort she dispensed.

Approaching the desk, you hear recordings of actors' voices re-creating what went on there — children excited over Christmas toys, or asking first lady "Evita" for something for their grandparents. It's a scene some older visitors can remember from real life, and occasionally prompts tears.

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Kani Alavi stands before his painting It Happened in November, part of the open-air East Side Gallery built on fragments of the old Berlin Wall. He's fighting proposed development that would overshadow, relocate or remove segments of the gallery. "The fight to keep this wall intact, to preserve it, has become [my] life," he says.

When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, Kani Alavi was a young artist living in an apartment overlooking the border between East and West Berlin. He remembers seeing East Berliners streaming through "like a wave of water," he said through an interpreter. "Some were joyful, some were doubtful, some were afraid they might not [have the chance to] cross again."

Alavi painted that moment: a flowing river of faces he calls "Es geschah im November," or "It happened in November."
Today, tourists can see that painting, alongside more than 100 others, covering a nearly mile-long stretch of the original cement Berlin Wall. It's called the East Side Gallery.

Alavi and a group of artists created it in 1990, soon after the wall fell. They wanted to preserve part of history, and felt it was symbolic to paint on the East side — which was blank during the East-West division, since East German soldiers patrolled the area dubbed the "death strip."



Dmitri Vrubel's painting of the Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev and East Germany's Erich Honecker kissing — under a Russian phrase that reads, "My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love" — is a popular part of the East Side Gallery.

Today, it's covered in colorful paintings, including one depicting the famous "kiss" between former Soviet head Leonid Brezhnev and East German leader Erich Honecker. The open-air gallery gets an estimated 800,000 visitors each year, including graffiti artists and vandals who scribble across the colorful paintings.

But for Alavi, the wall's biggest threat isn't vandalism. It's developers.

Alavi and his supporters have spent the past few years fighting developers from building alongside the gallery wall. While he has taken some to court and won, one developer managed to get building permits off Alavi's radar and recently constructed a luxury tower. The 14-story building with aquamarine windows overlooks the nearby Spree River, and as of this spring, had reportedly sold 80 percent of its units.

When construction started two years ago, 6,000 protesters showed up — including former Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff, who happens to be a popular singer in Germany. (He sang "Looking for Freedom," which he originally performed at the Berlin Wall in 1989 before a pro-reunification crowd.)



A luxury apartment building towers over the East Side Gallery, despite the objections of artists like Kani Alavi.

But 10 days later, construction workers removed a 6-meter portion of the wall under heavy police protection, so they could start building. A hotel was also granted a building permit right next to the luxury tower, though no construction date is set.
Standing in front of his painting on the wall, Kani says he hopes the East Side Gallery will one day become a UNESCO World Heritage site and be protected from further development. But the shiny new apartments tower behind him, and tourists strain to hear him above the rush of traffic.

It might seem like a losing battle (the Mercedes-Benz Arena sits right across the street, and already had part of the wall sliced out and relocated for an unobstructed view of the water). But Alavi feels it's crucial to preserve the Berlin Wall so people remember the struggle for reunification, and how borders are treated as barriers — especially in light of Germany's migrant crisis today.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made the controversial announcement earlier this summer that the country would take in 800,000 refugees — far more than any European Union nation. The media photos of Syrians streaming across the border look eerily similar to Alavi's own painting of East Berliners crossing the Berlin Wall.

"This painting has determined my future for 25 years," says Alavi, who migrated from Iran himself in 1980. "The fight to keep this wall intact, to preserve it, has become [my] life."

In 2011, Germany awarded him the prestigious Federal Cross of Merit for his efforts. Then in March 2014, he gave the South Korean president Park Geun-hye a tour of the East Side Gallery. She invited him to build a similar version along the DMZ border between North and South Korea, which he says will begin construction next year.

As Germany celebrates 25 years of reunification this Saturday, Alavi says, "We should get rid of psychological walls in our minds and our heads ... to get rid of the physical walls around the world."

Ironically, the man who was inspired by the fall of a wall is now determined to keep this one standing. It's a physical reminder of the borders people once crossed, and the change that is possible.

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