Included are portraits such as the etching, “Self Portrait at the Table” by Käthe Kollwitz, depicting herself momentarily looking up from her work to gaze directly at the viewer. In “Woman Resting Her Head on Her Hands,” Titina Maselli’s pen and ink drawing takes up the entire picture plane, making a powerful portrait with patterning and strong textural blocks.
Alice Neel’s “Mother and Child” is a self-portrait holding her daughter; a bittersweet painting remembering Neel’s one-year-old child that died. Neel paints the park they are visiting with a bleak background in the dead of winter; two bare trees frame the figures seated on a park bench. Neel posed the mother holding the child in a way that is reminiscent of historical depictions of the virgin and child.
Last year around this time I was cheerfully writing about the great upcoming art exhibitions, dance concerts and plays scheduled for the spring: paintings at the UA’s Joseph Gross gallery by a talented young Liberian refugee; a modern dance in Reid Park by the up-and-coming Hawkinsdance troupe; and an Irish play by acclaimed playwright Martin McDonagh at the Rogue Theatre.
I didn’t see any of them. They were all shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.
Things are getting better now, we hope. The vaccine has arrived and this miracle drug just may bring us back to life eventually.