• A Master of Painting in the 21st Century: Purvis Young at RFC (Rubell Family Collection), Miami Art Week 2018

• • Art for Progress
• 5 years ago
• Most Miami art week events are drawn to glitz and glam, vying to compete for a mention in the press or passed as gossip around town as the hottest soirée happening during its short life in Miami. The majority of art fairs push old and new artist names to the public while attempting to cash in revenues from lucrative collectors. They all play a part within the same hob-snob social games commonly celebrated in art communities across the board. It's just more intensified during this time of year. Luckily, the RFC ( Rubell Family Collection) opened it's doors to the public with a refreshing solo exhibition of Purvis Young's messy Zulu inspired, folk art and new acquisitions. Over one-hundred works were displayed, created over Young's lifespan, shedding light on "universal themes." Although Young is a prominently dominating name in the art world and his personal affairs disclosed to the public, there is still a sense of privacy or even distance that exists between his work and the public. This space became more apparent to me as I walked through the exhibition. Because the RFC exhibition space is vast and fixed in white walls, Young's smaller works became shushed from the viewer's direct gaze, but it was precisely his genius overcast brushstrokes what gesticulated the viewer to step in and absorb the extended, languid arrangements. Similarly to his reflective persona, his gestures seem pensive, drenched in the desire to understand humanity's fate, twisted by war, suffering,[...]
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