Art for Breakfast: Muqi’s Six Persimmons
Precise gestures offer a sense of familiarity — perhaps the shape is a common character in Chinese. The stems must be an abstraction of language. Does each stem mean…
Author Margaret Rew
Margaret Rew
Margaret Rew is the gallery director at Howard Yezerski Gallery by day and fledgling writer by night. She graduated from Tufts University in 2011 with a degree in Art History and Political Science. Her daily art blog, artforbreakfast.org, chronicles the story behind, beneath and within one piece of art every day.
Art for Breakfast: Francesca Woodman’s Untitled, Providence RI, 1976
A print sheet. Informal, in the rhetoric of photographers, a behind the scenes glance. Sharpie on the images. Is she editing or playing? She dives to the ground, over…
Art for Breakfast: James Casebere’s Flooded Hallway
At first, I was struck by the geometry of the space in the picture. The bright spotlight holds the walls accountable for its mystery. Rectangles and triangles descend upon…
Art for Breakfast: Cornelia Parker’s Hanging Fire
A drawing, mid air. Magically floating just off the ground, with a shadow gracefully leading back up the wall. Stand for a minute, and the pins will wink at…
Art for Breakfast: Marlene Dumas’ Jule, die Vrou
Cadmium beauty. There is something luscious about red. This one in particular. It is so pure and vibrant that the addition would only diffuse its impact. Dumas slathers her…
Art for Breakfast: Dawoud Bey’s Mgbechi
Looking at me, it is obvious that I am a young African-American woman. Some may see pride behind the firm position of my lips, others may see that I…
Art for Breakfast: Sandback’s ‘Untitled (Sculptural Study for Room with Three Entrances)’
The lines are made of yarn, carefully and precisely establishing invisible walls. The planes cut through our space. They prepare an odd, triangular room for us. Navigate me, they say.…
Art for Breakfast: Rineke Dijkstra’s Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Vulnerable, confronted with the camera. The girl knows this is her moment. This is her time to show the world what she is. But the moment comes and she doesn’t…
Art for Breakfast: David Park’s ‘Couple’
“I can’t do people,” they say. The detail in a face is too much, the stakes of failure are too high. We rest incredible power in a facial expression —…
Art For Breakfast: Cézanne’s Study of Trees
What does a tree look like? A child defines it like a lollipop, a green mass perched on top of a sturdy trunk. As we grow older we acknowledge the…