Catherine Opie Does the Vatican: Walls, Windows and Blood

Today I’m writing about an exhibition of new work by Catherine Opie (b. 1961), Walls, Windows and Blood, at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. She’s a Los Angeles–based photographer whose work I’ve followed since the mid 1990s. Opie tends to work in series, each with a different theme, so she “can’t be pigeonholed,” as she says. She’s done portraits of her leather lesbian friends in San Francisco, which remind me of Thomas Eakins’s portraits in their candor, but also groups of photographs on ice houses on lakes, California surfers, high-school football players, and interiors of Elizabeth Taylor’s last home. Now, in her new work, she’s photographing aspects of the Vatican. I like the show a lot.

Earlier this week I wrote about the art dealer Betty Cuningham, who has sold wonderful Modernist art for the past 50 years and who’s closing her gallery on Rivington Street in Manhattan this spring. The Last Picture Show is her farewell exhibition and a survey of many of the artists whose careers she has advanced over the years. I enjoyed it. Since I know many of the artists, it was a sentimental journey on the one hand, but, on the other, they’re all so good that they never go stale.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

Today I’m writing about an exhibition of new work by Catherine Opie (b. 1961), Walls, Windows and Blood, at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. She’s a Los Angeles–based photographer whose work I’ve followed since the mid 1990s. Opie tends to work in series, each with a different theme, so she “can’t be pigeonholed,” as she says. She’s done portraits of her leather lesbian friends in San Francisco, which remind me of Thomas Eakins’s portraits in their candor, but also groups of photographs on ice houses on lakes, California surfers, high-school football players, and interiors of Elizabeth Taylor’s last home. Now, in her new work, she’s photographing aspects of the Vatican. I like the show a lot.

Earlier this week I wrote about the art dealer Betty Cuningham, who has sold wonderful Modernist art for the past 50 years and who’s closing her gallery on Rivington Street in Manhattan this spring. The Last Picture Show is her farewell exhibition and a survey of many of the artists whose careers she has advanced over the years. I enjoyed it. Since I know many of the artists, it was a sentimental journey on the one hand, but, on the other, they’re all so good that they never go stale.