Well, the feasting holiday is over, leading to the post holiday/family need to exit the house and exercise the mind's eye and take in new contexts. Art can be great for this and here are my picks for some great shows to feed/sustain the mind.


Paul McCarthy and Ed Ruscha in Open This End

Open This End is the most exciting group show in Portland this Fall. Partly, this is because it comes from one excellent collector, Blake Byrne, whose good taste and adventurous attitude the work maintains a sharp edge about it. Collecting something that carries an implicit challenge takes on the responsibilities of what Art with an "edge" demands and therefore occupies a special place between civics and taste. Thus, what Open this End does so well is provide a variety of multifaceted world views.

Open This End | September 8 - December 11
Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art
Lewis & Clark College
0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road



Andy Warhol Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation at the Portland Art Museum

The current retrospective at the Portland Art Museum, Andy Warhol: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation is the largest of this seminal artist's output ever and should be on the to do list for anyone who can make it. There is breadth and scope here and PORT interviewed catalog essayist Richard Axsom for the occasion. Like so many Post WWII artists Warhol had mostly drained his work of allegory while introducing popular iconography as a kind of folk or kitsch context. This was something fascists had abused so Warhol's rise as an artist became a rehabilitation of sorts, bringing back iconic secularism without nationalistic jingoism and other subjugation. As the Cold War continued Warhol became became the defacto Pope of Americana, canonizing our taste in many secular/cosmopolitan things. The show is an ideal way to connect to the kind of America that is both being threatened by the next presidency. In other words a great post holiday field trip for Portlanders.

Andy Warhol: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer | October 8, 2016 - January 1, 2017
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Avenue