The Gallery Report Essay, Research Paper

Shailesh Patel

Cancer Alley

“The poisoning of the American south by Richard Misrach””

Since the late ‘70s, Richard Misrach has been known for his large format, eight by ten inch color photographs of the Nevada desert. His epic series of 18 Cantos or groups, of photographs range from lyrical to political. The west was a vision or absolute purity, Misrach tries to temper that reverence with the truth about mom’s occupation of the land.

In 1999, Misrach accepted a commission from Atlanta’s High museum of art as part of their “Picturing the South”. He chase to photograph Louisiana’s infamous cancer alley, for decades oil refineries and fertilizer plants have dumped their pollutions into the Mississippi river along this 150-miles stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rough. The Mississippi is the dominant river basin North America and drains more that 1.2 million square miles or about 40 percent of the continental United State. It provides 18 million people with drinking water, 1.5 million in Louisiana alone.

The Salton Sea

The Nature Trail on the West Shores of the fabulous Salton Sea is a three mile adventure along the shores of the Sea. Visitors can see a mixture of birds, native cacti, and wild flowers. The West Shores bird sanctuary borders on the beautiful greens of the Salton City Golf Course. The Bird Watch and Nature Trail, by a MAJOR FLYWAY, is host to over 250 species of birds and 96 accidentals. Migratory birds include Canada geese, snow geese, American avocetes, eared grebes, black-necked stilts, green-winged teals, brown & white pelicans, Scott’s orioles, redstarts, burrowing owls, mountain plovers, long-billed dowitchers, long-billed curlews, marsh wrens, and ruddy ducks. Every year the Salton Sea International Bird Festival attracts thousands of bird lovers from around the world.

Gentile da Fabriano,

“Adoration of the Magi”

Palla di Noferi Strozzi commissioned this famous altarpiece, signed and dated 1423 on the frame, for his family’s chapel in the church of Santa Trinita in Florence. Wealth and culture of the donor are reflected in the lavish use of gold and in the pomp of the Magi procession, including also exotic animals as leopards and monkeys. If in this picture clearly emerges the persistence of International Gothic at the beginning of 15th Century, in the meanwhile the panel is ahead of its time showing in the propeller’s scenes (Nativity, Rest during the Flight into Egypt and Presentation to the Temple) one of the basic innovations of Renaissance art: the blue sky at the place of the traditional gold background

Waste Land

“Meditations on a ravaged Landscape by David Hanson”

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Over 15 years David Hanson has photographed a broad range of the America landscape, form power plants to mines to military installations to hazardous waste sites. The images presented here become, in their own right, a form of meditation on a ravaged landscape. To deliver these images to people who might become involved in the solution of the environmental problems, Robert Ketchum has become a sponsor for David Hanson and has helped prom to this work.

Hans Memling,

“Madonna enthroned with Child and two Angels”

Artist of German origin, active in Bruxelles and Bruges during the second half of 15th century, Memling often painted sacred scenes with a sense of serene harmony and decorative elegance. In this work splendor of the colors dominates the foreground, with the Madonna’s throne framed in an arch and adorned with festoons of leaves, fruit and flowers held by putti: a set of motifs that clearly reveal the artist’s attention to Italian models of Venetian art, while peculiarly Flemish is the natural landscape on the background.

The Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti. Fisherman Spearing a Fish

The support is a very fine, plain-weave fabric that has been lined. The original tacking margins are intact. The thin white ground appears to have been commercially applied. A pale underlayer of pinkish wash is visible in the foreground, while a brighter red underlayer was used in the sky. Subsequent paint is opaque and was applied very thinly and dryly over the fabric nubs. A group of horizontal scratches through the paint layer in the lower left corner appears to be intentional. The surface seems to be selectively varnished, with neighboring areas alternately matte and glossy. Several small damages throughout the surface have been repaired and inpainted.