Andrew Mangravite

Contributor

BSR Contributor Since January 2, 2006

Andrew Mangravite is an archivist at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. He lives in Center City Philadelphia.

Andrew Mangravite is an archivist at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. He has written on art and film and has translated several of the French Symbolist writers. A new edition of his poetry collection, A Book of Cinquains, is due shortly. He has also written two collections of stories and one other collection of poems. He lives in Philadelphia.

By this Author

164 results
Page 1
Trying to pass: Scarlett Johansson in "Under the Skin." (© 2014 – StudioCanal)

'Under the Skin' and 'Only Lovers Left Alive'

New takes on horror
Genre films are not just for hacks — well-regarded indie directors Jonathan Glazer and Jim Jarmusch try their hands at horror.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 5 minute read
Still life with linzer torte1

Ellen Hutchinson, Sensory Perception
Ellen Hutchinson's work shows both a high level of technical mastery and a hint of the inexpressible.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 2 minute read
Csilla Sadloch, "Island Root," graphite, 2013.

Drawing on Nature at Schmidt/Dean
The apparently disparate show at the Schmidt/Dean Gallery is united through its emphasis on the primacy of drawing.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 2 minute read
By day's end, most of these men will be dead.

Joe Sacco’s ‘The Great War’

The face of war, seen from the trenches
The Great War is actually a 24- foot drawing, divided into 24 narrative panels, each crammed with mind-boggling detail. For Americans it’s a devastating reminder of what this war meant to England and, by extension, Europe.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 2 minute read
<em>Burned Out Shingle Style</em>, 48 x 40 inches, Oil on Mi-Tientes, 2013

David Brewster at PAFA

The return of the native — sort of
Over the years David Brewster’s subject matter has changed, but his work has never lost a fierce sense of urgency. This is a man who loves putting paint to canvas.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 2 minute read
Dali's 'Self Construction With Boiled Beans' (1936): Another way to think about war.

‘Surrealists’ at the Art Museum (1st review)

It is and isn’t Art
Surrealists didn’t depict things so much as what things suggested to the painter. They were ready to embrace the irrational precise because they saw where an ordered, rational social structure had led them. This Art Museum show rounds up the usual suspects but also includes some intriguing painters you rarely if ever hear of.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 4 minute read
Vivien Leigh in GWTW: Tara looks real, but...

Dante Ferretti’s film designs at MoMA

He turns cardboard into dreams
Production designers are the unsung heroes of film. The script and director may be brilliant, but at the end of the day, the audience must be able to accept that a plaster and cardboard set is the real thing.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 3 minute read
Levinthal’s ‘Rain Curtain’: The joy of pigments.

Levinthal & Garvey vs. Goodman at Gross McCleaf

Emotion vs. control
Gross McCleaf’s current show offers an interesting and rewarding confrontation of styles, and also of outlooks concerning how art is created and what it’s meant to be.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 2 minute read

Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Kraus Project’

Why was Karl Kraus so angry? Well, you’d angry too if….uh….
Karl Kraus, the Austrian playwright, editor and social critic, was little known to today’s English-speaking audience— until now. Thanks to the novelist and Kraus scholar Jonathan Franzen, the angry old man of German satire lives anew.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 3 minute read
Grimm's 'Old Woman Telling the Fortune a Young Noblewoman' (c. 1825): God, family, friends and pets.

German Romantic prints at the Art Museum

What Germans loved, before they loved Germany
This extraordinarily rich collection of German prints is an exhibit of popular art that was widely distributed via prints and books. Thus it truly represents the voice of the people, as opposed to the (possibly eccentric) vision of a single artist.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 7 minute read
'Shirt Corner': The haziness of memories recalled.

Rick Buttari at F.A.N. Gallery

A preference for the past
Rick Buttari seems an artist in two minds: On the one hand, a keen observer of people and something of a social critic; on the other, a recorder of the cityscape he lives in.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 1 minute read
Conte's Rising Tide': Visual vocabulary.

"Tonalism' at Gross McCleaf

It's all about mood
Gross McCleaf has mounted an engaging teaching exhibition about “Tonalism”— a type of landscape painting that uses atmospheric effects to achieve a mood.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 2 minute read
Frances Galante's 'Sleeping In II': Multiple worlds of artistic vision.

Last bow for Artists' House

Farewell to a haven for realist art
I was late in discovering Artists' House, showcase for emerging contemporary artists, but I always enjoyed my visits there immensely. Now that it's “retiring,” this show is your last chance— and it's a good one.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 1 minute read
At age 36: Quasi-military duds, but never his corporal's uniform.

Was Hitler an Expressionist?

Hitler rehearsing a speech, 1925: What the camera tells us
Hitler denounced the German Expressionists as "degenerate artists." But a set of photos from 1925 suggests that he may have been the greatest Expressionist of them all.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 3 minute read
Martenson's 'Tent Evening': Is darkness cozy, or terrifying?

"Night Vision' at Gross McCleaf Gallery

Fourteen shades of night
Night, as a theme, can conjure up feelings of loneliness and dread, or it can impel us to seek out warmth and light. Some of the 14 artists at Gross McCleaf interpret the subject more literally than others.

Andrew Mangravite

Articles 2 minute read