Dog Days of Summer: Susumu Kamijo and more...

 The works of some of our favorite artists are part of a show at the Timothy Taylor Gallery in Manhattan. Dog Days of Summer is a group exhibition that focuses on the dog as a recurring subject in art history and the many roles that dogs play in the lives of their owners ,not just as companions, but as models, muses and metaphors, as well.

 

Here’s a look at some of the artists in the Dog Days of Summer Show:

 

Susumu Kamijo (b.1975), whose poodle paintings and sculptures have gained him international acclaim, was influenced, as a child, by the American movies that his father introduced him to as a child. He was raised in Nagano, Japan, a region known for its high mountain ranges. Nagano is a popular place for skiing and snowboarding, not for its art museums. Kamijo came to the U.S. when he was sixteen.

 

 

 

He became interested in art as a college student. “I figured out at the end of college that I can get good grades in art and I don’t have to write any academic paper.” he said. “I just go in there and draw, sketch models or do painting and I keep getting good grades, so I decided to become art major.” He earned a BFA at the University of Oregon in 2000 and an MFA in Painting and Drawing at the University of Washington in 2002. His dog-grooming girlfriend introduced him to the elegance of poodles.

 

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 Kamijo’s friend, Jonas Wood (b.1977), who also holds an MFA rom the University of Washington, often includes images of dogs in his works, as well as images of his wife, Shio Kusaka’s pottery. Wood had plans to study medicine and has a BA in Psychology. 

Work by Jonas Wood is also included in the show.

 

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Best known for his portraits, flowers and landscape paintings, work by Alex Katz (b.1927)  has also been included in the Dog Days of Summer exhibit. Katz currently has a show at MoMA. The solo exhibit, Seasons, consists of four enormous paintings, each commemorating a season.

 

 

As he has done for many decades, Katz is spending the summer in Maine. He sketches the landscape in his summer home and returns to his New York studio to paint. In an interview with Prudence Peiffer. Director of Content at MoMA, Katz said, “The subject matter is different; we have skyscrapers and night paintings and in Maine, it’s a different kind of thing. But the thing in Maine is you get out of the rat-race art world.” Alex Katz’s paintings will be on exhibit at MoMA through September 8, 2024.

 

Also included in Dog Days of Summer  are works by Eddie Martinez, Pablo Picasso and William Wegman, whose work is also available at VFA.

 

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July 23, 2024