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Large-scale oil and acrylic paintings and mixed media compositions from the past 30 years highlight this retrospective of the artistic career of Peter Plagens, an alumnus of the USC School of Fine Art and the art critic for Newsweek magazine.
Individuals who dabble in different areas or work in more than one field are often called “jacks of all trades.”
For its part, the media simply refers to them as hyphenates, such as actress-singer-dancer-restaurateur-fashion moguls Jennifer Lopez or Britney Spears.
Meet Peter Plagens, a critic, painter, educator and novelist whose artistic work has been displayed at galleries across the country.
Perhaps most widely known as Newsweek senior writer for fine arts and an Artforum contributor, Plagens is also an accomplished artist. His paintings have been described as “of single importance … imposing expression(s) and exemplification(s) of the new condition visual art finds itself in.”
Plagens expresses himself through abstract forms that alternate between subtle and brash colorings. His work ranges from the self-described “craggy, disjointed and garish” to something more elegant and lyrical.
“Contemporary art,” he recently said, “is in a bad way because it has strayed from the path of trying to be different from pop culture. My taste and intellect is for an art that stands as the antithesis to pop culture.”
The 1962 graduate of the USC School of Fine Arts has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, for painting (1972) and art criticism (1973). He has has taught at USC, Hofstra University, James Madison University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Cal State -Northridge, the UC Berkeley and the University of Texas at Austin.
Plagens’ works are part of the permanent collections of many museums, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Santa Fe Museum of Art.
This exhibition is personally curated by Selma Holo, director of the USC Fisher Gallery.
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