Press
BIBLIOGRAPHY (some excerpts below)
Hudson/Catskill Papers - Art on Warren - Sept 18, 2009
Albuquerque Journal North – FOCA focus – February 14, 2003
Russian & Soviet Press Coverage of the United States, Jonathan Becker cover image - 2003
Pasa Tiempo – The Santa Fe New Mexican - Windy City Different – October 18, 2002
Art News – Review - Jewish Artists on the Edge: Yeshiva University Museum, April, “02
Forward – Exploring Edges of Identity: Yeshiva University Museum, November 30, 2001
Pasatiempo – The Santa Fe New Mexican – New Mexico – The State of Women’s Art – October 5, 1991
Pasatiempo –The Santa Fe New Mexican – Photo Week: Intermedia 2001, July 6, 2001
Hadassah Magazine – Becker’s Elvis in Jerusalem, October, 2000
Art Talk – Muy Caliente in Santa Fe, FOCA exhibition – January, 2000
Pasatiempo – The Santa Fe New Mexican – Becker and Berning – February, 1995
Vanderbilt Register – Arlene Becker, Women’s History Month – February 27, 1995
The Tennessean – Arts Spotlight, Arlene Becker – March 5, 1995
Nashville Banner – Arlene Becker, Women’s History Month – March 15, 1995
Chicago Tribune Magazine – Interiors – February 13, 1994
Gambit – New Orleans Weekly – A Knockout – Arlene Becker’s Masque – 9-28-93
Atlanta Journal/Constitution – Arlene Becker – May 21, 1993
New Art Examiner – Arlene Becker – Lannon Cole Gallery – February, 1991
Atlanta Journal/Constitution – Becker – Extended Boundaries – September 21, 1992
New Art Examiner – Arlene Becker’s Solitude – May, 1992
New City – Becker at the Lannon Gallery – November 8, 1990
Pioneer Press – Becker, Return 1 – June, 1990
Pioneer Press - Becker, Solitude – June, 1990
New City – Becker’s Masque – May 10, 1990
New City – Earthly Sculpture, Arlene Becker – November 8, 1990
Pioneer Press – Variations on One Note – August 14, 1986
Chicago Reader – Where the Soul Lives, Arlene Becker at ARC Gallery – 1980
Chicago Sun Times – A Room of One’s Own, Arlene Becker at ARC Gallery 3-16-‘80
Chicago Sun Times – Becker, Installation Art – 1978
Pioneer Press– Art, Science in Time/Space Exhibitio, Arlene Becker – 1978
Lake Views Chicago Artist Arlene Becker – January 30, 1974
Chicago Today – Focus: Artist Arlene Becker – August 3, 1974
The Chicago Sunday Booster – Chicago Artist Arlene Becker – Sept. 14, 1974
Highland Park Mail – Becker Uses Bricks for Canvas – September 1974
Lively Arts – Arlene Becker – Suburban Fine Arts Center – 1974
Surrealism on Broadway – Arlene Becker – 1974
Chicago Sun Times – Arlene Becker at Illinois Arts Council Gallery - 1973
Chicago Daily News – Arlene Becker at One Illinois Center - 1973
EXCERPTS
HUDSON/CATSKILL PAPERS - ‘Art on Warren’ by John Keeler 9/18/09 - ‘….Photography seems to be the center stage…..The BCB Art on Warren Streen is the most contemporary gallery on the street. and is often challenging to the viewer. It is high on interesting exhibits. Currently Arlene Becker’s photos are on view until October 11 and her brillient work titled “Museum Narraatives” is outstanding…”
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - ‘AT THE STATION’ Ultrachrome print mounted in Plexiglas, 19-1/4 by 35 in., image by Arlene Becker - ’What appears to be a string of train cars is a mirror image of a single car….caption under picture - ‘The Vastness of Reverie’ by Marilynne Scott Mason 2006 Looking at some of the wondrous images included in “Digital Art: 2006” at the Farrell Fishoff Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M…. feels like a revelation.
Take “At the Station,” by Arlene Becker. It appears to be a photo of train cars centered on a large black background, reminding one simultaneously of hard-edge painting in strips of increasing and decreasing light and varied degrees of grey with cubes of color strung across the central strip.
But a deeper look reveals that the image captures only a portion of a single car mirrored in such a way as to seem as though it were a string of cars. The color has been manipulated to create tension between outside and inside the “cars” – and the shadowy figures within.
“Everything I do is based on the human being within his environment,” says Ms. Becker.
The train is the Paris Metro, which she scanned into the computer, creating darkness on either side of the light-producing image she wants us to see, the story she wants to tell us, in which ambiguity is a key element. She speaks of Charles Baudelaire’s “vastness of reverie” as the elemental idea in her work……..
ART NEWS - Charles Ruas - This thought-provoking exhibition, curated by Ori Z. Soltes….….presents 50 contemporary Jewish artists whose works give an updated……definition of identity through religion, nationality, and gender…………….In a similar vein there is Arlene Becker’s complex play on the theme of identity through imitation in her 1997 photograph Elvis in Jerusalem, which shows two Elvis impersonators, one young, one old, on opposite sides of a crowded McDonald’s, ignored by everyone…….
FORWARD THE KING OF JERUSALEM image by Arlene Becker…..”Elvis in Jerusalem (above) depicts a Jerusalem-area restaurent’s dosplay of one of the largest Elvis memorabilia collections outside Graceland………….caption under picture
Defining “Jewish art” has always been tricky, tending to spawn more questions than answers. Should artworks about Judaism by non-Jews be considered? What about works by Jews that in no way refer to Jewish life?
“Jewish Artists: On the Edge,” a Yeshiva University Museum exhibition of 50 Jewish artists – including some converts to Judaism and some who recently rediscovered their faith – seeks to explore the boundaries of “Jewish” art……………….
Yet the exhibit is as much about Judaism pervading other cultures as it is about the influence of other cultures on Judaism. “Elvis in Jerusalem,” Arlene Becker’s iris print on arches, depicts a Jerusalem-area restaurant full of Elvis memorabilia that rivals collections anywhere in the United States outside Graceland. “I think it’s a comment on Israelis aspiring toward the hero worship of America,” said Reba Wulkan, curator of contemporary exhibitions at the museum. “Just having Elvis in Jerusalem, in a popular store, is a statement on Israeli society.” ……
ALBUQUERUE JOURNAL NORTH - FOCA FOCUS - ARTISTS’ LEWALLEN CONTEMPORARY GALLERY EXHIBITION - Dottie Indyke
………There are many interesting photographs, notably Arlene Becker’s “Black Guy, White Guys,” which is a little gem (and at 5-by-7-inches, I do mean little). The basis is a photo Becker took in McDonald’s. In the forefront, black and white men sit at tables: in the background is a cardboard cutout of the clown, Ronald McDonald. The men are depicted in black and white, the clown in color and everything else in royal blue. An archival giclee print that the artist digitally manipulated, the piece is funny and startling, cleverly composed and executed…
SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN – PASA TIEMPO - Arlene Becker: One Man’s Solitude Plus two Buddies, giclee print on canvas, 24 X36 “Interiors by Becker and portraits by Gay Block - January 22, 2004 - We live in a world of reflective and transparent materials, in which privacy is rare and loneliness is common. Photographer Arlene Becker draws attention to the illusory concealment offered by see-through tents, and she shows us the lack of interaction among patrons of a café. She captures the all-too-common feeling of being alone but visible and surrounded by strangers. In her photographs light plays on layers of transparent surfaces. She focuses on environments that protect us from bad weather but provide little emotional warmth. Ambient light becomes lavender and blue when viewed through layers of plastic, and the surface of a wooden picnic table seems sensuous next to such cold beauty. Using Photoshop, she turns parts of her photographs into ghostly shadows, heightening the sense of isolation.
THE NEW MEXICAN - NEW MEXICO – The State of Women’s Art - HARWOOD MUSEUM by Teri Thompson Randell If the exhibit of New Mexico Women Artists at the Harwood Museum proves one thing, it’s that there is no such thing as “women’s art.” The more than 80 artworks in the Taos exhibit share little in common other than demonstrating the unlimited range of expression and world-views that emerge……
Photographer Arlene Becker’s (Santa Fe) work explores people in various states of longing, alienation, solitude and connection. In Two Girls, two teenagers sit in a fast-food restaurant, staring out the windows toward a harsh, undefined exterior. Becker tinted the print blue, all except for the girls’ hair, which she tinted red, creating a stunning visual contrast and a feeling of shared uncertainty……
The New Mexican WINDY CITY DIFFERENT - by Lynn Kline - Chicago may lie more than a thousans miles from Santa Fe, but you don’t have to travel that far in order to see innovative works created by artists who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago…………….
…”Arlene Becker’s black-and-white photograph Breakfast at the Chuckwagon captures the ambience of a crowded café where men in gimme caps, flannel shirts and down vests drink coffee and huddle around tables. The starkness of the black and white offsets the exuberance of the advertisement-laden ceiling and the roadrunners, fish and ears of corn painted on the walls.
THE NEW MEXICAN - MUY CALIENTE EN SANTA FE by Shari R Morrison - “..…….Arlene Becker, who does photography of people in everyday settings, like the Chuckwagon restaurant in Espanola where they still serve Jell-O……