Bibliography

The Vastness of Reverie by Marilynne Mason - Christian Science Monitor - June, 2006 Visions of Santa Fe, published by Squarebooks – 2005
Albuquerque Journal North – FOCA focus – February 14, 2003
Russian & Soviet Press Coverage of the United States  by 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, 2002
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 – September 28, 1993
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 March 16, 1980
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


Most Recent

'The vastness of reverie' by Marilynne Scott Mason
..…French philosopher André Malraux saw the wide availability of art through reproductions, etc., as an important cultural development - what he called the "museum without walls." Works of art could be experienced by almost anyone, almost anywhere, whether they had access to museums or not.

Digital art may have turned another corner in the "museum without walls." Looking at some of the wondrous images included in "Digital Art: 2006," at the Farrell Fischoff Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M. (through June 19), on a computer 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 gray 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 Métro, which she scanned into the computer, creating darkness on either side of the light - producing the 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.….


Press Clips

ART NEWS
".......Arlene Becker's complex play on the theme of identity through imitation.....Elvis in Jerusalem, which shows two Elvis impersonators, one young, one old, on opposite sides of a crowded McDonald's, ignored by everyone...."

FORWARD
"Jewish Artists: On the Edge," a Yeshiva University Museum exhibition of 50 Jewish artists......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 as it is about the influence of other cultures on Judaism. "Elvis in Jerusalem".....Arlene Becker's iris print...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 .......is a statement on Israeli society....

NEW MEXICAN
.......New Mexice Women Artists at the Harwood Museum............Photographer Arlene Becker's (Santa Fe) work explores people in various states of longing, alienation 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....

JOURNAL NORTH
....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 a 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....

NEW MEXICAN
...Arlene Becker's black-and-white photograph Breakfast at the Chuckwagon captures the ambiance of a crowded cafe, 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....

NEW MEXICAN
.......Arlene Becker, who does photography of people in everyday settings, like the Chuckwagon restaurant....where they still serve Jell-O....

GAMBIT - NEW ORLEANS WEEKLY
.................But it is the forboding posture and blank visage that touches something at the edge of memory, something mysterious just beyond recall....

PIONEER PRESS
........they.....proceed to develop autobiographical, mythic and psychospiritual directions...there is a subtle humor here...seems odd, these esoteric and somewhat alien archetypes striking such a contnemporary pose...

NEW CITY
.....Becker's pieces are both personal and political....She reshapes the earthly materials in the way people twist their own natures...Becker combines the dark elements of the natural world and human nature......

NEW ARE EXAMINER
................Yet in its very simplicity it presented a challenge to the consumerist vision of nature which allows us to believe we can pick and choose who we are and what we value in the natural order.......

CHICAGO READER
....Arlene Becker's...exhibition.......These are quiet zones, separated though not aloof areas that seem to provide both actually (from inside) and metaphorically (from outside) an environment in which Woolf's territorial imperative for creativity could be fulfilled......Apparently Becker wants us to see how opposites match, forming a whole, in other words, "one zone,"..........reinforce the idea of unity........Becker's installations are not confusing, but evocative............Like time itself, the one continuous zone that the structures seem to encapsulate, they permit us to ponder eternity.