ArtsCriticATL.com

Babes and bodyguard in tow, Fahamu Pecou swaggered into the art scene a few years ago, playing a hip-hop tough guy.The Atlanta artist developed a branding campaign for said alter ego with the tagline “Fahamu Pecou Is the Shit.” It included motto-baring T-shirts sold on his Web site and paintings depicting his persona as a celeb on imitation covers of  real art magazines.

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The performance satirized the prevailing stereotype of the black male. The PR campaign and paintings pointed a finger at the media and the larger culture for promoting…

“Exposure” is a loaded word. A technical term in photography, it can suggest a learning experience and a sensational revelation. Photographer Tierney Gearon  embraces them all. In pursuit of understanding and catharsis, she fearlessly lets it all hang out — her life, her feelings, her family, their bodies and hers. And in “Explosure” she experiments with in-camera epiphanies.

The Atlanta native, 46, made a splash in 2001 with a series of vaguely unsettling nude images of her children exhibited at Charles Saatchi Gallery in London. Like Sally Mann’s family photos, the work provoked accusations of child pornography and exploitation on the one hand…

The exhibition “Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century” is a deep dive into the history, function and production of 16th-century mass media.

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Thanks to the scholarship that produced the exhibition and the eponymous book, we come to understand that the etchings, engravings and woodcuts are more than adjuncts to the biblical narrative. The artists and their patrons saw them as a means to purvey values and biblical history as well as political and religious propaganda.

“Christ Gives…

By CATHERINE FOX

The Georgia Council for the Arts has become a publisher. It hopes to boost recognition of the state’s artists and museums through ”Georgia Masterpieces: Selected Works from Georgia’s Museums.”

GCA executive director Susan Wiener used a $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant called “American Masterpieces,” which promotes efforts to bring art to audiences, to fund the generously illustrated coffee-table book. It is an omnibus of media, genre and time. The 27 featured artists include 18th-century bird painter John Abbott, folk potter Lanier Meaders, photographer John McWilliams and contemporary mixed-media artist Amalia Amaki.

The participating…

By CATHERINE FOX

This just in. Atlanta’s High Museum of Art has hired Michael Rooks as the new Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Rooks, who replaces Jeffrey Grove, will begin in January. 

Rooks (left), who earned his undergraduate and Masters of Arts degreesfrom the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has been curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, and at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Most recently…

The Contemporary contributed three very different photo exhibitions to the profusion…