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Bruce Museum opens Revised and Restored: The Art of Kathleen Gilje

Bruce Museum opens Revised and Restored: The Art of Kathleen Gilje an exhibition on view May 11, 2013 – September 8, 2013

Kathleen Gilge (American, b. 1945) Self-Portrait with Paintbrush after Bouguereau's The Assault, 2012 Oil on linen, 61 ¼ x 41 ½ inches Courtesy of the artist © Kathleen Gilje 2013
Kathleen Gilge (American, b. 1945) Self-Portrait with Paintbrush after Bouguereau’s The Assault, 2012 Oil on linen, 61 ¼ x 41 ½ inches Courtesy of the artist © Kathleen Gilje 2013
A new exhibition offers an overview of Kathleen Gilje’s satirically pointed and technically adroit reincarnations of famous Old Master and nineteenth-century paintings. Through these works she comments on social, political and art historical issues of our day, and often recasts leading lights of the world of art scholarship, criticism and collecting.

A trained restorer who began her career working on the great national collections at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, Gilje brings a sophisticated understanding of the techniques and materials of the older art that she reconfigures, be it a “restored” version of a van Eyck, Raphael, Artemesia Gentileschi, Manet or Sargent.

She often comments on contemporary fashions and manners by inserting anachronistic details into images from the distant past. Here, too, are juxtapositions of contemporary and older art, always with a topical thrust, and satirical send ups of iconic images. http://brucemuseum.or