Franz von Stucks Pieta, 1891, is on loan from the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.
  • Courtesy Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
  • Franz von Stuck's Pieta, 1891, is on loan from the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.

In the artist Franz von Stuck (1863-1928), Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker sees the holy quartet of the 19th century: Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, and Wagner. After being something of a doubter, Birnie Danzker has become one of his greatest supporters, and through her eyes at the Franz von Stuck show at the Frye, you're invited to consider his works as if they were marinated in the ideas of those men. For better and worse, 19th-century Germany itself is on display. But a few of the paintings are so strangely alluring as to be hauntingly powerful even if you never considered any context at all.

Hall lights are on, doors ajar, and neon signs are flashing out the windows at the far end.
  • Courtesy of the artist and Bellevue Arts Museum
  • Hall lights are on, doors ajar, and neon signs are flashing out the windows at the far end.

This is a TEEENY crutch glimpsed in the crack under a TINY door in one of Rick Araluces hyperreal/surreal/neonoir miniature stage set sculptures. What happened in there?
  • JG
  • This is a TEEENY crutch glimpsed in the crack under a TINY door in one of Rick Araluce's hyperreal/surreal/neonoir miniature stage set sculptures. What happened in there?

Be sure when you visit Rick Araluce's sculptures at Bellevue Arts Museum that you look for all the tiny peepholes, or ask the gallery guards. There are so many places to stick your eyeballs. If that sounds all naughty-like, it's because that's how it feels.

See more recommended art shows right here.