They may look like comic book art, but there is a perturbing sadness to the world that Valerio Adami creates in his large-scale paintings, 23 of which are currently on view until Jan. 9 at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in a retrospective exhibit that spans four decades of the Italian artist’s work.

The exhibit is merely a glimpse into Adami’s vast oeuvre, which has been shaped by global travel and friendships with some of the world’s most notable cultural icons. Adami’s work tells a visual story, allowing him to infuse social commentary in paintings that portray global hotspots such as Israel, India, Cuba, and the post-World War II Europe that seems the underlying theme to most of his work. Each painting is a visual storybook.

“Adami sees around him, in the real world, the world of his visions, a world of metaphors, those evocations from depiction that are replete with ideas beyond depiction,” writes George S. Bolge, the Boca Museum’s executive director. “He assumes all objects are inherently allegorical; ‘moderated’ by him, they become more intensely so.”

Adami was born in 1935 in Bologna, Italy. As a young man, he spent his summer vacations in Venice, where his ideology as an artist was shaped by meetings with prominent artistic figures, including W.H. Auden and Oscar Kokoschka. He went on to study art at the Academia di Brera, first as a draughtsman, but by 1954, he was studying under the tutelage of the then-renowned figurative painter Achille Funi.

Funi’s influences had included Boccioni and the Futurists, whom he later rejected, finally settling on a style influenced heavily by Renaissance masters. Funi’s struggle between the old and the new may have influenced Adami’s rejection of abstract expressionism in favor of a figurative style with abstract elements, which has remained his trademark for the past 40 years. It is decidedly the struggle betwixt modernity and antiquity, and it remains pronounced throughout his work.

It’s clear that Adami’s initial training with drawing dramatically influenced his painting, which includes sharp lines as significant feature. These lines are part of his deconstruction of the human form to what is essential to capture a moment and evoke a mood. Each painting begins with a study and he has said, “I look only for the anatomies and the virtue of the profile, the point of the pencil becomes the lamp that illuminates the path in the dark.”

By 1955 Adami was working in Paris where he became part of the Nouvelle Figuration movement — often described as the French intellectualized version of pop art. However, there were vast differences in the influences and ideologies of American and European artists at that time. The visual imagery in Adami’s style, and his use of color is, in fact, remarkably similar to the Action Comics of the 1930s, which introduced the Superman character. But the use of a commercialized, glossy surface, unlike American pop art, is a tool to draw the viewer into a world of introspection and allegory, and not just a commentary on materialism.

In Adami’s hyperreal world, women are eroticized, but not romanticized. They are fully present, but menacing. For example, in Metamorfosi (1982), Adami depicts Ovid’s myth of Actaeon, a hunter who has stumbled upon Diana and her nymphs bathing. Diana, irritated that he has seen her nude, transforms him into a deer. His dogs subsequently chase him down, kill him, and eat him. In Adami’s painting, Actaeon is trying to embrace Diana. She appears to be kissing him farewell as he morphs into a deer.

In Capriccio (1983), a sturdy female figure is poised to play the violin – an instrument that appears multiple times throughout many of Adami’s paintings. As a capriccio is usually a lively, short musical composition, the message is unclear. The woman has a striking profile, her stance is elegant, her bosom is attractive. However, her legs are oversized and unappealing – they seem far too large for her body and this distortion, along with a skeletal arm and a heavily lined face, make her too harsh for feminine appeal.

Overall, Adami’s women are powerful, albeit indelicate. In La Nuvola, (1991), a woman is poised coquettishly above a man who appears either spent, or perhaps dead? Though we can’t see the woman’s face, her body language seems triumphant. She seems unconcerned about the man. The two figures appear to be floating amidst the clouds (nuvola translates as cloud). A lone figure in the background rests upon a shovel, perhaps watching the two.

The female figure in La Notte dello Stambecco (1988) again appears triumphant and larger than life. She holds books and a canvas – perhaps Adami’s sketchbooks and painting? She is depicted in the evening sky and the figure of a goat is upside down beneath her. The woman’s face is skeletal, empty, and morose. Though she seems to hold important tools of the artist’s trade, she take no pleasure in these possessions.

Adami has adopted his own visual language with color that is both unsettling and thought-provoking. While the American pop artists, like Warhol and Lichtenstein, chose cheerful color palettes, Adami has chosen the colors of war as the foundation for much of his work. His canvases contain blocks of camouflage — colors of war and strife. Shades of putrid green are often accented with blocks of assaultive yellows and deep, sanguine reds. Adami’s world does lure you with its charm, but rather its symbolism, which invites analysis and demands further contemplation.

While the American artists embraced the sheer commercialization of art as a rebellion against the intellectual elitism of the abstract expressionists, Adami, like many of his Europeans counterparts, goes deeper. On the surface his work seems childlike, his figures robotic, but this simplicity is what drives the work’s complexity. To a certain degree, Adami’s work is artistic journalism and he has remarked, “Analytical drawing and figuration are forms of thought, the challenges to seeing, that new pedagogy for the education of our eyes.”

In Quadri nel Paesaggio (Pictures in the Landscape) (2008), Adami paints himself — identifiable by his signature round glasses— inhabiting a grayscale world. His foot is stuck to something and he points to a picture of a simmering volcano. But in front of him is a color painting that depicts crops and the hazardous figure of a locust. A self-commentary within the broader context of the nation of Italy and the ongoing struggle to maintain antiquity, it also tries to embrace a new modernity.

And that is Adami’s sheer genius, his ability to be both observer and participant: “I become a spectator and a protagonist: then in my unconscious other associations move.” Like his audience, Adami is observer, but also narrator.

Within his art, he makes available his dialogue with the world-at-large, and we are invited to participate. As he has said, “The important thing is not to develop new possibilities of vision, but to clarify and organize the reality in which we live into a representation, to make it available.”

Valerio Adami is on view at the Boca Raton Museum of Art until Jan. 9. Hours for this exhibition are Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m., Wednesday from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from noon until 6 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors, and $4 for students. For more information call 561-392-2500, or visit www.bocamuseum.org.

Jenifer Mangione Vogt is a marketing communications professional and resident of Boca Raton. She’s been enamored with painting for most of her life. She studied art history and received her B.A. from Purchase College.

Each fall, it is the labor of arts writers everywhere to forge connections between the many exhibits about to snap open and clamor for the eye’s attention. There is much excitement after many hot and slow months of student art shows and sweetly presented orchid photos at community centers.

September marks the beginning of the real pageant, or so we write, the onslaught of serious and money-minded mega fairs, the lockstep march of masters and up-and-comers, sculpture and paintings from exotic continents, the panache of New York canvases, the dioramas strewn with Pop surrealist kitsch. Arts writers strive to say how individual shows are, in fact, subtly linked through form or era, through tradition and culture, or even perhaps through the sweat of sheer intention.

But the truth is -- they are not. Each art season and its body parts arrive as beautifully disarrayed as the last. When it comes to this and every season’s exhibit roster, there is no pattern, no unity, no invisible reed joining the twilight penumbra of one cityscape to the charcoal clavicle of another nude drawing. Why pretend there is some overarching story? What is the point in making everything so tidy?

No fun in that, we say, so this year, we’ll dispense with the alleged themes and continuity. Let’s just say that there is much to see in South Florida. The eye is ready.

In what promises to be a rich retrospective, Tom Wesselmann Draws opens the season at the Museum of Art: Fort Lauderdale, Nova Southeastern University. The show includes more than 100 cutout still lifes, found-art collages, and mixed-media paintings and constructions made over 45 years by the late American Pop artist. Included are the some of the large-scale drawings and initial sketches for Wesselmann’s color-sensual Great American Nude series.

Vatican Splendors: A Journey Through Faith and Art arrives in January and teems with paintings, mosaics, sculpture, papal jewels, embroidered silk vestments and the armor and swords of the Swiss Guards. One of the grandest gatherings of art and historically significant objects from the Vatican that has toured North America, the exhibit also boasts the compass and tools used by Michelangelo while making the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. www.moafl.org

The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood has already begun its seasonal offerings with Sinisa Kukec: And Yet Another Wayward Landscape and Stephan Tugrul: En Masse. The former sprawls across the center’s main gallery and considers shape, light, and movement through a host of sculptural, and in places sexual, elements, some of which include a turntable, ornate frames, a rehabilitated dresser drawers, a ghostly fox, and swirling mirrors. Tugrul presents an energetic surge of collage and appropriated landscapes.

This year, the ever-rotating Projects Room welcomes the primordial, plastic vistas of Cristina Lei Rodriguez: Forever, the mythic banner paintings of Lisa Rockford: The She-Monster Sideshow, and Christiaan Lopez-Miro: All Roads Lead to Cassadaga, an assembly of photographs that chronicles a 115-year old Central Florida community with poetic attention to stillness and space. www.ArtandCultureCenter.org

Frances Trombly: Paintings arranges the Miami artist’s first solo exhibition at the Girls’ Club, which regularly features fiber and traditional craft media works by internationally renowned female artists including Kiki Smith, Ghada Amer, Ellen Gallagher, Amparo Sard and Tara Donovan, as well as prominent South Florida artists such as Carol Prusa, Jen Stark, Kevin Arrow, Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez, and Kerry Phillips. Known for handcrafting ordinary objects such as grocery store receipts and mops from fiber, Trombly expands on her oeuvre with these sculptural canvases made specifically for this downtown Fort Lauderdale art space. www.girlsclubcollection.org

The Bear and Bird Boutique + Gallery (inside/upstairs at TATE’s Comics+Toys+Videos) continues its always lively arts roster with Monsters Under My Bed, a multi-medium group show spotlighting South Florida artists and the assorted ooogah-boogahs of childhood nightmares. Also on deck: the gallery’s fourth annual Small Stuff (works 8 x 10 or smaller by local, national, and international visual artists) and The Super Punch Tarot, a wholly original tarot collection fashioned by dozens of artists and curated by pop toy-and-product blogger John Struan. www.bearandbird.com

Yves Saint Front: The Kaufman Collection shows the luminous canvases of the 20^th century French painter at The Coral Springs Museum of Art. A concurrent exhibit shows bronzes, sepia-toned marine-inspired photographs, and landscape paintings by, respectively, Jim Rennert, Michael Kahn, and Nicholas Berger. The new year brings watercolors by Miles Batt and figurative and abstract sculpture by Lothar Nickel, followed by Tools in Motion: The Hechinger Collection, a sampling of visual art that honors the design and function of everyday tools. www.csmart.org

At the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, everyday objects and thrift store attire are bundled to form the installations found in Shinique Smith: Menagerie. This is the New York based artist’s first large-scale U.S. museum show, and it also assembles paintings, drawings, and video inspired in part from Abstract Expressionism, color field painting, and Japanese calligraphy.

During Art Basel Miami Beach, the museum conflates the oeuvre of an international fashion and street photographer with the toil of one of Miami’s Caribbean communities in Bruce Weber: Haiti / Little Haiti. Shot from 2003 to the present, approximately 75 photographs frame the lives of Haitian immigrants, and recent pictures capture the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake. In 2011, the museum brings in statues and dioramas from Jonathan Meese: Sculpture and works on paper by British artist Chris Ofili. www.mocanomi.org

The Miami Art Museum organizes Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place, the artist’s first museum show in more than ten years and her debut in South Florida. Twenty-five paintings include early horse pictorials from the mid 70s to more recent canvases which address her daily life in New Mexico and the desert's disjointed perspectives. Tomas Saraceno's Galaxies Forming Along Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider's Web, is on view through the new year; the artist was the Argentine representative to the 2009 Venice Biennale, and this installation was the prototype for his work in Italy -- a conceptual installation that likens the universe to a lattice of floating elastic cords. A selection from the MAM's own diverse holdings fills out both Focus Gallery: Robert Rauschenberg and Between Here and There: Modern Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection. www.miamiartmuseum.org

In a fresh twist on tourism trends, the Art Center of South Florida unveils the Miami Poster Project, five super-sized posters by illustrator Phillip Brooker which stylize Miami's tropical spaces, abundant bird life, and urban and arts centers. Curated by artist-in-residence Kristen Thiele, Art Basel: Good n' Plenty places the ArtCenter front and center, with works by past and present residents flanking exhibit spaces and corridors, including efforts by Gavin Perry, Luis Gispert, William Cordova, Beatriz Monteavaro, and Ellie Schneiderman. Next spring, architects and University of Miami professors Jacob Brillhart and Errol Barron display their sketchbooks and illustrations in Visual Thinking in the Digital Age. www.artcentersf.org

The Frost Art Museum focuses on one narrative arc of abstract painting in Embracing Modernity: Venezuelan Geometric Abstraction. Covering the late 1940s through the 1960s, landmark works by Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gertrude (Gego) Goldschmidt, Mateo Manaure, Alejandro Otero, Jesus Rafael Soto and several others consider the genesis and history of this country's modern art movement. In Sequentia, artist Xavier Cortada visually depicts the four bases of a DNA strand through large-scale oil portraits; he also works with a microbiologist to create a living model of the famed double helix. Arnold Mesches, whose works are included in the collections of the Met, the National Gallery, and the Whitney, is featured in the Florida Artists Series: Selections from Anomie 1492-2006, an assemblage of 48 large acrylic paintings and 150 collages that blend postmodern thought with Old Master techniques. http://thefrost.fiu.edu/

At The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Speed Limits celebrates of the role of velocity in modern-day life and showcases more than 200 works from the collections of The Wolfsonian and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Some of the fare includes photographs of the construction of the Eiffel Tower and the Irving Trust Building in New York; films of early 20^th-century American workers, paintings, drawings, and books. Art and Design in the Modern Age: Selections from the Wolfsonian Collection views cultural and political arenas through ceramics, handmade and mass-produced furniture, graphic design, ephemera and household objects. Highlights include a bas-relief produced for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair and a sculpture by Alexander Stirling Calder for the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915. www.wolfsonian.org

New York artist Ellen Harvey exhibits oil paintings inspired by nudes from the permanent collection of the Bass Museum of Art. Also on display: Florida’s only ongoing Egyptian gallery, which includes a sarcophagus and mummy, and rotating selections from the museum’s archives, which span more than five centuries and contain North American sculpture, landscapes from the 19^th and 20^th centuries, paintings from Latin America and the Caribbean, contemporary photography, and Asian art. www.bassmuseum.org

The Jaguar’s Spots: Ancient MesoAmerican Art from the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami displays masterpieces from ancient Mexico and Panama that examine the dynamics between art and the natural world. In The Changing Face of Art and Politics, 32 works consider political imagery through an aesthetic lens that ranges from an early 16^th-century engraving by Hieronymus Hopfur to a late 20^th-century print by Stanley William Hayter. Frank Paulin: An American Documentarian brings 30 photographs from the mid-century American artist. http://www6.miami.edu/lowe/index.htm

And finally, in its ninth and glittering incarnation, Art Basel Miami Beach descends on South Florida December 2-5, with satellite fairs, gallery events, art talks, pop-up shops, installations, street murals, bands, bars, velvet ropes, and all the usual accompanying spectacle. Get a head start here: www.artbaselmiamibeach.com

Emma Trelles is an arts writer in South Florida.

This coming art season is to art lovers what the 24-hour gym is to procrastinators: the end of the Excuse. If you typically shy away from museums out of fear of being bored to death, don’t.

There’s plenty to choose from, which means something is bound to delight you.

Museums are keeping the promise to have the usual rotation of shows. Although having diversity in their lineups is the usual goal, this time exhibits are also reflecting more awareness of the infinite individual tastes out there. It’s a tricky mission. Individual taste is not only very personal and unique to one but also constantly changing. There is only one way to judge the outcome: be present and let the exhibits do the talking.

Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach: This season, the modern and ancient world will take turns in the museum and give audiences the best they’ve got. Starting with John Storrs’ Machine-Age Modernist (Oct.2-Jan. 2), the museum will present sculptures, drawings, and paintings drawn from private lenders and various national collections, including those from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Corcoran Museum of Art. This is the first exhibition of the American modernist’s work in more than two decades.

Sculptures too will bring us back from the modern world, more precisely to the center of the earth. Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth (Oct. 9-Jan. 9), organized by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, will feature about 40 forty of Cave’s Soundsuits, which are multi-layered, mixed media, wearable sculptures composed of discarded objects. While African culture and Mardi Gras might come to mind, the purpose here is to give the modern visitor a chance at finding the true origin of the objects.

Conveniently scheduled around Christmas is Celebrating 70: The Qianlong Emperor and Exchanges of Buddhist Gifts (Dec. 4–March 20). The story goes that in 1777, following a gift of paintings to Emperor Qianlong from Tibetan religious leader Panchen Lama, an exchange between the Chinese court and the lamas of Tibet began. The installation will examine how the art and traditions of Tibet influenced the creation of Buddhist art in the court of the emperor.

Photography will make a stop with works from France, Germany, Africa and the United States inviting you to look not just for 2 seconds but for a long time, really. Stare: The Pleasures of the Intensely Familiar and the Strangely Unexpected (Dec. 15-March 13) celebrates photography’s power to captivate the real observers: our minds. Around the same time, Made in Hollywood: Photographs from the John Kobal Foundation will feature a more glamorous and dramatic selection of prints with those usual suspects we can’t help to admire: Greta Garbo, Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford, among others. Don’t miss the 1958 shot of Alfred Hitchcock with the MGM Lion. The show runs from Dec. 12 to March 6.

Finally, From A to Z: 26 Great Photographs from the Collection (March 19-June 19) will feature prints alphabetically arranged by the artist’s last name. It’s meant as a tribute to some of the greatest photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as a reminder of the extensity of the museum’s photography collection.

If you ever wonder how fake celebrities really are, make sure you visit the museum sometime between Feb. 3 and May 1. That’s when you’ll find Fabulous Fakes: The Jewelry of Kenneth Jay Lane, featuring sparkling creations by the designer and QVC personality that once adorned Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Nancy Reagan, Diana Vreeland, among others.

Who wants to live forever? The Egyptians did. To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum (Feb. 12-May 8) will consist of more than 100 objects from the Brooklyn Museum, and will examine the ancient Egyptians’ take on death and the afterlife, the practice of mummification as well as funeral rituals and the various types of tombs. Opening March 26 is the complementary show Eternal China: Tales from the Crypt, which will also explore the tombs and mummies theme. It runs through July 17.

A colourful display of paintings and light installations will take over starting April 2 until July 17 with Altered States: Jose Alvarez, Yayoi Kusama, Fred Tomaselli and Leo Villareal. It promises to be irresistible and fun to look at while being psychologically engaging.

Fashion comes last with Out of This World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television (June 4-Sept.4), which is all about costumes and accessories: 30 to be precise. Where have you seen them before? In science fiction films and television programs such as Star Wars, Blade Runner, Terminator, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Batman.

Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach: You can judge the taste of Christians, the aristocratic and non-aristocratic types, starting Dec. 4 through Jan. 16 with Object of Devotion: Medieval English Alabaster Sculpture from the Victoria and Albert Museum. It’s simply a display of 60 elegantly carved alabaster panels and free-standing figures that once adorned the homes, churches and chapels of Christians in the 15^th and 16 centuries. To make better sense of it all, there will be a gallery talk on Jan. 8 with art historian Richard Frank.

Landscape painting will be represented 45 times in The Hudson River to Niagara Falls: 19^th Century American Landscape Paintings from the New York Historical Society show (Jan. 29-March 20). A gallery talk will be held March 5. While American Landscape Paintings runs you can also view the show running simultaneously. A Return to Palm Beach: Jewels from the Marjorie Merriweather Post Collection commemorates the 100th birthday of the town of Palm Beach while examining the style of this legendary icon.

Still running (since December 2009) until June 2011 is Florida Wetlands: an original photographic show featuring more than 50 images depicting this unique habitat. This particular exhibit is housed in the Mary Alice Fortin Children’s Art Gallery.

Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton: If you are into European Pop art, or better yet, if you have never heard of it, the first show at the museum should be your first stop. From Oct. 12 to Jan. 9 you’ll find Valerio Adami, a 23-paintings retrospective examining more than 40 years work of this Italian artist who went from being very expressionistic to brilliantly flat. Known for the areas of flat cartoonish color bordered by unapologetic black lines, Adami’s images are hard to take seriously, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. After all, these are works by an artist who finds the creative process a profound experience only possible through music and abandonment of ourselves.

Simultaneously running will be Robert Cottingham: Twenty Ways to See a Star. The exhibit debuts a series of 20 iconic Star silkscreens on canvas based on color variations of one of Cottingham’s most recognizable images. The Brooklyn-born artist worked on this three-year project with master printer Gary Lichtenstein and Michael McKenzie of American Image Atelier in New York, to produce this fresh series that no doubt will revive the American spirit.

For those admirers of the old classics, there’s Romanticism to Modernism: Graphic Masterpieces from the Permanent Collection (Oct. 12-June 19) which will run in the Education Gallery of the museum and include masterpieces by Francisco de Goya and Pablo Picasso. The show will open with works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the Italian precursor of the Romantic style, and follow with etchings from Goya’s The Disasters of War (1810-20); lithographs and etchings by American artist James McNeill Whistler; and a rich selection of graphic works by Picasso, including etchings from the Vollard Suite.

Latin American art is not staying behind. Twenty works by important Latin American artists (Francisco Zúñiga, Rufino Tamayo, Enrique Castro-Cid, Julio Larraz, etc.) will be on display beginning Oct. 12 through May 1. This small sampling of Latin American art from the museum’s collection will feature works that portray, in many different ways, the dance between politics, society and art.

An exciting selection of 43 costumes worn by film stars like Nicole Kidman, Johnny Depp and Heath Ledger will be featured under the name Cut! Costume and the Cinema (Jan. 19-April 17).

It’s a colorful journey that will transport us to familiar films (Casanova, The Phantom of the Opera, The White Countess, The Duchess) or maybe even specific scenes, depending on how good your memory is.

Also running Jan. 19 to April 17 is California Impressionism: Paintings from The Irvine Museum. The show, consisting of more than 60 works by 44 artists, is dedicated to landscape, more specifically, California plein-air painting. The Irvine Museum is the only museum in that state devoted to the preservation and display of this painting style. Guy Rose, Dona Schuster, Granville Redmond and Alson Clark are among the artists being featured.

Flagler Museum, Palm Beach: The museum will have two exhibits that will mostly celebrate architecture. The fall exhibition, Mizner Mediterranean: The Origins of Palm Beach Style (Oct.12-Jan. 2), is dedicated to architect Addison Mizner and is being done in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Palm Beach. It will feature architectural drawings, photographs, and plans, in addition to sculpture, metalwork, furniture, ceramics and decorative tiles produced or imported by Mizner’s companies. Also featured are lost masterpieces such as Playa Riente, El Mirasol, Mizner’s 1925 tiled courtyard for Whitehall, and objects from the construction and decoration of the Whitehall Hotel addition.

In conjunction with the exhibition, on Nov. 13 the museum will hold a special gallery tour for fourth- to eighth-graders. Afterwards, they will be asked to design their own Mizner-inspired artwork, involving painted tiles and mosaics.

The winter show, The Extraordinary Joseph Urban (Feb. 1-April 17), is devoted to the prolific designer, illustrator and architect behind Hungary’s Esterhazy Castle and New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre. Locally, Urban is known for Mar-a-Lago, the Bath and Tennis Club and the Paramount Theater. Gustav Klimt, Josef Olbrich, Josef Hoffmann and architect Adolf Loos are said to have influenced this Vienna-born artist who later migrated to the United States in 1912 to become the art director of the Boston Opera. By the time of his death in 1933, Urban had designed over 500 stage sets for more than 168 productions.

Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens: Opening Nov. 2 through Feb. 20, Modernity and Nostalgia: Woodblock Prints by Toyohara (Yōshū) Chikanobu will present us with 60 single-sheet and triptych prints from this artist on subjects ranging from customs and manners of Japanese women to the Sino-Japanese War, to nostalgic representations of the feudalistic Edo Period.

Toyohara (Yōshū) Chikanobu was a prolific artist capable of creating images inspired by the kabuki stage and beautiful women as well as murders and sensational events taking place in modern Japan in the late 19th century. The show will also include a series of prints born from his imagination, and for which he is well-known, that depict the lifestyle of the Meiji emperor and his family with amazing accuracy.

Armory Art Center, West Palm Beach: Open to all artists working in all media, New*Art is an exhibition that will be devoted to presenting international entries of cutting-edge visual art. The work to be exhibited has to have been produced after 2008.

The Armory’s director of gallery services, Ann Fay Rushforth, will curate the show (Oct. 8-Nov. 13) and select works later to be judged by Gallery Director Fredric Snitzer, who is known for representing controversial artists with international reputations and for his strong presence at Art Basel Miami. Snitzer will choose the winning selections for prizes.

Another opportunity to view plenty of art will come later in the year with the Judged Staff and Faculty Exhibition (Nov. 5-Dec. 31). It’s the second year for the annual exhibition, offering a sampling of works by more than 60 Armory adjunct instructors in all media.

The Lighthouse ArtCenter: A juried art exhibition of masks and Halloween-inspired artwork will take over the center from Sept. 30 to Nov. 2. Artists are invited to participate in the Hocus Pocus exhibit, which includes a costume party the third Thursday of October. Also during this time, the center will feature a more serene exhibit Painters of Scenery: An Exhibition of Landscapes. (Sept. 30 to Nov. 2)

A pricey fundraiser to support the ArtCenter promises to be fun for $250 a ticket. D’Art for Art Exhibition, (Nov. 6-Nov. 13) will treat guests to a cocktail hour and hors d’oeuvres while mingling around the museum to select their desired pieces of art. After the meal, groups are randomly called to dash and dart for their favorite art. A party favor is guaranteed for everyone: an original piece of art to take home and add to a personal collection.

Before the year ends there will be an exhibit and juried show Peace on Earth (Nov. 18 to Dec. 30) sponsored by centenarian Kathryn W. Davis, which will feature an original Picasso from her private collection.

Cornell Museum: If art and animals happen to be your passions and you don’t want to neglect either, don’t worry.

The Cat's Meow exhibit, running Oct. 14 through Feb. 27, won’t ask you to choose. The show will consist of paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs accompanied by funny photos and anecdotes from local cat owners. The Children's Gallery will feature a special mural by artist Sharon Koskoff and cat portraits from area elementary school students as well as members of the Delray Art League.

Featured artists include Ron Burns (Arizona), Rosetta (Colorado), Donna Fuller (Boca Raton), Deb LaFogg-Docherty (Boynton Beach) and Camile Schneebeli (Miami), along with photographer Joann Biondi (Miami). An opening reception will take place Oct. 14; local celebrity cats are expected to attend.

Running through Dec. 6 will be the Bernet Folk Art and Quilt Collection, featuring folk life oil paintings, quilts, needlework, decoys and baskets dating from the late 19^th century to the mid 20^th century. A juried exhibit, The Image in Photographs and Poetry (Dec.9-Feb.27), is bound to be more poetic than competitive, since it focuses on photographs inspired by poetry. The fine art photos are provided by Old School Square photography students and the poems are provided by the master poets, who will be leading the poetry sessions and readings during the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in January.

More paintings, drawings and photographs, courtesy of adult, young students and instructors from the OSS School of Art & Photography, will be presented with the OSS School of Art & Photography Student Exhibition (March 4-April 24).

World Trade (1987), by Susan Joy Share, at FAU.

Florida Atlantic University: Consisting primarily of visual books acquired more for their artistic expression than for their informational content, the Jaffe Collection show (open through Oct. 30) will present a thematic selection of about 200 works featuring the finest and most innovative works from over 6,000 artists’ books held in the university’s Wimberly Library.

The exhibition represents the three-fold growth of the collection since it was first donated to the school in 1998. Today it is one of the largest and most varied of its kind in the country. The essential focus being on artists’ books and the details they carry: letterpress printing, fine binding, hand papermaking and paper decoration.
Posters, gig fliers, album covers, T-shirts, skateboard decks, CDs and videos encompass the multimedia exhibit Raymond Petttibon: The Punk Years, 1978-1986 (Nov. 13-Jan. 2), which will feature more than 200 examples of punk-inspired designs by this contemporary artist. Among the bands that benefited from his graphic creations during the California punk rock era were Black Flag and Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, Circle Jerks and the Dead Kennedys. It gets better. A selection of punk era film and video works and punk-inspired performances will also be featured. And for book lovers, there is even a lecture and book signing by Ryan Moore, author of Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth Culture and Social Crisis.

Works by the masters of fine art graduates will be featured from April 22 through the summer of 2011 at the Schmidt Center Gallery while the Ritter Art Gallery will house the Fall Bachelor Fine Arts Exhibition (running Dec. 3-10) and the Spring Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibition (April 22-May 6). The Annual Juried Student Exhibition will also take place there from March 25 to April 9. Works by Miami printmaker Brian Reedy and Tom Virgin will be on display at the same time (Jan.7-March 11).

A thoughtful installation about body image will take over May 27-Aug.12 with Fort Lauderdale artist Adrienne Rose Gionta’s Do these make me look fat? Noah Z. Jones’s Almost Naked Animals will run at the same time.

Coming to the Schmidt Center in the fall of 2011 is Surfing Florida: A Photographic History, a traveling show that will combine digital reproductions of vintage photographs along with original photographic portfolios of the state’s best-known surf photographers and most significant historic photo collections (though it will not include surfboards and other surfing-related artifacts). Paul Aho, a lifelong Florida surfer and shaper who actively competed as a teenager, is the project’s editor and curator.

At the John D. MacArthur Campus in Jupiter, staff is still working on the Art in the Atrium schedule for this season, but so far we know Escenas de América Latina II will run there through Oct. 8. It will feature murals created for the El Sol Neighborhood Resource Center and paintings from local Hispanic/Latino artists. That will be followed by Photographs by Fine Art Photographer Barry Seidman (Jan. 5–Feb. 11). Shows will also be held in the campus library beginning with You Were Almost Extinct Too (Oct. 29-Dec. 17), consisting of Derek Weisberg’s emotionally –sometimes disturbing- clay portraits. Weisberg is a contemporary artist from Oakland, Calif. The college’s Student Drawing Show will run from Oct. 29 through Dec.17.

Art fairs: This year the Palm Beach Convention Center will house several events including Art Palm Beach, which had a very good year in 2010 and broke attendance records. This will be its 14^th year celebrating contemporary art through photography, video, installation art, public sculpture and design, and an educational lecture series. (Jan. 20-24).

Right behind it is the American International Fine Art Fair (Feb.4-13), entering its 15th year. Fair organizers expect 20,000 or more visitors this year. There will be about 60 exhibitors from 16 different countries. Among the highlights is a large-scale installation by artist Albert Paley. As it does every year, the fair will feature prestigious international dealers presenting paintings, sculpture, jewelry, antiques, contemporary design and decorative arts ranging from the antique to the contemporary.

The 2010 fair will be a tough act to follow. Attendance was estimated at 24,000, including a record 5,100 for the opening vernissage, and there were more than 80 exhibitors -15 percent more than in 2009.

Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Fair: Opens Feb. 18 and features more than 200 of the world’s finest antique dealers. An exclusive preview evening will be held that Friday evening for those interested in taking a look or making a purchase before everyone else. Funds raised will benefit the educational programming of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County and the Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum. The fair runs through Feb.22.

Palm Beach Fine Craft Show: The 8^th annual Palm Beach Fine Craft Show will come a day earlier this year. Running from March 4-6, it brings more than 100 of the nation's most distinguished craft artists to the heart of West Palm Beach to celebrate their works in ceramics, glass, fiber decorative and wearable art, wood-turned and carved objects, distinctive furniture, marvelous metals, exquisite jewelry and more.

With its simple harmony and elegant lines, much classic Asian art has been easy to digest but not to remember. This is its -- or rather, our -- struggle.

And so it is with the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens’ current exhibit, Kyoto: A Place in Art. As soon as we leave the exhibit, we’re in fear of forgetting what we’ve seen.

It doesn’t help that Kyoto: A Place in Art is not very exciting, at least not in the way that would require cool 3-D glasses. What is required of you is to empty your mind so it doesn’t interfere, for there is no way a show this quiet has a chance of being absorbed unless we forget for a minute -- more like an hour -- our busy modern lives.

The exhibit, which runs through Oct. 17, opens with a series of eight photographs by Haruzo Ohashi from the Morikami’s permanent collection. All of them feature sharp, beautiful images of temples, gardens and pavilions of relevant importance to a city that served as Japan's capital from 794 to 1868. Still, the images are far from unique.

Nature happens to be pretty extraordinary in these sites, so it is no surprise the photos take our breath away, particularly that of Kinkaku-Ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion). This three-tiered Zen temple served as the retreat of retired shogun Yoshimitsu. Here it appears with its top floors completely covered in gold leaf and overlooking the famous pond, which functions more like a mirror. The building has had its share of tragedies having been burned down several times, the last time in 1950.

When not fusing with the outside world, the structures appear to have completely disappeared, as in Ohashi’s Shugaku-in (Imperial Villa: Winter), where a white and grayish veil of snow has taken over the print and left no chance for inner cheering. Thankfully, the autumn and the sunset photographs that accompany the winter piece lighten up our spirit with unbelievable intense colors. The sunset piece gets my attention with the curious line of trees that look as if strategically placed next to one another.

Notably missing from this trio is a spring season photograph, which one can only imagine would be impregnated with cherry blossoms. There are no humans depicted in any of the photos, leading us to wonder whether humanity and these glorious places can really coexist.

The presence of swords, spears and folding screens is not enough to get a mood going. I can’t help thinking that having Japanese melodies or Zen music playing in the background would have helped. Unlike tea ceremony and koi feeding, which set a particular mood, the show doesn’t seem to transmit much. This is perhaps intentional, as to leave room for inward reflection.

If that’s the case, the best place to cleanse the mind is by the woodblock paintings depicting rock gardens: Sekitei and Ryoan-ji. Each of the seven works, ranging in date from 1960 to 2001 and by seven different artists, gives us a personal interpretation of these famous dry landscapes, also known as Zen gardens.

Painters such as Toshi Yoshida, son of the great Hiroshi Yoshida, were considered sosaku hanga artists, meaning they engaged in every aspect of the woodblock painting creative process: designing, carving, printing and publishing. His Sekitei, dated 1963, is the warmest depiction of the garden in the show.

Following it is an unexpected geometric composition titled Ryoan-ji, Kyoto by Kiyoshi Saito. It’s rather Pollockian compared to the rest in the sense that the work is more concerned with free expression and experimentation than with retention of form. For instance, although Saito’s figures are still clearly defined, he has placed circles instead of realistic-looking rocks and given each a different texture. Next to the other pieces here, which are more tri-dimensional and play with angles and shadows, Saito’s primitive take on the rock garden seems very flat but yet fresh and unique.

A scroll right before the woodblock pieces titled Fishing in Autumn is the piece I like the most. Hine Taizan gives us the scholar turning to seclusion and isolation to reconnect with his inner self. Here he appears inside a boat but is not in a rush. The piece isn’t about anxiety or urgency, but rather a man making a quiet exit out of the social and political life.

When we reach the pair of six-panel folding screens we sort of sense the presence of something important, even when we cannot fully understand it. Think of them as visual narratives, starting from right to left. The screens, dating from the Edo period, 17th or 18th century, are meant to portray the life of the various social classes in Kyoto. Too bad that the glass wall protecting them prevents us from taking a closer look at the tiny figures. Don’t be shy about using the description to identify the important sites on the panels.

You will find the striking dance platform of the Kiyomizu-dara temple (top of the fifth panel on right screen) and, right below it, the Great Buddha Hall distinguished by a bright orange hue and a green roof. The overall view reveals black outlines dancing, meditating, fishing and carrying baskets. Bridges of different sizes connect the top section with the middle and the bottom sections of the panels while members of the imperial court make their way to Nijo Castle.

On your way out, before the countdown toward forgetfulness begins and while your mind is still fresh with images, find comfort in the fact that perhaps it isn’t meant for you to remember this show after all. You don’t need to retain all the details, nor are you expected to give your friends a lecture on what you learned during this visit.

After all, in Zen, learning and knowledge should be open and free from practical use as skills; knowledge for its own sake is sufficient. In other words, enjoy, and don’t worry about giving your visit a later purpose.

Kyoto: A Place in Art is showing at the Morikami Museum through Oct. 17 along with Kaiju! Monster Invasion!, an exhibit of toys based on Japanese monster movies. For more information, call 561-495-0233 or visit www.morikami.org.

Entering Beyond the Figure at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, one enters a darkened gallery in which strange forms emerge from the shadows. Although artifacts from our own culture, these forms also point toward a parallel universe — a realm where we understand and know objects with all our senses and our imaginations.

The roughly 20 sculptural works on view do not depict recognizable subjects, so each viewer is left to search for other clues to unlock their mysteries. One gains a deep appreciation for the materiality of each work, encountering objects that are tactile, physical, and irresistible.

These sculptures are remarkably rooted. While the forms are mysterious, the materials and fabrication are amazingly familiar and recognizable. The works invite engagement because they exist in the same space that viewers occupy, giving the curious visitor both physical and visual access to them. This literal access facilitates intellectual access, offering opportunities to spend time appreciating each work.

As the light rakes across the surfaces of the pieces, each step of the creative process is revealed. The smooth, seemingly bioluminescent curves of Dale Chihuly’s Macchia Forest (1994) float along one wall in dramatic contrast with the earthy, sullen crevasses of Ursula von Rydingsvard’s Bowl-in-a-Bowl (1999). As one moves through the galleries, the mass, interest, and texture of each elegant and refined form are revealed.

Although the exhibition showcases a number of highly reduced, even austere objects, their physical presence, direct presentation, and thoughtful lighting make them endlessly engaging. Close inspection reveals the details of the joinery in Sol LeWitt’s 2 x 7 x 7 (1989). The brass spines of Harry Bertoia’s Sunburst III (1968) vibrate and shimmer with light and texture in the subtle meteorology of the gallery. Elsewhere, attentively carved wood transforms into a voluptuous puddle at the base of Toshio Odate’s Suspended Column Melting (1974).

Allan McCollum’s Ninety-Six Plaster Surrogates No. 4 (1982/89) and John McCracken’s Black Plank (1974) are examples of the simplified abstractions in the exhibition. This work creates ambiguities for viewers to consider. Beyond the Figure offers an enormous amount of space, both the physical space of the gallery and intellectual space, space into which viewers — as bodies and as thinkers — are able to project, imagine, and rewrite meaning.

McCollum’s work is an especially good example of this. This work is a seemingly endless number of blank, provisional, repeating forms. These framed gray rectangles are incomplete by their very design, inviting the viewer to complete them.

The strong physical presence of McCracken’s sculpture tempts viewers to assign an identity to this otherwise obscure object. The immense black slab becomes something relative to the viewer’s body, but its scale is just uncertain enough that it refuses to point directly to any referent in the world beyond the gallery. Instead, it has an insistent here-ness, demanding acceptance as it is.

Tension grows between its strong presence and its ambiguity, allowing one to push it in any number of directions while moving around it. If only I could be under it, it could be a shelter. There might be just enough space behind it for me to use it as a door. It might be flush enough against this wall to be part of the wall itself. It might be just narrow enough for me to dance with it as if it were another body.

Joel Shapiro’s Untitled (1985) is arguably more familiar, precisely scaled to the human figure. Forms are cantilevered as if the sculpture were bending at the waist like one of Edgar Degas’ dancers. Although not obviously figural, these rectilinear forms appear to locomote as if human. This familiarity tests the limits of one’s ability to empathize with objects that might otherwise seem distant or blank. This kind of abstraction is so pared down that the objects themselves become invitations to enter into a sensory and contemplative relationship with them.

These are incredibly quiet forms, ones that might easily be overlooked in other contexts. Presented together in this exhibition, installed as they are in the company of one another, all this quiet mystery invites — and rewards — careful inspection and patient appreciation.

Amy Broderick is an artist, writer, and professor. She is currently associate professor of drawing and painting at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. She regularly exhibits and delivers lectures about her work locally and nationally. Visit her at www.amybroderick.com.

Beyond the Figure: Abstract Sculpture in the Norton Museum Collection runs through Sept. 5 at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. For more information, call 832-5136 or visit www.norton.org.