artcritical

David Row @ Loretta Howard
artcritical

Peter Malone reviews David Row: Counter Clockwise at Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, on view through October 20, 2018. Malone writes: “Considering much of current abstract painting’s focus on spontaneity and one-off effects, Row’s tendency to revisit abstract elements embraced by earlier painters—not just Noland but Ellsworth Kelly, Dorothea Rockburne and Al Held, with whom […]

Paul Resika, Geometry and the Sea
artcritical

David Carrier reviews reviews Paul Resika: Geometry and the Sea at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through May 20) and Bookstein Projects (through May 26). Carrier writes: ” … as if working in a highly personal way through a Gombrichian history of figuration, [Resika] juxtaposes backgrounds of clear skies, with yellow suns, with jagged pyramids in the […]

Laura Newman @ Victoria Munroe
artcritical

Jennifer Riley reviews Laura Newman: New Paintings at Victoria Munroe Fine Art, New York, on view through May 12, 2018. Riley writes: “Newman conjures varied moods in this show that lead us on non-verbal paths of visual exploration. One painting suggests night walks in a city under construction; others suggest dreamscapes of layered experience; others […]

Eros, Weaver of Myth: Image and Text in Cy Twombly
artcritical

Wen Tao reviews two exhibitions of works by Cy Twombly: In Beauty It Is Finished: Drawings 1951-2008 (through April 25) and Coronation of Sesostris (through April 28). The former is on view at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue New York and the latter at Gagosian, 522 West 21st Street, New York. Tao writes: “Image and text […]

From Stasis to Kinesis: The Woosters of Ted Stamm
artcritical

Robert C. Morgan writes about Ted Stamm’s Wooster paintings, recently on view at Lisson Gallery, New York. Morgan writes: “The Woosters employ an unusual rectangular theme that extends into a triangular hinge on the left side. These works were both drawn in graphite and painted in black and white (and, later in silver). At the outset (1978), […]

John Walker: At the Edge of Land and Water
artcritical

Wendy Gittler reviews John Walker: The Sea and The Brush recently on view at the New York Studio School. Gittler writes: “Walker’s quest to reassemble pictorial language from a diverse painting vocabulary is no easy task. Throughout his long career he has searched for ways to meld the painterly traditions of Goya, Constable, Turner and […]

Pat Adams @ Victoria Munroe Fine Art
artcritical

Anne Sherwood Pundyk reviews Pat Adams: Then Found at Victoria Munroe Fine Art, New York, on view through January 27, 2018. Pundyk writes: “The works in Then Found span the years 1997 to 2016. This is only a third of the more than six decades Adams has spent building her extensive body of perceptual, non-figurative, mixed media work. […]

Frances Barth @ Silas Van Morisse
artcritical

David Brody reviews Frances Barth: New Paintings, 2011-2017 at Silas Van Morisse Gallery, Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through December 17, 2017. Brody begins: “Frances Barth’s new paintings combine calm planes of beautiful color with graphic details that suggest landscape, while also subverting easy spatial readings. As with Thomas Nozkowski’s cryptic modes of abstraction, Barth’s uncertain […]

Ad Reinhardt: The Threshold of Perception
artcritical

Justin Sterling reviews the recent exhibition Ad Reinhardt: Blue Paintings at David Zwirner Gallery. Sterling writes: “To see Ad Reinhardt’s paintings one must slow down the pace of everyday life. In the Blue Paintings … dating for the most part from 1950 to 1953, so much medium has been removed from the paint as to […]

Robert Motherwell: Early Paintings
artcritical

Megan Kincaid reviews Robert Motherwell: Early Paintings at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, on view through October 28, 2017. Kincaid writes: “… Kasmin tackles a body of work that has been overshadowed by Motherwell’s critically lauded early explorations into collage and automatic drawing. Despite the commercial appeal of paintings and their prominence in Motherwell’s later career, […]

Rachel Rickert at E.TAY Gallery
artcritical

Roman Kalinovski reviews Rachel Rickert: The Ins and Outs at E.TAY Gallery, New York, on view through October 7, 2017. Kalinovski writes: “The strange pleasure that comes from visual frustration is a recurring theme in this exhibition. While Soft Boundaries and Verge present its two extremes with the curtain drawn and closed, respectively, and the […]

Jennifer Packer: Interview
artcritical

Lee Ann Norman interviews painter Jennifer Packer whose show Tenderheaded is on view at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago through November 5, 2017. Packer comments: “I’ve been interested for a long time in how I present or protect humans in the work. It’s not figures, not bodies, but humans I am painting. I want […]

Clintel Steed: Interview
artcritical

David Cohen interviews painter Clintel Steed. Steed remarks: “I think as an image-maker I am always searching for an image that will be challenging that will have some of the elements that I find exciting in painting… That is the thing that is magic about the visual world, when you pay attention to things, that […]

Samuel Beckett and Painting
artcritical

Michael Coffey reviews Beckett’s Thing–Painting and Theatre by David Lloyd (Edinburgh University Press) Coffey writes: “David Lloyd, in his long-awaited book on Samuel Beckett and the visual arts, arrives, in his closing chapter, at this electrifying thought: ‘The political effect of Beckett’s work in general takes place not at the level of statement, but in […]

Lois Dickson: A Playpen Within A Battlefield
artcritical

An essay by David Cohen on the paintings of Lois Dickson. Dickson’s exhibition New Worlds is on view at the New York Studio School through July 15, 2017. Cohen writes: “A ludic morphology lies at the heart of Dickson’s endeavor. Elaborations of shape and excavations of depth animate her pictorial intelligence in ways that are […]

David Novros @ Paula Cooper
artcritical

David Rhodes reviews works by David Novros at Paula Cooper Gallery (through June 30). Rhodes writes: “Untitled (1975), and Untitled (Frog Altar) (1975) use right angles as pivotal compositional elements… Both the viewer and the painting are animated, provoking an experience like that of passing through a chapel or a cave, rather than analytically viewing […]

Shared Spaces: Dona Nelson Brings Back The Figure
artcritical

Hearne Pardee reviews Dona Nelson: models stand close to the paintings at Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, on view through May 13, 2017. Pardee begins: “Dona Nelson’s new works excite not just with their vigorous improvisation and inventive use of materials but with a new interactivity among the paintings themselves. After deconstructing conventional painting with […]

Harvey Quaytman @ Van Doren Waxter
artcritical

David Carrier reviews Harvey Quaytman: Hone at Van Doren Waxter, New York, on view through April 28, 2017. Carrier writes: “In the 1980s when I met him, I got to know a great many abstract painters. Harvey was the happiest artist I had the pleasure of meeting. I think, even if you never met him, […]

David Reed: Clarity of Facture
artcritical

James Hyde reviews the recent exhibition Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975 at Gagosian Gallery, New York. Hyde writes: “Part of the interest of the work, then and now, is how it distills painterliness. The schema is simple—each painting contains roughly a dozen horizontal bands of red or black alternating with white or off-white. The canvas […]

R.B. Kitaj: Renewal and Resistance
artcritical

David Cohen’s 2003 interview with painter R.B.Kitaj, republished on the occasion of the exhibition R.B.Kitaj: The Exile at Home, curated by Barry Schwabsky, at Marlborough Contemporary, New York, on view through April 8, 2017. “[Kitaj] is living proof of some traits his critic enemies picked up on: a promiscuous lover of big ideas, an inveterate historical […]