Link to Post:
http://stevenalexanderjournal.blogspot.com/2011/08/will-barnet-at-100-abstract-painting.html
Steven Alexander blogs about Will Barnet's consistently inspiring abstract paintings. Alexander notes that "there is no doubt still plenty of fertile ground to be cultivated creating dynamic arrangements of organic shapes with paint on canvas. The most inspiring example I know is Will Barnet, who turned 100 this year. Probably best known for his elegantly reductive and etherial figure compositions, he studied with Stuart Davis, and has devoted extended periods of his career to making abstract paintings that I think are his greatest contribution."
Link to Post:
http://slowmuse.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/effort-filled-effortlessness/
Deborah Barlow blogs about the "effort filled effortlessness of Matisse." She adds her thoughts to Sebastian Smee's recent profile of Matisse's Petit Interieur a la table de Marbre Ronde at the Worcester Art Museum.
Barlow writes that Matisse's painting "confronts the mystery that is at the core of [his] oeuvre. His signatory effortlessness was anything but effortless. That ease and flow was hard won." She concludes "...art making can be the way we possess the qualities we don't embody easily, to evoke moods, auras and existences that are vastly different from the ones we inhabit."
Link to Post:
http://blog.art21.org/2011/08/12/ink-twombly’s-poetics-in-print/
Sarah Kirk Hanley looks at painter Cy Twombly's activity as a printmaker. Hanley's post includes links to most of Twombly's major suites of prints.
She writes: "Though printmaking has been an important means of expression for many artists of his generation, it was a brief endeavor for Twombly... That said, he worked in nearly all traditional printmaking techniques... including line etching, mezzotint, aquatint, lithography, and screenprinting... Many of them were issued as portfolios, in keeping with his mode of painting and drawing in cycles."
Link to Post:
http://debubarve.blogspot.com/2011/08/vs-gaitonde-triumph-of-solitude.html
Debu Barve profiles Indian abstract painter V.S. Gaitonde (1924-2001).
Gaitonde, Barve writes, "insisted on not being categorized as an 'abstract' painter, but a 'non-objective' one instead... Abstract painting in India was dominated by gestural figurative abstraction, and the common practice of ornamenting the ideas with ethnic references and cultural motifs. In such times, Gaitonde's richly evolved forms and luminous colors must have appeared 'outsiders' to some, and it is no wonder why Gaitonde himself must have preferred to remain detached from the established school of abstraction."
Link to Post:
http://rebeccaharp.com/2011/08/08/andrew-wyeth/
Rebecca Harp blogs about the work of painter Andrew Wyeth. She writes "When I look at Andrew Wyeth's paintings, the last thing that comes to mind is painstaking, empty illustration. There is a love driving his work, both found and lost. I always feel privileged to look at his paintings, swept away by the chance to stand in his shoes and look deeply at his recordings of the people, places and weather around him. It is a rare gift that someone looked so stubbornly, poignantly and faithfully – not afraid to expose himself so, despite the trends of the commercial art world."
Link to Post:
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/38102/the-claws-show-through-how-abex-legend-clyfford-still-waged-war-on-the-new-york-art-world-and-triumphed-in-the-end/
Nicholas Zeman documents painter Clyfford Still's extraordinary success at protecting his vision and work in the face of art world presurres.
Zeman notes that "Still wasn't a manipulator; he was always forthcoming and direct. He was, however, able to see opportunities, and he did know how to make people feel privileged just to see his work. He was able to anticipate the historical moment, and subsequently seize upon it to establish himself as one of the most important painters in the world. It also helped, of course, that he painted some hot pictures."
Link to Post:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/aug/01/hugo-van-der-goes-trinity-altarpiece
Jonathan Jones blogs about Hugo Van der Goes' Trinity Altarpiece, currently on view in the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.
Jones writes that the Altarpiece is one of Van der Goes' "finest extant works... the paintings reveal a king and queen at prayer, flanked by saints, in a church that is painted in depth - a real, resonant space. The stillness and gravity of the people, the rich details of their dress and the books from which they pray, share the sombre poetic realism of this artist's most famous masterpiece, the Portinari Altarpiece... Spiritual vision and acute realism are mystically at one."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/2011/08/purism-off-kilter-stephen-westfall-as-painter-and-curator/
David Cohen writes about painter Stephen Westfall's work and its influence on his recent curatorial efforts.
Cohen notes "At first [Westfall's] compositions strike the viewer as well-behaved structures of pattern with decorative correlates in the applied arts... But his visual wit goes beyond mere reference to recent abstract art history. A key element in his vocabulary is the disruptive kink he will admit into his patterning that sets it off kilter; never quite subverting the flatness of the picture plane, he nonetheless allows a breeze or ripple to run across the composition."
Link to Post:
http://canopycanopycanopy.com/13/matter_of_rothko
A must read article: David Levine revisits the scandal and trial surrounding the Mark Rothko estate from a moving, personal perspective. Levine's father, Morton Levine was a close friend of Rothko and an executor of the estate along with painter Theodoros Stamos and accountant Bernard Reis.
Levine writes: "Black-and-white photos of cocktail parties; that was their scene... There's Mom hanging out with Rothko and Stamos in the living room; there's Mom smoking a cigarette in Rothko's studio; there's Rothko sitting on the edge of his bed. I grew up in a house full of photos of Rothko, and not a single photo of my dad. He's always out of the picture. He's always the one taking the picture."
Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/basel-mural-i-by-sam-francis_b_910247.html
John Seed muses on Sam Francis' painting Basel Mural I in the collection of the Norton Simon Museum. Seed writes "If you haven't seen the Basel Mural, you very likely don't know what Sam Francis was capable of at the height of his powers... I also feel strongly that [the painting] has something to do with experience of flight. 'I have destroyed the ring of the horizon and got out of the circle of objects,' exhorted the Russian abstractionist Kasmir Malevich, 'Comrade aviators, sail on into the depths.' That is the call that I think Francis was heeding, the lure of the depths of the unfathomable and the purely abstract."
