Link to Post:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2013/05/the-modern-art-notes-podcast-philip-taaffe/
Tyler Green talks to painter Philip Taaffe on the occasion of the exhibition Philip Taaffe Recent Work at Luhring Augustine, New York, on view from May 3 - Jun 15, 2013.
Commenting on the sources for his work, Taaffe remarks: "I have this idea in my head that I am referencing ancient art and the idea of the scribe. Several of the paintings in the exhibition are derived from what I think of as illuminated manuscript paintings, so in other words I am trying to get in touch with this earlier art historical reality and trying to update it in my own sense… the idea of the scribe, the idea of the mosaic patterning, has to do with ancient craftsmanship being brought up to date and being filtered through my own artistic desire, I suppose, in terms of what I would like to see in the world."
Link to Post:
http://www.ahtcast.com/2013/04/artist-interview-julia-schwartz.html
Phillip J. Mellen talks with painter Julia Schwartz about her work and process.
Schwartz returns several times in the conversation to the importance of place to her as a painter. "In general," she remarks, "I'm working more from a kind of mental place.. I don't think it's an intellectual place, it's just more from a reverie state… I'm just trying to be open to the experience of being in the studio." Later she comments: "Everything that I do, whether it's painting or work in my office, or just being - living - it's all coming out of the same place… It's like walking around with your filters open all the time… receptive all the time."
Julia Schwartz recently curated the online exhibition States of Being at curatingcontemporary.com (through May 15) and her work will be included in the group show What I Like About You at Parallel Art Space, Brooklyn from May 31 - June 30, 2013.
Link to Post:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2013/02/the-man-podcast-thomas-nozkowski/
On the occasion of the upcoming exhibition Thomas Nozkowski: Recent Work at Pace Gallery, New York (on view from February 22 through March 23), Tyler Green talks to painter Thomas Nozkowski about his work.
Nozkowski comments: "I do have a kind of reality core to my work, a kind of kernel of something in the world behind everything I do. I try to come up with more improbable things to paint. What can't you paint; what shouldn't you paint; what would be really stupid to paint? What kind of devices are bankrupt? What kind of devices are so disgusting nobody would want to look at them? Let's try those things, let's look at them."
He continues: "I need a reason to make a painting. And for me the reason the reason is often that I see something that's confounding. Or I see something that I need to commemorate, or to examine, or to think about. And on walks... I see these things that I really want to persue... before there was a written language there was a visual language and our earliest ancestors would read the world, they would see things in it that meant something to them - a broken leaf, some scat on the ground, the color of the sky and what that meant in terms of weather. I think that that's something we can still channel, it's in our DNA, and I think we can find that. And we can find it in all sorts of places. For me, finding it back in the natual world is important."
Link to Post:
http://www.ahtcast.com/2013/01/artist-interview-inga-dalrymple.html
Phillip J. Mellen interviews painter Inga Dalrymple about her work and process.
Asked about the relationship between her drawing and painting practices Dalrymple comments: "I don't think of drawing necessarily as something that goes straight into my paintings... they're kind of like a bit of a conversation... I tend to jump between [drawing and painting] a lot and I definitely see the two feeding off each other... I find my drawings a lot fresher and looser and more playful than my paintings but I see my paintings as the older, wiser adults of the two, the drawings on paper and in my sketchbooks are like the wild kids."
Link to Post:
http://www.ahtcast.com/2013/01/artist-interview-connie-goldman.html
Phillip J. Mellen interviews painter Connie Goldman about her work and process.
Goldman speaks about the emotional content of reductive abstraction. Asked about her recent Doublet series, Goldman remarks that although they are reductive and abstract, the Doublet paintings refer to personal loss and embody both the feeling of crumpling inward and the will to resist this urge at the same time. She comments: "For many years I've worked with the square... it's really a symbol for stability. So, when I use the square, when I break the square up, it means the equilibrium is upset and most of my work is really concerned with that... the tension between stasis and flux. And this body of work was no different, but it was very specific in that I made each panel look as if it was folding... and yet being a panel it's not really folding - it's just an illusion.
Link to Post:
http://www.ahtcast.com/2013/01/artist-interview-sabine-tress.html
An extended conversation between painters Phillip J. Mellen and Sabine Tress.
Asked about her approach to painting Tress comments: "I just start and the paintings, they evolve through the painting process. I think that's the exciting bit about painting for me, you just start somewhere and see where it takes you. And that freedom to decide spontaneously what you want to do or what you don't want to do, really that's a big motivation for me to paint."
After answering questions about her own work and practice, Tress turns the tables on interviewer Mellen and asks him about his own painting.
Link to Post:
http://www.ahtcast.com/2013/01/artist-interview-louise-p-sloane.html
Phillip J. Mellen interviews painter Louise P. Sloane about her work, practice, and development as an artist.
Sloane discusses a wide range of subjects from her intuitive approach to painting, one in which she "fuse[s] geometry, color, and texture," to formative influences including works by Josef Albers, Morris Louis, Gene Davis, and Ad Reinhardt that Slone encountered in the exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art. She comments that these works "put me into a very different frame of mind... when I look at these works even today, I'm swooning when I see them. They so deeply influenced me and my regard for color and space and light, that was a moment for me."
Link to Post:
http://www.ahtcast.com/2013/01/artist-interview-paul-behnke.html
Phillip J. Mellen conducts an in-depth interview with painter Paul Behnke about his work.
Behnke talks several times in the interview about his spontaneous, materials-based approach. "To me," he comments, "especially at the beginning, the work is all about the materials, I just start. I don't have any preconceived colors I'm going to use... that all evolves as the work progresses. I do a lot of alternating... there's a lot of going back and forth in my mind between what to leave in and what to leave out, that's a tension that I want to be apparent in my work, that tension of what you keep and what you do away with - how those things are constantly jostling and competing with each other."
Link to Post:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2013/01/the-modern-art-notes-podcast-henri-matisse/
Tyler Green talks to Rebecca Rabinow about Henri Matisse and his process of investigating a visual ideas on multiple canvases. Rabinow is one of the three curators of the exhibition Matisse: In Search of True Painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through March 17, 2013.
In the web introduction for the show Rabinow writes that Matisse "used his completed canvases as tools, repeating compositions in order to compare effects, gauge his progress, and, as he put it, 'push further and deeper into true painting.' While this manner of working with pairs, trios, and series is certainly not unique to Matisse, his need to progress methodically from one painting to the next is striking... For Matisse, the process of creation was not simply a means to an end but a dimension of his art that was as important as the finished canvas."
Link to Post:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2012/11/the-modern-art-notes-podcast-jonathan-lasker/
In separate interviews, Tyler Green talks to painters Shirley Kaneda and Jonathan Lasker about the exhibition Conceptual Abstraction at Hunter College Art Galleries, New York, on view through November 10, 2012. Green begins both very interesting conversations by asking each artist the same question: "Is there a meaninful difference being an abstract painter in 1990 and in being an abstract painter in 2012?"
Kaneda begins her response: "There was a lot of re-defining and re-aligning going on in terms of abstract paintings at the time, and it seemed to be a very optimistic time... There is very little critical dialogue around abstraction today, whereas 20-25 years ago there was a lot of critical dialogue around it."
Lasker responds that he feels there is "a huge difference really. The big thing about painting is that there really haven't been a tremendous number of new issues coming forward in the last 20 years. There's been a lot of dispersion of issues, and a lot of people painting from a lot of different aspects and ideas... The last 20 years has had a lot of interesting artists, a lot of good artists, and some good young painters emerging too, but in the sense of bigger issues and big ideas, there hasn't been that much."
