[VIDEO] Clyfford Still: A Life in Paintings featuring painter Bill Jensen discussing his own discovery of Clyfford Still’s work. Produced and directed by A bark K Productions and the Milkhaus
Yevgeniya Traps reviews the exhibition Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, on view through June 2, 2013.
Traps writes: "In some ways, [DeFeo's] work echoed the Beats: The Rose, in its making, is one continuous poem, bound up with the artist’s body no less than Ginsberg’s long poem, which takes the writer’s breath as the singular measure of its lines." Traps adds that the "triumphantly speaks to [DeFeo's] prolific imagination, her abundance of technique. The Rose, with its built-in mythology, its gargantuan ambition and stunning payoff, hogs the limelight, but other, smaller works also shine."
Nicolas de Staël at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 1018 Madison Avenue, New York, on view from May 2 - 31, 2013.
In the United States, an eerie silence surrounds the work of Russian painter Nicolas de Staël. His name is rarely, if ever, recommended to or cited as an influence on an American painter. The first reason for his relative absence from the American consciousness is simply bad timing. As Eliza Rathbone explained in 1997: "The very fact that [de Staël] began to achieve fame and recognition during the same years as the New York School was establishing its reputation on native soil, made a challenging environment for the work of an artist steeped in artistic culture and traditions of France." 1 The romantic image of the New York School remains powerful today. Struggling inwardly in a studio on 10th Street continues to capture the imagination of young American painters more than painting light and heat on a beach in Antibes.
Nicolas de Staël, Paysage Méditerranée 1954, oil on canvas, 23 5/8 by 31 7/8 inches (courtesy of Mitchell-Innes and Nash)
Perhaps the main reason de Staël’s reputation has languished in recent decades, though, is the inaccessibility of his work. The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. has been the only reliable venue to see de Staël’s paintings in the last half century. After regular showings in the 1950s, only four other shows of de Staël’s paintings - in 1963, 1965, 1990, and 1997 - precede the small, but well-selected show of his works now on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash’s Madison Avenue space.
In a new video curator Asher Edelman and author Charles Riley discuss the career of New York School painter Fritz Bultman. Fritz Bultman: The Missing Irascible is on view at Edelman Arts, New York, through May 11, 2013.
The video features close-ups of Bultman's paintings as well as a video walk-through of the exhibition. Riley notes that Bultman's term for what he was trying to achieve "was 'fullness.' He felt that most of the history of painting was some kind of recession from the surface backwards. Hofmann and Bultman were trying to fill the surface so that there was no further recession."
Subject Matter of the Artist: Robert Goodnough, 1950-1965, a new book published by Soberscove Press, is a time capsule of sorts. It unearths a lost primary source, penned by a significant artist, one that sheds first-person light on some of the most iconic artists of the New York School. It also conveys, through the enthusiasm of its author, a palpable sense of the excitement of a painter consciously aware he is in the midst of a significant avant garde moment.
Irving Sandler, in the foreward, describes the ethos of this moment (1949-1950) and its influence on Goodnough. It was a “lively avant-garde ferment,” Sandler writes, “in which [Goodnough] was introduced to the latest and most vital art and ideas, and all the fresh options in contemporary art.” (p.9)
As a graduate student and protege of Tony Smith at NYU, Goodnough embraced these ideas. He sought out avant garde painters, not only making the acquaintance of key artists of the New York School, but also visiting their studios and interviewing them for a research paper. This important, nearly unknown piece of writing, titled Subject Matter of the Artist: An Analysis of Contemporary Subject Matter in Painting as Derived from Interviews with those Artists Referred to as the Intrasubjectivists, is the centerpiece of this new collection.
Goodnough is known primarily as a second generation Abstract Expressionist, the generation that included Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Sam Francis, and Norman Bluhm among others. He also penned the seminal ArtNews article, “Pollock Paints a Picture,” a first hand account of Jackson Pollock’s novel drip painting technique (also included in this new volume - along with an interesting new revelation about that text).
Halasz writes that the exhibitions"might be said to constitute one show of three generations. The first show celebrates Perle Fine, an artist associated with the first generation of abstract expressionists; they mostly came to their artistic maturity in the later 1940s. The second exhibition offers work by a group of artists usually associated with the second generation of abstract expressionists: they mostly established their reputations in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the few exceptions in this group didn’t have his first solo exhibition until 1985, and thus represents a third generation. This artist, James Walsh, is further featured in a small exhibition of his own."
James Panero photo-blogs a visit the the studio of painter James Little. The exhibition James Little: Recent Work will be on view at June Kelly Gallery, New York from May 16 - June 18, 2013.
Panero's photo essay documents Little's studio, materials, and process which come together, Panero writes, to realize "a rhythmic sense of composition." He continues: "Shapes, colors, and values all work together to energize the paintings. Little's process requires constant adjustments and an attention to detail. Given the time he puts into each work, he may only create four large paintings a year."
Andrew writes that "For Bultman, who unfortunately missed his photo-op as one of 'The Irascibles' (the group of Abstract Expressionist painters made famous by a 1951 photograph in Life magazine), the paradox in painting was bridging nature and art... Bultman recalls watching the burning of the swamps in the delta as a young boy. 'What appears to be a sheet of water will be burning with very high flames against a blue sky,' adding that he found the sight, 'terribly exciting. I don’t know anything else that seems to me as beautiful as that […] It’s fire and water. You very seldom see them together in such close juxtaposition as you do when they are burning a swamp.' ...To Bultman, nature was not only tangibly seen and touched, but also felt in one’s heart and head. Art was the interpretation or record of the pulse and rhythm of the human condition."
Emil Robinson reviews the recent exhibition William McGee Works 1954-1977 at Reed Gallery, Cincinnati.
Robinson writes: "The show gave a wonderful introduction to a talented artist who had the good and bad fortune to be making work alongside some of the most important American painters in history. McGee was a painter of courageous ability and range... this show provided an art history lesson as we saw McGee working out the picture making problems that captivated the art world for some 40 years. For the art historian, painter or connoisseur, this show provided an opportunity to learn a new name through a powerful body of work."
