Link to Post:
http://www.pirihalasz.com/blog.htm?post=873479
Piri Halasz reviews several new shows in Chelsea including The Lure of Paris at Loretta Howard Gallery (thorugh November 3), Jackson Pollock and Tony Smith at Matthew Marks Gallery (through October 27), and Carolanna Parlato at Elizabeth Harris Gallery (through October 6).
In the Lure of Paris Halasz finds Jules Olitski and Ed Clark to be standouts. She writes: "Olitski seems to have been one of the few Americans actually looking at the better postwar French painters practicing the French equivalents to American abstract expressionism known as tachisme or l’art informel..." Halasz continues: "[Clark] is... known for having painted with push brooms instead of brushes... [his painting] benefits from the use of large, sweepingly simple forms and clear, vigorous colors, wisely limited & separated from each other -- much livelier than the blackened, bush-like center in the Joan Mitchell on display, or the muddy, overdone creation of Al Held."
The Lure of Paris provides a fitting backdrop for Halasz to view a show of new paintings by Carolanna Parlato: "[Parlato's] intuitive color sense is one of the strong points of the current show... Also, her paint is a lot thinner than the hallmark smears of the 50s, sometimes transparent in fact, when an almost dry brush appears to have been stroked across the canvas, depositing only hair-like lines of paint, as opposed to solid areas, and allowing the complimentary undercoat to shine through. Finally, at its best her organization is a lot stronger than most of the tyros at work in 'The Lure of Paris.' "
Link to Post:
http://www.artnews.com/2012/09/13/jacksonsotheractions/
Robin Cembalest writes about Jackson Pollock's little-known sculptures from 1956, on view in the exhibition Jackson Pollock & Tony Smith: Sculpture at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, through October 27, 2012.
Cembalest writes that "the lowly status of Pollock’s object-making has its roots in the artist’s own day, when painting was considered the pinnacle of Abstract Expressionism—and sculpture, as Ad Reinhardt famously put it, was 'something you back into when you look at a painting.' It didn’t help that Pollock’s sculptures hardly resemble his drip classics. The humble objects don’t scream 'Pollock,' or action, never mind painting. Most of his extant sculptures, under a dozen, don’t even resemble each other. And their hands-on quality—hammered copper, hand-built clay—contradicts the popular image of Pollock conjuring his abstractions in a rhythmic ritual dance."
Link to Post:
http://mnaves.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/art-of-another-kind-international-abstraction-and-the-guggenheim-1949-1960-at-the-solomon-r-guggenheim-museum/
Mario Naves reviews the exhibition Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949–1960 at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, on view through September 12, 2012.
Naves writes: "The exhibition includes an inescapable array of artists and some stunning works. But the problem -or part of the problem - is how many of the works aren’t stunning, but merely diverting or symptomatic of the time. Art of Another Kind isn’t intended to be a definitive retrospective of an era -roughly speaking, the decade in which Abstract Expressionism achieved Grand Manner status. The curatorial focus, rather, is on one institution’s accounting of the avant-garde and, as such, is both defined and limited by the museum’s permanent collection. All the same, certain artists are conspicuous in their absence and too many of those present-and-accounted-for are represented by near misses, transitional pieces, or out-and-out failures."
Link to Post:
http://eyelevel.si.edu/2012/08/why-i-am-not-a-painter-on-michael-goldbergs-sardines-.html
Howard Kaplan blogs about Michael Goldberg's painting Sardines (1955), the inspiration for Frank O'Hara's poem Why I Am Not a Painter, which documents the painting's progress.
Kaplan writes: "O'Hara was a very generous friend. He was particularly giving to his painter friends, including Goldberg, in looking at their work and responding to it. Joe LeSueur in his invaluable Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara states that O'Hara offered his painter friends 'encouragement, inspired them with his insights and his passion; they impinged upon and entered his poetry, which would not have been the same and probably not as good without them.' One can say in turn that the painters he knew and cultivated would not possibly have achieved all they did without O'Hara's enthusiasm and feedback."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/frank-bowling-interview/
Robin Greenwood talks to painter Frank Bowling about his life and work at the exhibition Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip… Frank Bowling's Poured Paintings 1973–8 at Tate Britain, on view through April 30, 2013.
Bowling remarks: "What we inherited from the first generation [of abstract expressionists] was the freedom to apply the paint in any which way you want, pouring it, spilling it, dripping it … It was a kind of exhilarating thing to feel, that you can make a work, and make a work that's really rich, and right on the way… to the best that's ever been done with paint by spilling and dripping, pouring… the whole thing was so open…"
Link to Post:
http://www.thoughtsthatcureradically.com/2012/08/ruth-abrams-microcosms-yeshiva.html
Caleb De Jong reviews the exhibition Ruth Abrams: Microcosms at Yeshiva University Museum, on view through January 6, 2012.
De Jong writes: "Sometimes measuring only a square inch on either side, these paintings, if such a big word can be used to describe these objects, conger corners of landscapes, moons and mountains. Whereas her larger paintings appear muddled in their intention and of their moment, the smaller paintings on paper achieve what Abrams discusses in her video, ‘The Paradox of the Big’ in which the smaller a paintings becomes the more space and infinitude it can contain."
Link to Post:
http://www.on-verge.org/essays/cy-twombly-and-the-school-of-the-fontainebleau-hamburger-bahnhof-museum/
Pac Pobric reviews the exhibition Cy Twombly and the School of the Fontainebleau at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin, on view through October 7, 2012.
Pobric writes: "If saying that Twombly was an artist and not a historian seems obvious, the implications of that probably aren’t. When we say that Twombly was a painter interested in art history, all that means is that his working through the history of art was material and not theoretical. Whatever affinity he had for the School of the Fontainebleau is therefore going to be mediated through the material practice of his painting. That filter—the process of making work with influences in mind—therefore obscures the connection between the final picture and the influence, making the connection highly tenuous."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/55657/flying-blind-de-koonings-closed-eye-drawings/
Thomas Micchelli discusses the "blind" drawings of Willem de Kooning, now on view in the exhibition Eyes Closed/Eyes Open: Recent Acquisitions in Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, through January 7, 2012.
Micchelli writes: "De Kooning’s hand... feels out the image in two dimensions, creating space and volume that exists in its own enclosed precinct. I speculate that the sensation would not be far removed from the way he squeezed clay between his fingers to make his gangly, clotted sculptures, which were always one or two steps removed from being bas-reliefs. These drawings would be marvelous by any standard; that they were done blindly is astonishing. The sensitivity of touch, the rawness of the sexuality, the tactility of the forms, the wit and invention of the imagery, and the ethereal gradations of the charcoal line are masterful even by de Kooning’s very high bar."
Link to Post:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2012/07/revisiting-pollocks-mural/
Tyler Green revisits a two part interview with Pepe Karmel co-curator of the 1998 MoMA Jackson Pollock Retrospective, about Pollock's monumental, breakthrough painting Mural, which is currently undergoing a well publicized conservation.
In part one Karmel notes that "It's an important painting for Jackson Pollock because it's the moment that announces his future as a painter of large, mural-scale paintings that become environments, and furthermore paintings that are in this distinct, all-over style that changes people's idea of what a painting might be."
In part two Karmel remarks that at the time "I don't think it had the kind of impact the later paintings had. It was a bit of a one-off, after which he went back to making smaller paintings. It probably didn't make that much sense to people. They may have been impressed by it, but by itself it didn’t announce a new style. Aesthetically, looking back, we go, 'Aha, this is it. This is when he gets there, even prematurely, and then goes away from it.' I’m guessing other people, including artists, who saw it didn't understand its implications for some time."
Link to Post:
http://mnaves.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/off-the-cuff-and-on-the-money-richard-diebenkorn/
An essay on the achievements of Richard Diebenkorn, republished by Mario Naves on the occasion of the exhibition the exhibition Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series, on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. through September 23, 2012.
Naves writes: "Matisse is the crucial source for the Ocean Park pictures. Not a few observers, after visiting the Matisse in Morocco exhibition at MOMA in 1990, remarked upon the similarity of the backdrop for Zorah on the Terrace (1912) to Diebenkorn's paintings. It is a not adventitious historical rhyme, as Diebenkorn would have been the first to admit. Yet to claim that he did little more than finesse (and fret over) Matisse for almost thirty years is to mistake a profound engagement with tradition for accomplished hackwork. With their pensive harmonies and stoic elegance, the Ocean Park paintings divulge their antecedents without reiterating them... Diebenkorn knew that the hurdle of tradition is not to recapitulate history, but to make tradition speak in a form that is as individual as it is contemporary. He also knew when it needed prodding. By transmuting his forebears into something personal and fresh, Diebenkorn claimed his status as an unapologetic modernist."
