Link to Post:
http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/898669/video-the-missing-irascible-of-fritz-bultman
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."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/proserpina-and-amnesiacs-exhibitions-of-work-by-ann-marie-james-and-annie-lapin/
John Holland reviews two painting exhibitions on view in London: Annie Lapin: Amnesiacs at Josh Lilley (through May 16) and Ann-Marie James: Proserpina at Karsten Scubert (through May 10).
Holland writes that both Lapin and James are artists who "make ostensibly abstract paintings, but who use the art of the past in a self-consciously Post-Modern sort of way. They quote it, in other words, deconstruct it, 'employ it', to use James’ utilitarian terminology, 'as a tactic.' ... both artist use the language of strategies, of doing things like reconfiguring our notions of art history and referring, as is more or less obligatory now, to Deleuze..." "Intriguing paintings" happen, Holland argues, when these strategies fail.
Submitted by Brett Baker on May 6, 2013
Subject Matter of the Artist: Robert Goodnough, 1950-1965
Edited with an Introduction by Helen A. Harrison, Foreward by Irving Sandler, Soberscove Press
Cover featuring Robert Goodnough, Horses III, 1960, Collection of Milette and Haag Sherman, Houston, Texas, courtesy of Langs De Wal Gallery, New York © Estate of Robert Goodnough
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).
Link to Post:
http://www.pirihalasz.com/blog.htm?post=910288
Piri Halasz reviews three exhibitions at Spanierman Galleries: Perle Fine: 30 Years of Painting, Dripping! Pouring! Staining!, and paintings by James Walsh (all through May 25).
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."
Link to Post:
http://structureandimagery.blogspot.com/2013/05/in-process-james-erikson.html
As part of his In Process series, Paul Behnke posts a photo-blog about the development of painter James Erikson's Slow Morning (2012).
Of his work Erikson says: "My paintings are abstractions in the sense that at some point in the painting process I’m abstracting from nature, whether consciously at the beginning or through some experience or memory I bring into the studio during the evolution of the painting. Sometimes the painting reminds me of something, a particular mood or memory of a place and it won’t go away -- that becomes the subject of the painting for me."
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2013/05/clinton-king-april-2013.html
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Clinton King.
King discusses the progress of individual paintings and his studio process. On the resolution of individual paintings he comments: " If it's mysterious to me and I really don't know why they look a little uncomfortable and there's a varying degree of response to them, I think they're successful… "
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/70299/whos-afraid-of-hot-pink-canary-yellow-and-midnight-blue/
John Yau reviews two exhibitions that foreground color: Paul Behnke: An Awful Rainbow at Kathryn Markel Gallery (through May 18) and Stanley Whitney: Other Colors I Forget at Team Gallery, New York (through May 12).
Yau notes that "In Behnke’s best paintings, our focus shifts between dissonance and order, large and small, solid planes and scraped 'unfinished' areas. Where an earlier layer has not been painted over, its color punches through the hole and grab us. Hot and cool colors abut, as well as complementary ones. You have the feeling that Behnke is trying to pull out all the stops, that he wants structure and chaos to coincide." Whitney, Yau writes, "extends his gamut, going from thin, crackled surfaces, to washy, translucent layers exposing painted over shapes, to solid planes of color. And he might suddenly paint wet into wet, suspending brushstrokes of maroon in a green rectangle. Clearly, there is little or no plan when he begins with one color and moves to the next. It is comparable to writing a poem word by word, rather than line by line."
Link to Post:
http://glasstire.com/2013/05/03/biggs-and-collings-suspicious-utopias-an-email-interview/
Michael Bise interviews Emma Biggs & Matthew Collings on the occasion of the exhibition Biggs and Collings: Suspicious Utopias at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, on view through May 11, 2013.
Biggs and Collings comment: "At the moment in art culture, any proposal to do with “form” is considered bad. As something transcendent, it is automatically linked with considerations of ideology and hegemony, and is seen as an illusion that allows the viewer to remain blind to social realities. Hot contemporary art is interested in plugging in directly to those, and in this kind of art, form can be anything so long as it is explicable in terms of that connection. We, on the other hand, believe that plugging-in to social realities is often an illusion. We think institutional critique, for example, has become formulaic. We address this problem in the textual component of our show in Fort Worth. Our paintings don’t avoid difficult issues but neither do they spell them out as directly readable propaganda. We look at the material and the tangible. Things have to work: the colour has to be objective, it has to be meaningful on colour terms – the same with shape, line, tone – all the elements we use. We attack mystification ruthlessly. If there are comfortable illusions, we see our work as a blow against them."
Link to Post:
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/05/artseen/ted-stamm-paintings
Pac Pobric reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Ted Stamm at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
Pobric writes that in 1973 "Stamm began to focus more fully on the overall structure of his work, and soon after he discarded the more traditional square and rectangular supports. His attention turned elsewhere: to the shapes of shadows, or the design of a baseball diamond. What Stamm saw in these models was an escape from the burden of composition. If he took anything from his earlier experiments, it was that the shape of a painting should be specific and that the problem with more traditional configurations was their seemingly accidental nature. New structures allowed him to more deliberately choose the shape of his work, opening an expanded range of possibilities for art that could feel altogether fresh."
Link to Post:
http://figureground.ca/2013/05/03/a-conversation-with-rebecca-campbell/
Julia Schwartz interviews painter Rebecca Campbell.
Campbell remarks: "There is no illusion I have that I’m inventing anything. I’m returning to something that exists for all of us, so for me, things like death, things like light, because they have happened always does not make them rote or irrelevant. We each have to face death. We don’t get out of that. Nobody gets a free pass. Does that make it not meaningful, like there’s nothing new? The idea of being avant garde or new—Great poetry uses the same set of words, it simply reconfigures them into a way that allows us to be present again with the words. I think that about painting often. People do wonderfully inventive things with form, but there is sort of a finite system that we work within, and I don’t find that to be a downfall."
