Link to Post:
http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/-Painterly-Pasted-Pictures--at-FreedmanArt-7100
Brendan Dooley reviews the exhibition Painterly Pasted Pictures at Freedman Art, New York, on view through May 18, 2013.
Dooley writes that the exhibtion "brings together a group of collages from the 20th century united by the stylistic trait of 'painterliness.' ... Though painterliness obviously has its roots in painting, this exhibition shows how easily and successfully the concept can be applied to other mediums; painterliness is, in a sense, materiality, which is why collage – the mixing of different materials and forms – seems to be one of the best mediums to demonstrate this visual effect."
Link to Post:
http://elisabethcondon.blogspot.com/2013/02/from-color-field-to-figure-friday-in.html
Elisabeth Condon photo blogs visits to several painting shows on view in Chelsea: Peter Williams at Foxy Production (through March 23) Charlie Roberts: Girl Power at Kravets Wheby (through February 23) Shinique Smith: Bold As Love at James Cohan Gallery (through March 16), and Caro, Frankenthaler, Louis, Motherwell, Noland, Olitski, Stella, curated by Hayden Dunbar at Paul Kasmin Gallery (through February 23).
Link to Post:
http://www.pirihalasz.com/blog.htm?post=884652
Piri Halasz writes about several current and recent painting exhibitions on view in Manhattan that together provide a sweeping view of abstraction over the last 70 years. The shows include: Conceptual Abstraction at Hunter College's Times Square Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Frank Stella at Mitchell-Innes & Nash (through November 24), Hans Hofmann: Works on Paper from the 1940s at the New York Studio School, curated by Karen Wilkin (through January 5), and Ronnie Landfield: Where It All Began at the Kenny Gallery, High School of Art & Design.
Link to Post:
http://themaximilian.com/#Shadowy Things and the Pulpit of Modernism
Considering works by Van Gogh, Kandinsky, and Frank Stella, Mark Stone muses on the ongoing tension between figuration and pure abstraction in abstract painting.
Stone wrties: "What our abstract painting lacks is a more comprehensive way of seeing and producing imagery that accomodates both our lens-based dematerialised culture and the physical life we live. Our painting should define a different kind of visual engagement and understanding, one that moves us beyond the detrimental influence of our mannered Modernism. At this point in Post-modern cultural history we painters must begin to resolve the problem of illusionistic thickness defined in Stella’s early Black Paintings and the legacy of that shadow cast by van Gogh’s table. Yet, we choose to remain forever elsewhere, floating in Kandinsky’s nebulous universe."
Link to Post:
http://newabstraction.net/2012/09/07/emilio-vedova/
Robert Linsley considers the work of Emilio Vedova as an important precedent to the later work of Frank Stella.
Linsley writes: "The Plurimi of Emilio Vedova are clear precursors of Stella’s relief paintings, and the differences between the two groups of work are revealing. Vedova’s works had an origin in sets for an opera by Luigi Nono that he had done in 1961. The effort was to make an enveloping space, to place the viewer within the work... Vedova is trying to spread, to conquer space; Stella, as he has often said, stays pictorial, if pictorial means a kind of gathering of everything together in front of a ground plane."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/51958/frank-stella-black-aluminum-and-copper-paintings-new-work/
Thomas Micchelli considers Frank Stella's early and new work on view in two exhibitions Frank Stella: Black, Aluminum and Copper Paintings at L&M Arts (through June 2, 2012) and Frank Stella: New Work at Freedman Art (through September 27, 2012).
Micchelli writes that Stella's assertion 'What you see is what you see' is a comment on the obvious. And its visual correlative - stark black enamel stripes arranged in a predetermined symmetrical pattern - is the work of a precocious smart aleck... demonstrating the true condition of the art form. Stella's attention-getting tactics aside, it is astonishing that what he was doing then - which was received as both ultra-radical and instantly blue-chip... feels as of-the-moment as his most recent work... Which, for an artist who’s just turned 76, is a feat in itself."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/2011/11/welcome-to-inter-stella-space-the-good-the-bad-and-the-baroque/
John Bunker reflects on the daring nature of Frank Stella's oeuvre.
Bunker notes: "Stella started his career by examining the architecture of a painting as object. He makes the image and the object one….This is a guy who knows what Modernism is with a capital M! He is not an artist of touch, of painterliness. His career has been about how to find a truly modern space; it is abstract for sure, but it reflects us, refracts us- our desires, our alienated angst- just as Manet did in 'A Bar at the Folies- Bergere' one hundred and fifty years before."
Link to Post:
http://ilikethisart.net/?p=10553
Installation images with text from Nicholas O'Brien about a new collaborative mural by Frank Stella & Santiago Calatrava Mural Collaboration entitled The Michael Kohlhaas Curtain recently on view at the Neue Nationalgalerie.
O'Brien writes: "The neon colors of the 98 foot mural immediately jump out and clash against the surrounding stoic tones, while the gridded donut enclosure acts as an update the stagnant flat grid of Late Modern architecture.... The Curtain certainly takes cues from early 20th century murals, but instead of opting for a figurative approach, this collaboration tells an abundantly abstract story of the reciprocating influence that painting and architecture have had upon one another, as well as point toward a vivid future where both disciplines can merge into one grand gesture."
Link to Post:
http://newamericanpaintings.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/material-crescendo-frank-stella-at-the-phillips-collection/
Link to Post:
http://tylerblogs.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/frank-stella-awarded-the-iscs-lifetime-achievement-award/
The Kenneth Tyler Print Collection blog posts about their long history collaborating with artist Frank Stella on his prints and sculptures. The post documents "the serendipitous and open-minded way Frank finds many of his images. With a Melville-like appreciation of high and low, squalid and pristine, silly and serious, it is no wonder that 'stuff' from so many sources makes Stella's studio a place for alchemy. A rusted hulk of steel, the left over armature of a foundry casting, or tourist's Brazilian twisty beach hat, can become a sculpture with profound grace and impact."
