Link to Post:
http://gregcookland.com/journal/2013/01/04/bernard-chaets-far-horizon/
Greg Cook reviews the recent exhibition Bernard Chaet: A Life in Art at Alpha Gallery, Boston.
Cook writes that Chaet's "impasto buildup of paint recalls the cement-like clouds of Marsden Hartley’s raw, roughhewn late style, which he pioneered during summers at Gloucester in the 1930s. Chaet also seems to be channeling the vivid meaty textures of Boston Expressionist Hyman Bloom’s corpse paintings of the 1940s—work which influenced him when he was a young student in Boston. But Chaet’s colors are now filled with emotion, and effervescent."
Link to Post:
http://www.theartblog.org/2013/01/chaos-and-harmony-in-arden-bendler-brownings-cityscapes-at-bridgette-meyer-gallery/
Maegan Arthurs reviews an exhibition of paintings by Arden Bendler Browning at Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, on view through January 19, 2013.
Arthurs writes: "Bendler Browning sees a romance in the varying states of maintenance and decay throughout the urban scene. Her paintings convey an impression of the blurred images we casually observe while walking, biking or driving through the bustle of the city." She continues, noting Browning's "interest in the stark beauty of the cityscape juxtaposed with the dirt and grit of the street. In her works, there is a definite acknowledgement of, and perhaps affection for, this dichotomy."
Link to Post:
http://cityarts.info/2012/12/26/luminous-gravity/
John Goodrich reviews the exhibition Matisse: In Search of True Painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through March 17, 2013.
Goodrich writes: "As the 20th century’s greatest colorist, [Matisse] possessed an uncanny instinct for the energy of colors—for the way shifting hues illuminate a painting from within—but other qualities as well: drive, an anxious but methodical disposition, a willingness to fail and a reverence for great painting... In Search of True Painting is the rare show that reveals and connects art on its own, intimate terms—in its purely visual manifestation. Looking on, we absorb the evidence of one of the greatest minds of modern art, a painter who, to a unique degree, combined intelligence, self-awareness, and knowledge of precedents."
Link to Post:
http://www.theartblog.org/2012/12/flanz-kines-roots-in-coal-and-steel-at-allentown-art-museum/
Elizabeth Johnson reports on the exhibition Franz Kline: Coal and Steel at the Allentown Art Museum, PA, on view through January 13, 2013.
Johnson writes: "Highlighting Kline’s childhood and attachment to the industrial Lehigh Valley, Coal and Steel unites Kline’s early realism with his late abstraction, framing the artist’s development within the beautiful but harsh environment we still experience today... Several never-before or rarely-seen urban paintings that Kline made in New York following the Ashcan School and American Precisionist styles sparkle in the exhibition." Johnson continues noting that curator Dr. Robert S. Mattison connects Kline's early work with that of "George Bellows, George Luks and John Sloan, and sees it as foretelling the structure of Kline’s later abstract art. Seeing 'Lower East Side Market,' a lovely, prismatic urban scene made in the Ashcan style, together with 'Chatham Square (circa 1948),' made in the Precisionist style, reveals Kline’s broad search for meaningful subject matter and a personal style."
Link to Post:
http://elisabethcondon.blogspot.com/2012/12/studio-visits-alison-berry-julian-hatton.html
Elisabeth Condon photoblogs visits to the studios of painters Alison Berry and Julian Hatton.
Condon notes that Berry "has been omitting some of the intensive detail of her previous work and 'letting color and shape take over.' " Condon continues commenting that Hatton "has been working a range of sizes, playing with paint applications and 'flat and full' forms... Traversing his spaces, it comes as no surprise Hatton has a Chinese scroll near the studio. He is no stranger to the pathways therein."
Link to Post:
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/849760/danish-icon-per-kirkeby-now-on-view-at-phillips-collection
Nicolai Hartvig interviews painter Per Kirkeby about his work and career.
Kirkeby comments: " In the 1980s, when I decided to begin to paint in oil on canvas in the great European tradition — a decisive turning point for me — there was an openness and an incertitude to the work. Each painting was different, and that is what I wanted. But through the 1990s I developed signatures, somewhat radical and unmistakably mine. Francis Picabia remains my hero. The more you dive into his work, the wilder it becomes. He painted the skewed Cubist paintings that we all know. Then came the kitsch works. And he ended up doing these strange, abstract works that are impossible to grasp. Whenever you think you’ve got him, he’s always moved along. That’s what I aspire to do."
Link to Post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvfoudq5ecQ&feature=share&list=UUMpcK_m6Z23e0QvIn8dk8hg
James Kalm visits an exhibition of new paintings by Carroll Dunham at Gladstone Gallery, New York, on view through January 19, 2013.
Kalm writes that in this new work, Dunham "takes up the female nude for investigation These beach-side scenes are less Pierre-Auguste Renoir and more Hanna-Barbera with their cartoonesque cavorting and goof-ball vegetation. A series of tree paintings provide Dunham with a context to delve into draftsmanly abstraction."
Link to Post:
http://www.artcritical.com/2012/12/10/susannah-phillips/
Beverly Acha reviews the exhibition Susannah Phillips: Paintings and Drawings at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York, on view through January 5, 2012.
Acha writes: "The absence of representational details grants [Phillips'] landscapes an unexpected second life. They have the capacity to suddenly flip to abstraction, for a moment losing their pictorial depth. Yet the muted and succulently specific color always shifts the landscape back into view. The change in light from painting to painting is sophisticated, creating strong implications of volume and space between landmasses. As you walk though the gallery, the landscape progressively reveals more dimensionality, with variations in the height of mountains, the position of the sun, atmosphere, and time of day. Time intervals between paintings seem no more than 30 minutes or an hour, allowing the artist to slow time down to the point of capturing the closest thing to what we can understand as the present."
Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/margaret-mccann-art_b_2264263.html
John Seed talks to painter Margaret McCann about the portrayal of Atlantic City in many of her recent paintings, currently on view in the exhibition From Rome to Atlantic City at the University of Virginia’s Ruffin Gallery, through December 7, 2012.
Seed introduces the conversation: "Getting to know Margaret and her paintings was Faustian: the more I learned the curious I became. In particular, as I wrote about her large three panel painting 'What We Worry?' which is set on the boardwalk of Atlantic City -- re-imagined, re-configured and re-populated in Margaret's mind -- I began to wonder about the meanings and associations of the many pop culture characters she had included. 'McCann has a mind like a tarot deck,' I wrote in my essay, 'jammed with meaningful characters that spill out onto her canvasses in eccentric troupes.' In her personal vision of Atlantic City she uses these characters as a kind of 'American 'commedia dell'arte' troupe'that together form a loving caricature of American culture."
Link to Post:
http://au.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/845544/john-walkers-licentious-landscapes-at-tim-olsen-gallery
Nicholas Forrest reviews an exhibition of paintings by John Walker at Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney, Australia, on view through December 16, 2012.
Forrest writes: "In [Walker's] latest series of large-scale paintings, a rogue element emerges that dominates the canvas yet awakens the landscape scene to which it is tied... totemic forms – provocatively shrouded in yellows, reds and blues – entice the viewer into the landscape, the next moment they command undivided attention... The artist himself recalls being inspired by the crosses commemorating a life lost through a car or motorcycle accident that often appear by the side of the road, where they are usually anchored to telegraph poles or trees. He also had a desire to see what colour would look like on his usual, more earthy palette... Appearing foreign to the environment in which they are entwined, the prominent geometric figures exhibit a ghostly presence suggestive of a more urban environment, from which they have perhaps been extricated to haunt the natural world which they now inhabit."
