Link to Post:
http://figureground.ca/charles-garabedian/
Julia Schwartz interviews painter Charles Garabedian on the occasion of the exhibition Charles Garabedian: Re-generation at L.A. Louver Gallery, Venice, CA, on view through May 11, 2013.
Garabedian discusses his history as an artist, the challenges inherent in painting, and the subject matter of his new work: "I think with all artists an idea sort of manifests itself within a period time. No matter what the paintings look like, there is something that identifies them as part of one thing. In this case I’ve looked at the work and see that it has a lot to do with the figure, which the work has for years and years. In these particular paintings, the motivating kind of force was the idea of Salomé, which led to a certain kind of figure, primarily a female figure. The female figures have always had a quality of their own in terms of personality, and I think it continues on in these paintings here."
Link to Post:
http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2013/03/thomas-germano-response-to-roberta.html
Sharon Butler posts a defense of the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, written by painter Thomas Germano.
Germano questions the prevailing tendency to dismiss Pre-Raphaelite painting: "While some will dismiss Pre-Raphaelite art as illustrative because they were the first artists to employ the new technology of photography in their art, the use of photography today is a perfectly accepted method of image making and artists no longer hide this fact nor apologize for doing so. The Pre-Raphaelites were simply too popular and widely circulated in their day and critics have always frowned upon the universal acceptance of the PRB art movement questioning, 'how can anything this popular be good art when so many commoners admire it?'... While I've never been the first to champion the PRB, this exhibition demonstrates their brilliance and proves exactly why "now" is the time to re-examine their admirable accomplishments. "
Link to Post:
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/reviewed/jaune-quick-to-see-smith-at-accola-griefen
A Bascove reviews the exhibition Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Water and War at Accola Griefen, New York, on view through April 6, 2013.
Bascove writes: "The figures in these paintings are unique to the land of Native Americans, transmitting the force of its endurance. There is a recitation of the struggles of indigenes peoples and the balm of humor, community, and belief that speak of its survival... Quick-To See-Smith’s vocabulary is also punctuated with another tribe, that of the Artist. There are a cacophony of references to, among others, Picasso, Louise Bourgeoisie, Robert Rauschenberg, Frida Kahlo, Goya, Mexican muralists, and Sunday matinee cartoons. These are seamlessly integrated into narratives that tell the stories of the sacred symbols of indigenes societies and the ravages of war."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/64822/beer-with-a-painter-kyle-staver/
Jennifer Samet talks with painter Kyle Staver about her work, Facebook debates, and late Renoir.
Staver remarks: "When I first started painting, with personal subject matter, I wanted to tell you what it was like to be alive, and to be Kyle Staver. I thought, I will paint about the most important events of my life, and hopefully, in doing that, will make a connection to you and it will be universal. Well, I did that for a long time. If you look at Titian, Rembrandt, Tintoretto, or Picasso, you see that at a certain point in their careers, they gave up personal incidents as subject matter, and turned to the mythological, because those themes are typical. We all share Adam and Eve — some sort of ideas about creation. So, rather than go from the particular and try to make it universal, I now am taking the universal and telling you about my stake in it."
Link to Post:
http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2013/01/in-her-own-words-kyle-staver.html
Sharon Butler posts Kyle Staver's thoughts on her work which will be on view in the upcoming exhibition Kyle Staver: Paintings, Prints, Reliefs at John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York (January 31 - February 24, 2013).
Staver notes: "I don't think it's an accident that these Mythical subjects are often taken up by artists in mid to late career. My recent paintings' latent anxiety, emotional/tonal heaviness, and darkness are not just reflections of my home in Northern Minnesota's climate: I have grown increasingly interested in speaking with the big boys of western art, stepping into their homes, working with their darker palettes and their darker subjects, classical mythology, especially. I don’t feel at odds with artists like Titian and Rembrandt—I’m not arguing with them as a contemporary female painter, although my own take on these mythic women is often quite different. I don’t subjectify my women; rather, they allow me to reinvestigate a myth from my point of view: rather than rape, there’s pleasurable co-joining, as in Danae and the Parakeet; rather than the terrified victim, there’s resistant outrage, as in Europa and the Flying Fish."
Link to Post:
http://icallitoranges.blogspot.com/2012/05/last-paintings-of-cy-twombly.html
An essay by Ed Schad about Cy Twombly: The Last Paintings at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, on view through June 9, 2012.
Schad writes: "Camino Real is a 1948 play by Tennessee Williams... and when it comes to entering into a dialogue with the works at Gagosian, reading the text can be illuminating... On the set, there is a wall and a gate that separates the town from what is simply out there - an unknown wasteland, a place where no one ever comes back from, Terra Incognita... I think about Twombly at the end of a long journey, which has taken him to places in the old world and the texts of our Western culture that I would like to visit. To find him in the end in Camino Real, in that uncertain and horrible territory, dizzy with fever and crime and impossible dreaming, where one can peek over the wall but cannot see it, is chilling."
Link to Post:
http://blog.art21.org/2012/04/06/ink-brilliance-under-pressure-dana-schutzs-monotypes-at-gallery-met/
Sarah Kirk Hanley writes about the exhibition Götterdämmerung at the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, New York, on view through May 12, 2012.
Kirk Hanley writes: "Schutz’s own extravagantly creative and somewhat outlandish imagination, as well as her exuberantly gestural style, is well-matched to Wagner's outsized narrative and grandiloquent score. Yet the artist took the assignment as a general guideline, noting, '…I worked only loosely from the themes in Götterdämmerung. Most of the images came from drawings in the studio. After drawing for many hours you start to forget the story and focus on the specifics of how to make an image work. I hadn’t seen the production at the Met Opera before I started making the work so that made it easier to imagine what these characters could look like and be doing' "
