Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/note/ansel-adams-and-abstraction/
During a visit to Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea at the National Maritime Museum, London (through April 28), Robin Greenwood finds works by Ansel Adams that present the "moment of most heightened visual intensity," also sought and prized in great painting.
Greenwood writes: "I need to look at something that is ambitiously but unambiguously spatial, and very particular about it; rather like, in fact, [some] photographs by Adams, the ones where content and form were indistinguishable. This is not an argument for figurative art; this is an argument for breaking out of the easy-going, moribund, over-composed two-dimensional space that almost all abstract painting currently lives and dies by. This is an argument for pushing deeper into abstract space, opening it out in all the complexity, particularity and exactitude of its visual relationships; like a magnificent landscape laid out to sight, unfolded and lucid."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/64046/fritz-winters-crystalline-vision/
John Yau considers the work of Fritz Winter on the occasion of the exhibition Licht-Bilder: Fritz Winter and Abstract Photography at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, on view through February 17, 2013.
Yau writes that "In a number of the 'light pictures,' Winter compresses semi-transparent crystalline forms, a dark gray, depthless space and a moon-like orb, which he overlays with a black, open linear structure. In these works the tension between surface and depth is held by the black linear structure, through which a soft radiant light emanates from the gray depthlessness and amber-colored crystalline forms. A sharper symbolist glow comes from the cold white, moon-like orbs. The palette runs from white to black with grays and browns marking the in-between areas. The coolness of the palette endows the paintings with a chthonic presence, at once mineral-like and otherworldly. Light and materiality coincide, overlap and even switch places."
Link to Post:
http://idiommag.com/2012/10/dividing-line-wendy-white-at-leo-koenig/
Brian Dupont writes about Wendy White's latest exhibition Pix Vää at Leo Koenig, Inc, New York, on view through October 20, 2012.
Dupont writes: "Wendy White's paintings have always walked a fine line between abstraction and real world reference, between gestural immediacy and polished construction. She does not walk an easy path in painting. As an artist interested in mining the dense marks and language of the urban environment, married with a concern for contemporary abstract painting, the easiest thing in the world would be to embrace a provisional aesthetic of rough materials and utilitarian supports. Instead, she has maintained a dedication to craft that is born of constructing the elements of her work in her studio, herself."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/57274/wendy-white-pix-vaa-leo-koenig/
John Yau reviews the exhibition Wendy White: Pix Vää at Leo Koenig Gallery, New York, on view through October 20, 2012.
Yau writes: "By making each component distinct - visually, materially, and in its physical scale - White endows everything with a specific identity. By having the smallest component resting on the floor, with something larger stacked on top of it, she ensures that this element is regarded as necessary to the work rather than as a decorative addition. Finally, by binding the work into a single unit made up of highly individualized modules, she invites the viewer to become more conscious of the play of similarities and differences among the constituent parts."
Link to Post:
http://notesonlooking.com/?p=16633
Geoff Tuck reviews the exhibition Kevin Appel, Paintings at Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles, on view through August 23, 2012.
"There is a photographic base to these paintings – Appel takes pictures of landscapes ('in the landscape,' the artist says) and he mechanically applies them to treated canvas and then by hand he paints over them. (Here I want to keep in mind the insubstantial nature of photographic images.)... looking at Salton Sea (heap), I find black, oily smears, these are veined as though they are spreading or are under pressure. (There are such colored smears on several paintings in the show.) The smears remind me of chemical mishaps that might be experienced using Polaroid cameras, when the developer would squeeze out of the pouch across the photo print. Appel’s paintings, which were begun in the camera, make reference to the photographic process again and again."
Link to Post:
http://bombsite.com/articles/6728
Richard J. Goldstein looks at the recent work of Stephen Posen which merges painting and photography.
Goldstein writes: "Access and memory are two words that come to mind when viewing Posen’s work. His initial question of communication in turn became one of recognition. How does the viewer comprehend recognizable space through added layers of concealment? This comprehension is all about access to the recognizable ground which, when visually obstructed, relies upon memory and intuition to complete the picture... Through the years, the strategies may have changed but the game is still the same for Posen: how one accesses meaning in the languages of paint and photography via memory."
Link to Post:
http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2012/07/25/examining-photographic-activity-through-a-wide-angle-lens/
Leslie Anderson blogs about the paintings of George Hendrick Breitner (1857-1923), whose works are included in the exhibition Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard, on view at the Indianapolis Museum of Art through September 2, 2012.
Anderson writes that Breitner's "immediate grasp of [photography's] potential in his own artistic process is evident in the present exhibition. Breitner’s painting Demolition of Oudezijds Achterburgwal (1903-04) bears more than a passing resemblance in both form and subject matter to his snapshots of street reconstruction in Amsterdam (taken from 1894-1898)... Flattened picture planes and unusual cropping characterize Breitner's images. Breitner translated this photographic aesthetic to painting, creating works distinguished by their innovatory compositional daring."
Link to Post:
http://bombsite.com/articles/6677
Painters Greg Lindquist and Tom McGrath discuss their approaches to landscape painting and its place in a world dominated by technology.
Responding to Lindquist's question about how his paintings relate to photography and technology, McGrath remarks: "Technology is everything. Photo-wise, it's the old cliche about Impressionism as the secret child of photo, and Pointillism being the forerunner of process color in printing: Sigmar Polke's dots, Bridget Riley's psy-ops, camouflage, the pixel, inkjets and spray paint. These paintings catch light, maybe freeze movement - I hope. The silhouettes, for instance refer to the look of a photogram, a kind of filmic mood lighting."
Link to Post:
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/nathan/snapshot-at-the-phillips-4-20-12.asp
Emily Nathan reviews the exhibition Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard, on view at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. through May 6, 2012.
Nathan writes: "while the two mediums have their parallels -- Bonnard's nude photos of his model and future wife Marthe are clearly echoed in many of his painted compositions, for instance -- the show suggests that the influence of photography on these artists’ painting was “diffuse and multifaceted” rather than obvious and direct."
Link to Post:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2012/03/the-man-podcast-painters-their-1888-kodaks/
Tyler Green talks to Elizabeth Easton, curator of the exhibition Snapshot: Painters and Photography: Bonnard to Vuillard, on view at the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. through May 6, 2012.
The curatorial statement notes that "none of the artists thought of themselves as photographers. These were private objects, often made for the same reason people use cameras to this day: to commemorate events or capture precious moments with friends or loved ones. The artists sometimes translated their photographic images directly into their work in other media, and when viewed alongside these paintings, prints, and drawings, the snapshots reveal fascinating parallels in foreshortening, cropping, lighting, silhouettes, and vantage point."
At the end of the podcast Green also interviews painter Anne Appleby, whose work is on view at Danese Gallery, New York through March 10, 2012.
