Link to Post:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2012/10/the-modern-art-notes-podcast-manets-portraits/
On the occasion of the exhibition Manet: Portraying Life at the Toledo Museum, Ohio (on view from October 7, 2012–January 1, 2013), Tyler Green talks to exhibition co-curator Lawrence Nichols and Gary Tinterow, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
The segments include a discussion of Manet's interest in portraiture, his subjects, his interest in Frans Hals, and "the Spanish influence on Manet’s portraiture, both Spanish pictures Manet saw in France in the 1850s and early 1860s and then the importance of Manet’s 1865 visit to Spain."
Link to Post:
http://notesonlooking.com/2012/09/thomas-butler-curates-the-figure-in-contemporary-art-at-cypress-college/
Geoff Tuck reviews the exhibition The Figure in Contemporary Art, Curated by Thomas Butler, at Cypress College, Cypress, CA, on view through November 1, 2012.
Tuck writes: "There is a freemasonry of painting among figurative painters – and I mean the term in the metaphoric sense of a secret club as well as the sense of a guild of highly developed craftsmen, for great skill is required to observe and render the body. And it is both, observation as well as drafting. Over a lifetime of close watching one learns how muscles move and pull and place our bones into postures, and the ways that our bodies and faces can reveal our thoughts; the long, slow, laborious practice of making marks to represent what one sees isn’t as direct as the same thing might be if one takes a photograph, the mark-making also conveys what one senses and feels. The hand is an interpreter, not a copiest. In my simplistic way, it seems to me that other arts can make statements about the human experience, while painting offers a breadth of interpretation that equals life."
The show includes works by Domenic Cretara, Jerome Witkin, Juliette Aristides, Kate Lehman, Odd Nerdrum, Paul Fenniak, Ruth Weisberg, Sharon Allicotti, Sigmund Abeles, Steven Assael, Thomas Stubbs, and Vito Leonardo Scarola.
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/56894/the-ambiguity-between-the-human-and-the-void/
Daniel Larkin reviews the exhibition Matthew Miller: Fools Are Those Who Lose Their Mirrors on view at Pocket Utopia and C.G. Boerner Gallery, New York, on view through October 14, 2012.
Larkin writes: "Most of the critiques of Miller’s work find fault in the destabilizing fissures in his work, like uneven shoulders, differing levels of detail, or the occasional crudely cut line. Others see these choices as a deliberate stylizations with their own advantages. These inconsistencies subvert the effect of realism. After centuries of harmonious proportioned paintings and the hyper-realism of the 20th century, it’s refreshing to see a work that undermines and casts a shadow on its own sense of realism that varies greatly from one work to another."
Link to Post:
http://www.artwrit.com/article/lynette-yiadom-boakye-at-jack-shainman-gallery-new-york/
Laura Leffler reviews the exhibition Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: All Manner of Needs at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, on view through October 13, 2012.
Link to Post:
http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/fragonards-fantasy-portrait-of-dashing-french-duke-on-temporary-loan/
Annelisa Stephan blogs about a striking portrait by Jean-Honoré Fragonard now on view at the Getty Museum.
Stephan writes: "Dark in color but radiant in spirit, this painting is one of Fragonard’s 15 'fantasy portraits,' three-quarter-length studies that took him, incredibly, as little as an hour each. Set against plain backgrounds, the paintings show off Fragonard’s knack for bending oil paint to his will, both in the faces and the swaths of luxurious textures..."
Link to Post:
http://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/interview-by-joe-heaps-nelson/2625
Joe Heaps Nelson talks to painter Mike Cockrill about his work and career.
Asked about his recent departure from purely illusionistic painting, Cockrill remarks: "I'm just experimenting... it's almost like, I don't know whether it's the work, or the fact that I've changed, but there's a lot of curiosity about this and what am I doing and where am I going, and I don't know. I'm not going to know until I get there. That's the good part, I'm going with an open mind about it... It's always a crisis being an artist. It's one long crisis. But sometimes it's productive."
Link to Post:
http://www.artltdmag.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1346954322&archive=&start_from=&ucat=32&
Lauren Buscemi reviews works by painter Alex Kanevsky who was recently in residence at the Lux Art Institute, San Diego.
Buscemi writes that Kanevsky: "paints nudes and portraits steeped in tradition that feel fresh and contemporary. Figure in Dark without Onlooker (2012) is an intimate work the 49-year old Russian-born, Philadelphia-based painter produced using a Lux volunteer as the model. In the painting, a young woman with dark hair lounges nude on her side facing away from the viewer nestled in layers of dark brooding brown and deep green brushstrokes. These hues were not derived from the sun-saturated indigenous Encinitas landscape surrounding Lux, but from Kanevsky's memory of the stormy sky found in Velazquez's painting of Carlos Balthasar at the Prado Museum. Originally, Kanevsky included a male onlooker, but later removed him, providing a more direct experience for the viewer."
Link to Post:
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/09/artseen/jean-baptiste-simon-chardin-chardins-visor
John Elderfield considers the true meaning of Cézanne's interest in the painting Self Portrait or Portrait of Chardin Wearing an Eyeshade, 1775 by Jean-Siméon Chardin.
Elderfield writes: "we cannot dismiss the possibility that the unclear sentence in Cézanne’s unquestionably authentic letter on Chardin’s self-portrait is not, in fact, about a physical attribute of the pastel: the plane of light that carries across the bridge of the nose and allows the work’s range of tonal values better to be seen. It could well be about the practical purpose of the shade-creating visor depicted in the pastel..."
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2012/08/hannah-barrett-august-2012.html
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy interview painter Hannah Barrett about her work.
Barrett has described her paintings as"invented portraits based on collage. Copies of photos or in some cases, copies of paintings are cut apart and reassembled into figures of ambiguous gender. Fusing the features of both sexes creates a range of androgynous characters that may be straight, queer, hermaphroditic or just cross-dressing. My aim is to create portraiture that deviates from the conventional male or female, and to explore the resulting pictorial and conceptual possibilities."
Link to Post:
http://elisabethcondon.blogspot.com/2012/08/susanna-coffey-studio-preview-alpha.html
Elisabeth Condon visits the studio of painter Susanna Coffey and blogs a photo preview of Coffey's paintings for an upcoming exhibition at Alpha Gallery in Boston.
Condon writes that Coffey's "paintings have changed radically, while retaining salient characteristics such as cropped portrait size, large scale seen close-to, subtle, but exciting color transitions and a 'knit-painting' mark that is a cross between a horizontal dab and flick of the brush. The paintings are on cradled panel, but the overall effect of the facture is a soft density, built layer upon layer to achieve a rich earthiness."
