Link to Post:
http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/george-bellows-1882-1925-modern-american-life
Ben Wiedel-Kaufmann reviews the exhibition George Bellows at the Royal Academy of Art, London, on view through June 2013.
Wiedel-Kaufmann writes: "where Hogarth, Goya or Dickens proved at least as critical of the hypocrisy of the higher classes as the depravity of the lower, as we move around the exhibition we realise that Bellows’ brush was not just adept at the fleshy distortions and brutalising carnality but equally capable of genteel delicacy. Be they roamers in central park or the members of his family - the middle class scenes are invariably portrayed with a soft focus and refined elegance that is altogether absent in the downtown scenes (Men of the Docks, 1912 providing a possible exception). All this gives weight to Marianne Doezema’s judgement that it was Bellows’ ability to "combine a 'revolutionary' style with an ingratiating message" that enabled him "to chart a delicate course between resistance and accommodation”, and rather undermines the attempts to claim him as a social realist."
Link to Post:
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/05/artseen/john-moore-portals
Robert Berlind reviews the recent exhibition John Moore: Portals at Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York.
In the painting Turnstile (2012), Berlind writes, "The interplay of decrepit and pristine, near and far, light and dark, amid two distinct orders of spatial structure could be an instant of a dream. The turnstile’s abandoned structure holds us in place before the romantic allure of the late afternoon. The corollary formality of Moore’s pictorial organization is social, in his address to the viewer, which is, you feel, respectful and confident of reciprocal attentiveness. It’s as though, in a generous spirit of sharing with the viewer, he is pointing out scenes of a private, personally nurtured preserve. No bravura flourishes interfere with his considered, workmanlike account of his chosen sites or the evidence of their poignant devolution."
Link to Post:
http://www.supremefiction.com/theidea/2013/05/gallery-chronicle-may-2013.html
James Panero reviews four painting shows in New York: Dana Gordon & John Mendelsohn: New Paintings at Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn (through May 12), Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets at Tibor de Nagy Gallery (through June 14), Fedele Spadafora: New Paintings at Slag Gallery, Brooklyn, and John Dubrow: Recent Work at Lori Bookstein Fine Art.
Link to Post:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/apr/27/leon-kossoff-love-affair-london
Charlotte Higgins visits with painter Leon Kossoff on the occasion of the exhibiton Leon Kossoff: London Landscapes at Annely Juda Fine Art, London, on view from May 8 - July 6, 2013. The show will be on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York from November 5 - December 21, 2013.
Higgins writes: "It seems that Kossoff has frequently been drawn to landscapes that suggest a state of transition: either because they are undergoing literal change, such as the St Paul's building site; or because they are, like tube stations or railway lines, the zone of humans on the move. Christ Church, Spitalfields, which he painted for years, its facade looming monumentally, and miraculously (in his paintings at least) failing to topple despite itself, is a rare example of something that might be regarded as a 'view' in the conventional sense."
Link to Post:
http://paintingperceptions.com/landscape-painting/interview-with-frank-hobbs
Larry Groff interviews painter Frank Hobbs about his work and career.
Asked about the excitement of plein air painting, Hobbs remarks: "On site, the first things that I respond to are space and light. I really am an abstract painter, I think; or a frustrated musician. Rhythm is more important to me than the particular inventory of things. I love to discover how things connect visually; to find the 'liasons' between things, to borrow Lennart Anderson’s term. A searching attitude is important because it allows for the emergence of something new, a transformation of the familiar fragmented reality into something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. A great painting is not just a picture, it’s really a model of how the universe is put together: one energy differentiated into all these seemingly disparate, yet dependent, parts. You see it in Morandi’s table top games, in Corot’s oil studies, and especially in Vuillard’s interiors from the 1890s. Could anything be more thrilling than to make a 14 x 18-inch model of the universe?"
Link to Post:
http://paintingperceptions.com/cityscape-painting/interview-with-john-dubrow
Xico Greenwald interviews painter John Dubrow. A solo show of Dubrow's recent work is currently on view at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York (through April 20) and a retrospective of his paintings, A Formal Realist: The Works of John Dubrow is on view at the Demuth Museum, Lancaster, PA (through May 19).
Asked about the process of making a painting, Dubrow comments: "I’m waiting to get attached. As I get new ideas, I rework my painting. At points along the way I become attached to certain moments, different figure moments in the painting, and those are the things I start building on. It’s just an improvisation and until something locks in and I start building off that one moment, everything is up for grabs. There is usually a moment that is not necessarily held on to but that I can start building from."
Link to Post:
http://ayearofpositivethinking.com/2013/04/12/what-does-a-man-see-when-he-looks-at-his-own-image/
Mira Schor writes about the exhibition Susanna Heller: Phantom Pain at Magnan Metz Gallery, New York, on view through April 20, 2013. Schor directs her attention specifically to a group of paintings Heller made of her husband while he recovered from a serious illness.
Schor writes that "[Heller] sat in the hospital making hundreds of drawings, of her husband lost in a forest of medical machinery, and of the vistas of the East River soaring outside the hospital window... these paintings of immensely difficult painful subject matter are painted with a vigorous simplicity that allows the viewer and the subject to simply be, 'lost in thought,' in the turbulent space she is always looking to embody, with all the horror and melancholy of a life transformed by sudden, dramatic, near fatal illness. The human figure and the very particular figure of her husband created a challenge to one of the core aspects of her approach in the studio—that of doubt that haunts every brush stroke, and something new to her work happens in these portraits that is different than the encounter with landscape..."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/68265/beer-with-a-painter-jane-dickson/
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Jane Dickson about her work.
Samet writes: "Jane Dickson is best known for her nocturnal cityscapes of the old Times Square — peep shows and porn parlors — but she has also mined subjects such as Las Vegas, Coney Island, American highways, demolition derbies, and suburban homes. She often paints on alternative supports like carpets, vinyl, sandpaper, and Astroturf. The pixelation of the image she achieves with these surfaces, and the implied feeling of distance, could be mistaken as a commentary on modern detachment. However, it is more reflective of Dickson’s attitude, a non-judgmental form of observation that creates space for projection and reflection."
Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/dominic-cretara_b_2951266.html
John Seed interviews painter Domenic Cretara, whose work is on view at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, CA through April 14, 2013.
Seed writes that Cretara is a "narrative painter who comes from the heart, Cretara's work fuses the personal with the theatrical, and channels emotions ranging from nostalgia to tenderness to indignation." Asked about his experience as a young painter traveling to Italy on a Fulbright, Cretara comments: "Confronting the work in person I felt that I was communicating directly with the artists, especially with Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo. There was no sense of childhood nostalgia at all. The formal, technical and content ideas were so interwoven, especially in their drawings, that all I could think of was, "I want to work with that level of complexity too." I analyzed, studied and asked the works questions unceasingly."
Link to Post:
http://culturecatch.com/art/susanna-heller
Bradley Rubenstein reviews the exhibition Susanna Heller: Phantom Pain at Magnan Metz Gallery, New York, on view through April 20, 2013.
Rubenstein writes: "Heller's painting presents a journey of sorts... Traveling in a painting is not linear, and one must be willing to take the time to travel. Painting also embodies this place: the seeming contradiction between the thick stuff of paint (in all its finite opacity as the record of a mark having been made) and the volatile space or movement being suggested. Just like nothingness, or empty space, which is actually filled with energy and vibrating with electromagnetic fields and particles dancing in and out of existence, so also our thoughts and sights are connected to sensations and events that may not be visible to the naked eye but are no less real and recordable."
