Link to Post:
http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/-Painterly-Pasted-Pictures--at-FreedmanArt-7100
Brendan Dooley reviews the exhibition Painterly Pasted Pictures at Freedman Art, New York, on view through May 18, 2013.
Dooley writes that the exhibtion "brings together a group of collages from the 20th century united by the stylistic trait of 'painterliness.' ... Though painterliness obviously has its roots in painting, this exhibition shows how easily and successfully the concept can be applied to other mediums; painterliness is, in a sense, materiality, which is why collage – the mixing of different materials and forms – seems to be one of the best mediums to demonstrate this visual effect."
Link to Post:
http://tamarzinn.blogspot.com/2013/03/painting-in-black-and-white.html
Tamar Zinn considers the limitations and potential of painting in black and white.
Zinn writes that "painting in black and white is not the same as thinking in black and white. By painting in black and white, the artist has pared down one part of image-making -- color choice, but rather than certainty we are offered a range of possibilities. Is the blackness something concrete or is it atmospheric? Does whiteness always connote a void? Can blackness and whiteness possess many of the same qualities? And of course, labeling colors simply as 'black' or 'white' is simplistic, as there are many variations of blackness and whiteness. Although the palette is limited to black and white, the experience of seeing is complex."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/iconophilia/
Mark Stone argues that the image and the being it communicates is missing in contemporary abstract painting.
Stone writes: "In the 21st Century the subject of our painting, especially abstraction, is not directed at the lives we live, or more specifically, at the world that we see and experience. Rather we abstract painters have been more concerned about eradicating visual confrontation with being/images. We are more comfortable with warped re-presentations of style. We prefer the documentation of our painting processes over the depiction of visual things. The rhetoric around this iconoclasm is just as predictable. It’s usually accomplished when the artist states that the process, even though it is the subject of the painting, is actually inconsequential, a byproduct. We no longer deny the accidental as Pollock famously did. We claim no control of the image, no framing of the processes. The Postmodern artist removes himself from processes altogether, claiming that the artist is not, should not be, involved in the making of images whatsoever. The painting, the document, becomes a found object. The recent retro-tinged conversations online over Wade Guyton’s use of a printer in making his handsomely banal abstract paintings is a perfect example of the intellectual emptiness of this current moment. The point is to remove the icon maker, and in doing that, to remove the icon. It’s almost as if one can only paint if one intends not to do so. Since the sanctification of Duchamp at the beginning of our Postmodern era, every painting emerging from our studios comes equipped with its own mustache."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/painting-and-performance/
On the occasion of the exhibitions A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance at Tate Modern (through April 1) and Explosion! The Legacy of Jackson Pollock at the Fundació Joan Miró (through Feb 24), Stephen Moonie considers the history of "painting and performance in relation to one another." He asserts that "it is evident that painting can no longer be taken for granted: instead it operates within an expanded field across and between media."
He concludes: "What is clear... is that performance and painting are closely intertwined, and that the relationship between the two works both ways: painting is not only a pathway into performance, but that many aspects of performance equally lead back into painting..."
Link to Post:
http://leftbankartblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/mannerism-at-morgan.html
Charles Kessler visits two exhibitions at the Morgan Library: Fantasy and Invention: Rosso Fiorentino and Sixteenth-Century Florentine Drawing (through February 3) and Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich (through January 6).
Of Rosso's Holy Family with the Young Saint John the Baptist (c. 1520), Kessler writes: "Rosso makes no attempt to create a plausibly real scene in a real space. What's being depicted is not ordinary human activity, and it's not an idealized scene either, but rather it's an almost hallucinogenic, spiritual ecstasy more akin to medieval mosaics in spirit than to the High Renaissance. This ecstatic emotion is conveyed by the glowing colors and the swirling, rhythmic brushwork. (The painting is unfinished so it's probably rougher and less polished than it would be if he had finished it — but still.) In the Rosso, St. Joseph and St. John are so emotionally overwrought they seem to be dissipating visually."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/between-sense-and-de-kooning/
Robert Linsley talks to Richard Shiff about Schiff's book Between Sense and de Kooning. The extensive conversation touches on many aspects of de Kooning and his career including his critical reception, his relationship to Cubism and Picasso, the slippage between abstraction and representation, the idea of finish, and painterliness.
Schiff remarks: "I think I argued explicitly—and in many places, implicitly—that de Kooning had no development in our usual art-historical sense of this term. He had continuity, not development. This is probably why it was so easy for him to shift direction (at least to us, it looks like a shift in direction, but since he had no direction, it wasn’t necessarily a shift for him). By shifting direction, I mean going from abstracted figuration to overt figuration, or returning to an old form to make a new painting, or even rummaging through historical imagery from the ancient world to the modern and from high art to commercial art and comic books to get his themes. He was serious when he said he was 'eclectic by chance.' This is a bit like 'deja vu all over again.' The title Between Sense and de Kooning refers to this lack of development, because 'sense' is logic, 'sense' is direction, and there’s something missing between this artist and the direction that we keep imputing to him because we want him to be more 'normal' than he was. Of course, 'sense' also refers to 'sensation.'"
Link to Post:
http://www.artnews.com/2012/11/12/de-kooning-paints-a-picture/
Thomas B. Hess' records the tortuous evolution of Willem de Kooning's seminal painting Woman I, 1950-52.
Hess writes: "The painting’s energetic and lucid surfaces, its resoundingly affirmative presence, give little indication of a vacillating, Hamlet-like history. Woman appears inevitable, like a myth that needed but a quick name to become universally applicable. But like any myth, its emergence was long, difficult and (to use one of the artist’s favorite adjectives) mysterious... It would be a false simile to compare the two years’ work that resulted in Woman to a progress or a development. Rather there was a voyage; not a mission or an errand, but one of those Romantic ventures which so attracted poets, from Byron, Baudelaire, through Lewis Carroll’s Snark, to Mallarmé and Rimbaud... The stages of the painting which are reproduced on these pages illustrate arbitrarily, even haphazardly, some of the stops en route—like cities that were visited, friends that were met. They are neither better nor worse, more or less 'finished,' than the terminus. They are memories which the camera has changed to tangible souvenirs. Some might appear more satisfactory than the ending, but this is irrelevant. The voyage, on the other hand, is relevant: the exploration for a constantly elusive vision; the solution to a problem that was continually being set in new ways. And the ending is like the poets’ ending, too; the voyage simply stops."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/55657/flying-blind-de-koonings-closed-eye-drawings/
Thomas Micchelli discusses the "blind" drawings of Willem de Kooning, now on view in the exhibition Eyes Closed/Eyes Open: Recent Acquisitions in Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, through January 7, 2012.
Micchelli writes: "De Kooning’s hand... feels out the image in two dimensions, creating space and volume that exists in its own enclosed precinct. I speculate that the sensation would not be far removed from the way he squeezed clay between his fingers to make his gangly, clotted sculptures, which were always one or two steps removed from being bas-reliefs. These drawings would be marvelous by any standard; that they were done blindly is astonishing. The sensitivity of touch, the rawness of the sexuality, the tactility of the forms, the wit and invention of the imagery, and the ethereal gradations of the charcoal line are masterful even by de Kooning’s very high bar."
Link to Post:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2012/07/the-modern-art-notes-podcast-barbara-kruger/
In the second segment of his weekly podcast, Tyler Green talks with curator Karen Wilkin about the exhibition American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, de Kooning and Their Circle, 1927–1942, on view at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas through August 19, 2012. (Note: the first segment is an interview with artist Barbara Kruger, Wilkin's interview begins 40:25 into the program)
Wilkin notes the importance of John Graham to the American painters: "Graham was always in the middle of it… He's the glue." She also comments on how each artist was important to the others' development: "That kind of cross-fertilization is what fascinates us… It's not just that they're looking at European modernism, that's how these artists are always discussed, in relation to what was going on in Paris. Of course they're paying attention to that, but they're also looking at each other's interpretations of European modernism and learning from each other."
Link to Post:
http://mnaves.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/american-vanguards-graham-davis-gorky-de-kooning-and-their-cirlce-1927-1942-at-the-neuberger-museum-of-art/
Mario Naves reviews the exhibition American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, de Kooning, and Their Circle, 1927–1942 at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, on view through April 29, 2012.
Naves writes that these four artists "were united by an unshakable sense of purpose. 'American Vanguards' is installed with an eye toward underscoring that bond. Discrete themes - the still-life, the city, abstraction (both pure and not), and what can only be termed Ingres-worship - are grouped together with a keen sense of rhythm and commonality. Continuity is the leitmotif, and it’s elaborated upon with understated and, at moments, thrilling nuance."
