Exhibitions
James Brooks reconsidered
Two Coats of Paint
Laurie Fendrich reviews James Brooks: A Painting is a Real Thing, curated by Dr. Klaus Ottmann on view at The Parrish Art Museum from August 6–October 15, 2023. Fendrich writes: “On the rare occasions I’ve encountered Brooks’s paintings, I’ve paid them scant attention. Like many, I have walked on by, presumptively ranking him well below […]
Gwen John at Pallant House
London Review of Books
Alice Spawls reviews Gwen John: Art and Life in Paris and London at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. Spawls observes that: “The pictures themselves are not large or flamboyant, and some are almost austere. But they seem to vibrate. There are suggestions of movement in the cloth, in the stippling of paint (which sometimes looks like […]
Ed Clark: The Big Sweep
Brooklyn Rail
Charles Moore reviews Ed Clark: The Big Sweep, on view at Hauser & Wirth, New York from September 7– October 21, 2023. Moore notes that “the exhibition, titled The Big Sweep, —named for the artist’s revolutionary use of the push broom as paintbrush—examines how Clark worked at the frontiers of abstract expressionism, experimenting with materiality […]
Seen in New York, January 2019
Paul Corio reviews a selection of exhibitions, including shows of work by EJ Hauser, Jennifer J. Lee, Eleanor Ray, Jim Osman, Robert Otto Epstein, Josef Albers and others.
Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire
Studio International
Emily Spicer reviews Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire at the National Gallery, London, on view through October 7, 2018. Spicer writes that the show centers around Cole’s “The Course of Empire series, which charts the rise and fall of civilisation over five canvases – a cautionary tale of the dangers of imperial greed and corruption. These […]
Ellen Berkenblit: Interview
Sound & Vision Podcast
Brian Alfred talks to painter Ellen Berkenblit. Berkenblit comments: “If I let myself do what I naturally do physically, with a canvas, there are elements that are continuous. They’re like a diary, they keep morphing, they change. And they also become a springboard for paint and color mixing which is something that makes my heart […]
Marc Chagall & the People’s Art School
Hyperallergic
Wilson Tarbox reviews Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevich: The Russian Avant-garde in Vitebsk, 1918–1922, on view at the Centre Pompidou, Paris through July 16, 2018. The exhibition highlights the short lived People’s Art School, started in 1918 by Marc Chagall, and its demise that coincided with the “tension … between Chagall and his particular notion of revolutionary art — […]
Dona Nelson: In Conversation
Brooklyn Rail
Leeza Meksin interviews painter Dona Nelson whose exhibition Stand Alone Paintings is on view at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College through August 12, 2018. Nelson remarks: “I am interested when architecture does not dominate the experience of the paintings. Maybe one of the strategies of Pollock and Still making such big paintings was […]
Etel Adnan: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Gabriel Coxhead interviews artist and poet Etel Adnan whose work is on view at the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, through October 7, 2018. Adnan remarks: “If I were just a painter, maybe my work would have been different, more encompassing. But my writing is rather pessimistic, because of the angle of history I got involved with, being […]
Eugène Delacroix @ The Louvre
Studio International
Joe Lloyd reviews Eugène Delacroix at The Louvre on view through July 23, 2018. Lloyd observes that “the importance Delacroix placed on colour as a vehicle for meaning runs through the Fauvists, Matisse and Picasso and abstract expressionism, right through to much present-day art. To this is joined Delacroix’s painterliness. Even the most harmoniously composed […]
Al Held in Paris: 1952-53
Brooklyn Rail
Tom McGlynn reviews Al Held in Paris: 1952-53 at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, on view through June 15, 2018. McGlynn begins: “Al Held moved to Paris in the early 1950s where he was part of a loose-knit expatriate community of American painters that included Joan Mitchell and Sam Francis. Mitchell, Francis and Held all […]
John Elderfield on Cézanne’s Portraits
Brooklyn Rail
Phong Bui interviews John Elderfield, curator of Cézanne Portraits on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through July 8, 2018. Elderfield comments: “Cézanne records a face without interpreting. Of course, we will find ourselves interpreting. We do so when we look at the face of someone one on the subway. But […]
Tomma Abts @ the Serpentine Gallery
The Guardian
Adrian Searle reviews works by Tomma Abts at the Serpentine Gallery, London, on view through September 9, 2018. Searle writes: “Someone once said Abts’ work reminded them of wallpaper designs from East Germany. The paintings flirt with a kind of datedness. They do not quite belong to their moment. They are hard to place. This is […]
Susanna Coffey: Interview
The Studio Visit
John Mitchell interviews painter Susanna Coffey whose exhibition Crimes of the Gods is on view at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, through June 30, 2018. Coffey recalls: “I began to paint self-portraits from observation in order to be a better teacher. To learn about, not a subject, but rather a process of making, […]
Len Bellinger & Jamison Brosseau
James Kalm Rough Cut
James Kalm visits Len Bellinger: Painting Notes 1993-2018 at David & Schweitzer Contemporary and Jamison Brosseau: Skittles at SARDINE. Both shows are on view through June 3, 2018. In the video Kalm provides a close look at both Bellinger and Brosseau’s works and talks to Bellinger about his paintings and career.
Paul Resika, Geometry and the Sea
artcritical
David Carrier reviews reviews Paul Resika: Geometry and the Sea at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through May 20) and Bookstein Projects (through May 26). Carrier writes: ” … as if working in a highly personal way through a Gombrichian history of figuration, [Resika] juxtaposes backgrounds of clear skies, with yellow suns, with jagged pyramids in the […]
Devastatingly Human
New York Review of Books
Jenny Uglow reviews All Too Human: Bacon, Freud, and a Century of Painting Life at the Tate Britain through August 27, 2018. Uglow begins: “The gripping and dramatic show … merits its title: it is ‘all too human’ in the tender, painful works that form its core. But ‘a century of painting life’ promises something wider—does it smack […]
Elisa Jensen @ David & Schweitzer Contemporary
Whitehot Magazine
Jonathan Goodman reviews Elisa Jensen: 100 Boats and the Fair Wheel, recently on view at David & Schweitzer Contemporary, New York. Goodman writes: “[Jensen’s] offering, which argues for a bronze-age reading of Brooklyn contemporary art, consists of a wall installation of diminutive golden boats, a group of small paintings, a few larger paintings, and a bench […]
Inka Essenhigh @ Miles McEnery Gallery
Hyperallergic
Peter Malone reviews paintings by Inka Essenhigh at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, on view through May 25, 2018. Malone concludes: “What separates Essenhigh … is her willingness to embrace the implications of her narratives and to share her dramatic intuitions openly with the viewer, without abandoning the improvisational spontaneity of her drawing and painting. […]
Ewelina Bochenska @ The Fortnight Institute
Art in America
Elizabeth Buhe reviews Ewelina Bochenska: A Hole Was Placed in the Sky and Sealed with Water recently on view at The Fortnight Institute. Buhe writes that the show “featured nearly thirty jewellike oil paintings—most around eight by ten inches, though two could fit in the palm of your hand—that seemed to transform Fortnight Institute into a site […]