Artist Writings
On Raoul Dufy
In thinking about the work of his favourite painters Sargy Mann realised that Raoul Dufy was the most extreme example of the separation of line and colour.
Shared Experience
An essay on how perception can facilitate shared experience, the second in an occasional series featuring important but under-known writings by the painter Sargy Mann (1937- 2015).
Jack Tworkov on Chaim Soutine
ARTnews
Blog post revisiting Jack Tworkov’s 1950 essay “The Wandering Soutine.” Chaim Soutine: Flesh is on view at the Jewish Museum, New York through September 16, 2018. Tworkov writes: “Soutine derives an immediate advantage by painting from life; because his motive is settled in advance, he does not have to tease it out in the process of painting. […]
Altoon Sultan on Piero di Cosimo
Painters on Paintings
Altoon Sultan reflects on Piero di Cosimo’s A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph (c. 1495), seen on a recent trip to the National Gallery, London. Sultan writes: “There I was, standing in front of this beautiful, tender, poignant painting, unable to stop weeping. It may be that my feelings were very close to the surface from […]
John Goodrich on Henri Matisse
Painters on Paintings
John Goodrich considers Henri Matisse’s Laurette in Green Robe (Black Background) in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Goodrich observes: “We … may become aware of something particularly lively about this semblance of a woman in a chair: the sense of her weight, and how her forms expand rhythmically across the chair, which […]
‘Let it be felt that the painter was there…’
An essay on Bonnard’s drawings, the first in an occasional series featuring important but under-known writings by the painter Sargy Mann (1937- 2015).
Erika Ranee: Ideas and Influences
Two Coats of Paint
Erika Ranee shares a wide variety of material that inspires her abstract paintings.
Leland Bell on André Derain
ARTnews
Blog post re-publishing Leland Bell’s seminal 1960 artice The Case for Derain as An Immortal. Bell writes: “The wholeness of [Derain’s] art is a response to the wholeness of nature. His art does not separate life into compartments: instinct here, intellect there. He didn’t paint with half of himself… Derain senses the virtue of … […]
Philip Pearlstein on Piero della Francesca
Painters on Paintings
Philip Pearlstein reflects on his transformation from an abstract expressionist to a figurative painter, a change owed in part to the study of Piero della Francesca. Pearlstein recalls that Piero’s work “seemed to me to provide a kind of grammar of pictorial invention, parallel to the grammatical constructions of language that adventurous poets play with; […]
Alan Gouk on Key Modernist Paintings
AbCrit
Alan Gouk presents his thoughts on great modernist paintings by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard, Gauguin, Monet, and Braque. Gouk remarks: “What painting is about is claiming the surface – making it real to you, palpable, physically present, and tangible almost. At its best it is the expression of one’s involuntary response to surface, but without resorting […]
David Reed on Caravaggio
Painters on Paintings
David Reed considers rarely seen details in several paintings by Caravaggio and how these details alter and intensify the potential meanings of the works. Reed writes; “Did Caravaggio realize that the self-portrait reflection in the “Bacchus” and the praying figure in “The Works” would not be visible under the standard circumstances in which the paintings […]
Making Work for LS Lowry
The Guardian
Reprinted from May 12,1960, photographer Robert Smithies recounts commissioning a painting from LS Lowry. Smithies recalls: “The steps rose from ruins of a demolished terrace. A lamp-post, bent with age, pointed from the bottom to the surmounting stock brick façade of yet another chapel – the Primitives… ‘Now I really must paint that! What do […]
James McGarrell on Jan Vermeer
Painters on Paintings
James McGarrell reflects on Jan Vermeer’s The Artist in His Studio (1665-1670). McGarrell writes: “I find in all of his works, and in this piece specifically, a sequentially paced structure that directs a journey for the probing eye. Its entry is inevitably from the bottom edge because it is from there that, as crawling infants, […]
Thomas Berding @ The Painting Center
Artdeal Magazine
Addison Parks considers the paintings of Thomas Berding whose exhibition Paintings from the Surplus Mound is on view at The Painting Center, New York through April 22, 2017. Parks observes: “Glorious color goes hand in hand with his loosely defined and multi-layered shapes and structures. It is at the heart of this process of making […]
John Moore on Pierre Roy
Painters on Paintings
John Moore reflects on Pierre Roy’s Metric System (1933) in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Moore writes: “While objects like the transit in Roy’s work were undoubtedly found in his studio, the context, like the room in Metric System, was likely invented and existed only in his paintings. He apparently began by […]
David Reed: Over the Edge
The Art Section
Deanna Sirlin writes about the work of David Reed on the occasion of Painting Paintings (David Reed)1975 on view from April 1- May 21, 2017 at 356 S. Mission Rd, Los Angeles, California (and recently on view at Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and Gagosian Gallery, New York). Sirlin observes: “In each decade of his life […]
On Georgia O’Keeffe, In and Out of Sight
Brooklyn Rail
Gaby Collins-Fernandez considers the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. Collins-Fernandez concludes “The openness with which O’Keeffe considers observation allows a viewer to track formal similarities between the works. It’s just that what she was looking at was not so limited—her dreams and thoughts, photographs, landscapes, art she’d seen, edges, shadows, shapes. This variety, and the ease […]
Barkley Hendricks on Louis Sloan
Painters on Paintings
Barkley Hendricks writes about painter Louis Sloan. Hendricks notes: “Louis Sloan was an under-recognized painter who happened to be a ‘Black Artist’ who didn’t do ‘black art.’ His main focus was the beauty of the planet; landscapes were an example of his raison d’etre … His influence followed me into my studio many years after his […]
Lorraine Shemesh & the Impossibility of the Romantic
Painting: Martin Mugar
Martin Mugar considers the paintings of Lorraine Shemesh. Mugar writes: “Whereas [Shemesh’s] earlier painting retained the notion of an observation of swimmers in a recognizable setting, the latest work puts the observer in with the observed. She does not rely on a romantic search for connections between herself and the environment that allows [Edwin] Dickinson […]
Josef Albers: Color is a Whole World
The Art Section
Painter José Heerkens reflects on color and the work of Josef Albers. “Even knowing that visual language is a totally different language than the language of words, each acting on its own level, color is still a very difficult subject to describe. Any form can be described, but trying to catch color in words is impossible… The […]