Exhibitions
Matisse: The Joy of Things
New York Review of Books
Claire Messud reviews Matisse in the Studio at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on view through July 9, 2017. Messud writes: “this glorious exhibition impresses the viewer also with simpler, more atavistic and abiding truths: Matisse’s passion for color, for light, for pattern, for flowers and the female figure; and his conviction—borne out in […]
Mike Solomon @ Berry Campbell Gallery
Hamptons Art Hub
Peter Malone reviews Mike Solomon: Immediate Splendor at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, on view through July 8, 2017. Malone begins: “Mike Solomon’s pictorial space appears familiarly limited in the traditional modernist sense, but is dominated by a persistent blur. Viewers are left with the odd feeling of being kept just outside of an event […]
Philip Guston: A Painter and His Muses
The Art Section
Deanna Sirlin reviews Philip Guston and The Poets at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, on view through September 3, 2017. Sirlin concludes: “[Eugenio] Montale writes of his own poetry, ‘The subject matter of my poetry . . . is the human condition considered in itself.’ Whether one is looking at the earliest period of Guston’s pictorial works, […]
Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave
Evening Standard
Matthew Collings reviews Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave at the British Museum, on view through August 13, 2017. Collings concludes: “Hokusai believed every year of working improved his ability and he would have to get to 100 before he really hit the peak. At 75 he wrote modestly and with comic particularity that it was […]
Markus Lüpertz @ Michael Werner
James Kalm Report
James Kalm visits Markus Lüpertz: New Paintings at Michael Werner Gallery, New York, on view through July 7, 2016. Kalm notes that this exhibition “presents over two dozen paintings from the past two years featuring the painter’s engagement with the Neo-Classic tradition. With a glancing nod to artists such as Nicolas Poussin, Pierre Puvis de […]
Janice Nowinski @ John Davis Gallery
Hyperallergic
John Goodrich reviews Janice Nowinski: Paintings at John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York, on view through June 18, 2017. Goodrich writes: “In her third show at John Davis Gallery, Nowinski continues to combine a distinctly ‘low,’ unpolished approach with high ambitions for painting. The artist’s fairly conventional motifs — figures posed in landscapes and interiors […]
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Imaginary Portraits
The New Yorker
Zadie Smith profiles painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose exhibition Under-Song For A Cipher is on view at the New Museum, New York through September 3, 2017. Smith writes: “Yiadom-Boakye’s people push themselves forward, into the imagination—as literary characters do—surely, in part, because these are not really portraits. They have no models, no sitters. They are character […]
Thaddeus Radell: Essays in the Epic
Painting Perceptions
John Goodrich reviews Thaddeus Radell: Hard Rain at John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York, on view through June 18, 2017. Goodrich writes: “Throughout these paintings, the candid attempts and re-attempts to define each subject become, in effect, stories of their own: encapsulated histories of a transcendental quest. Radell’s work, in short, revels in the epic […]
Merrill Wagner: Works from the 70’s
Hyperallergic
Thomas Micchelli reviews Merrill Wagner: Works from the 70’s at Zürcher Gallery, New York, on view through June 24, 2017. Micchelli writes: “Merrill Wagner’s remarkable tape paintings are as much head games as they are inquiries into precision and chance. Trying to puzzle them out is akin to reverse-engineering a ship in a bottle: even […]
Lee Lozano: c 1962 @ Hauser & Wirth, London
Studio International
Joe Lloyd reviews Lee Lozano: c 1962 at Hauser & Wirth, London, on view through July 29, 2017. Lloyd writes: “Each piece is untitled and diminutive in size. In shape, they range from squares to frieze-like panels… By forcing one to scrutinise closely, the form draws one into Lozano’s domain while distancing it from the […]
Helene Schjerfbeck & Her Contemporaries
Too Much Art
Mario Naves reviews Independent Visions: Helene Schjerfbeck and Her Contemporaries at Scandinavia House, New York, on view through October 3, 2017. Naves writes: “… an uncompromising, if at times highly affected, talent. At her best, Schjerfbeck holds vulnerability and measure in wiry equilibrium… The innovations of early Modernism liberated these painters [Schjerfbeck, Sigrid Schauman, Ellen […]
Markus Lüpertz: Interview
Artnet News
Henri Neuendorf interviews painter Markus Lüpertz, whose work is on view at Michael Werner Gallery, New York through July 7, 2017. Two concurrent retrospectives of Lüpertz’s work are on view in Washington D.C.: Markus Lüpertz: Threads of History at the Hirshhorn Museum (through September 10) and Markus Lüpertz at the Phillips Collection (through September 3). […]
Anne Harvey @ Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Anne Harvey: Private Life at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through June 11, 2017. Yau writes: “Harvey’s observational paintings were described by John Ashbery, in 1966, as ‘the probing anguish of an almost Jamesian dissecting eye.’ Ashbery went on to state: “A curious anxiety, tempered by the exhilaration […]
Abstracts @ Poem 88
ArtsATL
Rebecca Brantley reviews ABSTRACTS at Poem 88, Atlanta, on view through June 10, 2017. The show features works by Brendan Carroll, Ben Steele and Zuzka Vaclavik. “Each artist,” Brantley writes, “engages 20th-century traditions, albeit in markedly different ways.”
John Zurier @ Anglim Gilbert
Squarecylinder
David M. Roth reviews John Zurier: Dust and Troubled Air at Anglim Gilbert, San Francisco, on view through June 10, 2017. Roth writes: “This sensation of looking at dense fields and then being drawn into irregularly shaped pools of light is unexpected, shocking even, because nothing in the quick-read indicates that possibility. I was also […]
Ridley Howard @ Marinaro Gallery
Arte Fuse
Kate Menard reviews Ridley Howard: Travel Pictures at Marinaro Gallery, New York, on view through June 18, 2017. Menard writes: “While loosely connected to specific locations, the figures in Howard’s Travel Pictures do not interact with their surroundings but seem isolated and caught up in their own private narratives. His meticulous attention to color and […]
Matisse in the Studio
ARTnews
Phyllis Tuchman reviews Matisse in the Studio at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on view through July 9, 2017. Tuchman writes: “Though he closely observed his subjects, [Matisse] generally rendered them with a twist depending on his interests of the moment. Has any other show in recent times made us so acutely aware of […]
Ginny Casey in Philadelphia
Two Coats of Paint
Becky Huff Hunter writes about the paintings of Ginny Casey, on view in the exhibition Ginny Casey & Jessi Reaves at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, through August 6, 2017. Hunter writes: “This impossible composition [of Moody Blue Studio, 2017], as well as those of the other ten paintings, is reminiscent of art school still […]
John Graham: Maverick Modernist
Hamptons Art Hub
James Croak reviews John Graham: Maverick Modernist at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, on view through July 30, 2017. Croak writes: “Early Modernism in painting, loosely defined as artwork seeking an essentialism constructed between the late 19th century up until WWII, was an intellectual adventure of the first order, having its manifestation in […]
David Novros @ Paula Cooper
artcritical
David Rhodes reviews works by David Novros at Paula Cooper Gallery (through June 30). Rhodes writes: “Untitled (1975), and Untitled (Frog Altar) (1975) use right angles as pivotal compositional elements… Both the viewer and the painting are animated, provoking an experience like that of passing through a chapel or a cave, rather than analytically viewing […]