Brooklyn Rail
Joanna Pousette-Dart: Centering
Brooklyn Rail
Lilly Wei reviews Joanna Pousette-Dart: Centering at Lisson Gallery, New York. Wei observes: “Schooled in a modernist aesthetic, Pousette-Dart soon veered away from non-objective formalism to a more personalized, independent aesthetic. Abstractions sourced in landscapes and painted on multi-paneled shaped canvases have been her calling card since the early 1990s. They are also marvelously quirky—no […]
Bosiljka Raditsa and Elizabeth Yamin
Brooklyn Rail
Jonathan Goodman reviews Accommodating the Object: Bosiljka Raditsa and Elizabeth Yamin at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York. Goodman writes that both artists, “in distinguished fashion, look to an organic abstraction that elaborates on the ab-ex style that immediately preceded them, at the same time pulling away from the past and working […]
Gustav Klimt Landscapes
Brooklyn Rail
David Carrier reviews Klimt Landscapes at the Neue Galerie, New York. Carrier points out the uniqueness of these pictures observing that “while Impressionism was shown in Klimt’s Vienna, he seemed to have worked in a parallel Austrian universe. His pointillism owes more to the sixth-century Christian mosaics at Ravenna than to Georges Seurat. … perhaps […]
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 […]
Charline von Heyl: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Raphael Rubinstein interviews painter Charline von Heyl whose exhibition Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes will be on view at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. from November 8, 2018 through January 27, 2019. Von Heyl remarks: “At the root of my painting is the line. As an outline, line defines a shape. In repetition, line creates […]
Peter Halley: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Tom McGlynn interviews painter Peter Halley on the occasion of a new installation of Halley’s work at Lever House entitled New York, New York. Halley remarks: “I just don’t think the power of abstraction is going away. Our whole cultural universe is built on abstraction, beginning with the abstraction that is money. But in the twentieth […]
Monet & American Abstract Painting
Brooklyn Rail
Norman L Kleeblatt reviews The Water Lilies: American Abstract Painting and the Last (Later) Monet recently on view at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Kleeblatt observes: “Monet’s late work, in particular his now exemplar Water Lilies, offered a new node on the modernist art historical road map that underwrote American Abstract Expressionism. With 20/20 hindsight, late Monet […]
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 […]
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 […]
Thomas Nozkowski @ Pace Gallery
Brooklyn Rail
William Corbett reviews an exhibition of paintings by Thomas Nozkowski at Pace Gallery, New York, on view through February 15, 2018. Corbett writes that Nozkowski’s paintings “have a cheerful and clear engagement with their world. They do not ask to be read or figured out. They belong to that strain of twentieth century American painting […]
Cecily Brown: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Jason Rosenfeld interviews painter Cecily Brown on the occasion of her recent exhibition A Day! Help! Help! Another Day! at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Brown observes: “It would be ironic if this horrible period in our history was producing really good art, for a change. I’m uncomfortable talking about something too specific to my […]
Holly Coulis: Table Studies
Brooklyn Rail
Jason Rosenfeld reviews Holly Coulis: Table Studies at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York, on view through October 22, 2017. Rosenfeld writes: “Coulis’s subjects are not erotic. They are not vanitas images. They are not naturalistic. Instead, they somehow propel you into an imaginative space of sign systems denoting some arcane language—Pale Table, Red Tumblers […]
Ad Reinhardt: Blue Paintings
Brooklyn Rail
Eleanor Ray reviews Ad Reinhardt: Blue Paintings at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through October 21, 2017. Ray writes: “Our idea of Reinhardt’s work, whether from reproductions or sporadic viewings, might tend to flatten it, and the in-person effect far exceeds that mental image. Having already been a fan of Reinhardt, I was […]
Against Space
Brooklyn Rail
James Hyde argues that space “isn’t a manifestation or aim of all painting, nor a timeless idea, but a historical Modernist convention.” Hyde writes: “Discussions about ‘painters’ use of space’ may serve as a way of speaking about the general ‘feel’ of a picture, its atmosphere, use of perspective or presentation of overlapping planes. These are all more […]
Guy Goodwin: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Phong Bui interviews painter Guy Goodwin whose exhibition Grotto Relief was recently on view at Brennan & Griffin, New York. Goodwin remarks: “The relationship I’ve developed with my color, which takes a day or two to dry, is the biggest step I’ve taken in my life as an artist. The miraculous thing is that when […]
Looking at Late de Chirico
Brooklyn Rail
Matvey Levenstein, Stephen Ellis, and Lisa Yuskavage discuss de Chirico’s oft maligned late work. Their comments were submitted as part of a panel (moderated by Giovanni Casini) associated with the exhibition Giorgio de Chirico – Giulio Paolini / Giulio Paolini – Giorgio de Chirico at the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), New York, on […]
Sandro Chia at Marc Straus
Brooklyn Rail
Jonathan Goodman reviews a recent exhibition of works by Sandro Chia at Marc Straus Gallery, New York. Goodman writes: “It is hard to read Chia’s inclination for forthright feeling in an environment like ours—dominated by the market and mostly biased against a recognizable awareness of art history. In contrast, in a painting such as Looking […]
Al Taylor: Early Paintings
Brooklyn Rail
Tom McGlynn reviews Al Taylor: Early Paintings at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through April 15, 2017. McGlynn writes: “What at first may underwhelm, in other words, can become an inexorable undertow that sets any preconceived notion of painting adrift in a sea of local allusion and wandering association…There is a token of […]
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 […]