Steven Alexander photoblogs visits to two New York shows: Joan Mitchell: Trees at Cheim & Read (through August 29) and Robert De Niro, Sr.: Paintings and Drawings 1948-1989 at DC Moore (through July 31).
Alexander notes: "Both artists build paintings of exquisite beauty out of the rawest materiality of the medium and the language. Both retained throughout their lives an essential connection to the impulses and structures of observed reality."