Thomas Trosch @ Fredericks & Freiser
Art in America
Eric Sutphin reviews the recent exhibition Thomas Trosch: Paintings: New And Old at Fredericks & Freiser, New York. Sutphin writes: “Trosch has mastered the art of suggestion: one gets a sense of the ages and affects of the figures through dashes and globs of paint. He accomplishes the difficult task of marrying subject matter and […]
Robert Motherwell: Early Paintings
artcritical
Megan Kincaid reviews Robert Motherwell: Early Paintings at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, on view through October 28, 2017. Kincaid writes: “… Kasmin tackles a body of work that has been overshadowed by Motherwell’s critically lauded early explorations into collage and automatic drawing. Despite the commercial appeal of paintings and their prominence in Motherwell’s later career, […]
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 … […]
Power Color: Peter Saul at Mary Boone
Peter Saul has met the enemy and it’s us, and imparts this discomfort beautifully.
Anoka Faruqee and Michelle Grabner
Bomb Magazine
Anoka Faruqee and Michelle Grabner discuss common ground in their work and their experience as art educators. Grabner remarks that “… indexing by way of crude stenciling has always been a way for me to achieve that sweet spot between abstraction and representation—to have something handmade without showing the hand.” Faruqee observers: “I find myself […]
Expressionism Revisited
Painting Perceptions
John Goodrich reviews Crossroads: Lynette Lombard, David Paulson, and Thaddeus Radell at Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, on view through October 8, 2017. Goodrich writes: “Lombard’s paintings are unpopulated by human figures, and also appear to be anchored in immediate observations – though these are heightened by twisting, vertiginous plunges of space. Despite such distortions, Lombard’s sure sense […]
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 […]
Rachel Rickert at E.TAY Gallery
artcritical
Roman Kalinovski reviews Rachel Rickert: The Ins and Outs at E.TAY Gallery, New York, on view through October 7, 2017. Kalinovski writes: “The strange pleasure that comes from visual frustration is a recurring theme in this exhibition. While Soft Boundaries and Verge present its two extremes with the curtain drawn and closed, respectively, and the […]
Alberto Giacometti and Alice Neel
The Nation
Barry Schwabsky investigates connections between the portrait paintings of Alberto Giacometti and those of Alice Neel. Schwabsky observes: “Although Neel and Giacometti both emerged from a left that was aligned with communism, neither one produced anything in a social-realist vein. It would also be wrong to see their insistence on portraiture as an acceptance of individualism. […]
Carolyn Case: The Mythic and The Mundane
Two Coats of Paint
William Eckhardt Kohler reviews Carolyn Case: Homemade Tatoo at Asya Geisberg, Chelsea, New York, on view through October 14, 2017. Kohler writes: “Case digs in with persistence, perseverance, and painterly inventiveness. Seeing this, one might think that paint and painting are the subject of these paintings, but that is only true in part. The paintings […]
Bernard Chaet: First Light
The New Criterion
Franklin Einspruch reviews Bernard Chaet: First Light at Alpha Gallery, Boston, on view through October 4, 2017. Einspruch writes that “[Chaet’s] landscapes are exuberant to the point of ferocity. Alpha Gallery in Boston is showing a suite of them produced during or inspired by plein-air sessions at dawn on the North Shore, towards and soon after the end […]
Aubrey Levinthal @ Nancy Margolis Gallery
Gorky's Granddaughter
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy interview painter Aubrey Levinthal at her exhibition at Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, on view through October 14, 2017. Levinthal remarks: “I like paintings … that when you look at first, it’s inviting, it feels good to look … but then there’s something to hold you into the painting … […]
Emily Berger: Rhythm and Light
Huffington Post Arts: D. Dominick Lombardi
D. Dominick Lombardi reviews Emily Berger: Rhythm and Light at Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, on view through October 25, 2017. Lombardi begins: “Emily Berger’s abstract paintings are the product of an intuitive process. Berger sees them as being about ‘thought and vision; they deal with light, space, movement, rhythm, color, speed and change, point […]
Brenda Goodman Cuts Deep
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Brenda Goodman: In a New Space continues at DAVID&SCHWEITZER Contemporary, Bushwick, Brooklyn through October 1, 2017. Yau writes: “Goodman renders the border between abstraction and representation meaningless. The internal sectioning of her forms invites us to categorize what we are looking at, even as they resist succumbing to that dominance. In the nearly […]
State of the Art in American Figurative Painting
D/Railed
Daniel Maidman observes the topic of contemporary figure painting through the work of three painters: Yedidya Hershberg, Eric Fischl, and Heather Morgan. Maidman begins: “The field [of figurative painting] is enormous and shows almost no conceptual or procedural unity. One’s only hope, in approaching the topic overall, is to build up a mosaic of specifics, […]
Leslie Wayne: Beyond Painterly
Two Coats of Paint
Sharon Butler and Jonathan Stevenson review Leslie Wayne: Free Experience at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, on view through October 21st, 2017. They write: “… in his lecture series at Harvard in the 1980s, Frank Stella came up with the notion of ‘working space’ – that is, activating the space in front of the canvas by building out from […]
Suzan Frecon: The Pleasures of Slow Paintings
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Suzan Frecon: recent oil paintings at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through October 21, 2017. Yau writes: “I think of Frecon’s shape as an abstract thing, a form that defies being turned into language or a message. I think her resistance to the tendency to easily convert her art into […]
Wayne Thiebaud: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Martin Gayford interviews painter Wayne Thiebaud on the occasion of Thiebaud’s recent exhibiton at White Cube, London. Thiebaud remarks: “‘I’d been working in food, washing dishes. That was my environment. I remember seeing pies laid out, processed food that I’d worked on, so I started painting these triangles and turning them into pies. I thought, […]
Jennifer Packer: Interview
artcritical
Lee Ann Norman interviews painter Jennifer Packer whose show Tenderheaded is on view at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago through November 5, 2017. Packer comments: “I’ve been interested for a long time in how I present or protect humans in the work. It’s not figures, not bodies, but humans I am painting. I want […]
Bridget Riley: Our Instinct Enhanced
Christchurch Art Gallery
Richard Schiff writes on the paintings of Bridget Riley on the occasion of Bridget Riley: Cosmos on view at the Christchurch Gallery, New Zealand through November 17, 2017. Schiff observes: “Riley grants that the ‘role of art’ changes. Yet this social and historical role is merely an aspect of the art that an artist creates. […]