Raymond Spillenger: A Painter’s Afterlife
Charles McGrath profiles the late New York School painter Raymond Spillenger. McGrath writes that "Spillenger, who died in November at the age of 89, was among the very last of the first- and second-generation Abstract Expressionists. There can’t be many others remaining, and few more obscure than Mr. Spillenger, who left scant traces… When Mr. […]
Erik den Breejen: Interview
Maria Calandra interviews painter Erik den Breejen on the occasion of his recent exhibition There's a Riot Goin' On at Freight + Volume, New York. Den Breejen comments: "I see the paintings as having three equal, interconnected parts: the words, the image, and the color. The color operates as its own language, but it's usually […]
Franklin Evans: paintingas-supermodel
James Kalm visits the exhibition Franklin Evans: paintingassupermodel at Ameringer McEnery Yohe, New York, on view through August 1, 2014. Kalm ntoes: "Franklin Evans has been receiving much critical attention for his blurring of painting, the studio and installation. Using the rubbish of his studio practice, particularly used masking tape and paint stained cloths, the […]
Mark Greenwold: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Mark Greenwold about his work and career. Greenwold remarks: "Painting need not just be about big yellow expanses of canvas. If Rothko wanted people to cry in front of his paintings, as if they were looking at Auschwitz or Buchenwald, he had to tell them. He is a great painter, but […]
Bridget Riley: Interview
Jackie Wullschlager interviews painter Bridget Riley on the occasion of the exhibition Bridget Riley The Stripe Paintings 1961-2014 at David Zwirner, London, on view from June 13 – July 25, 2014. Riley comments: “Increasingly I work at a technical distance. For me the work is not physical. It has to be made, of course. Facility […]
Matthew Ballou: What Is Painting?
In the first post of a new blog series titled "What is Painting?", Matthew Ballou considers what painting is to him. Ballou writes: "Painting, to me, is a love of attention. That is, as I pay attention to experiences and objects and ideas and light and space and hope, my painting becomes a kind of […]
Do It Yourself @ BOS
Julia Sinelnikova reports on as series of ten exhibitions at the 2014 Bushwick Open Studios collectively titled Do It Yourself and organized by painter Julie Torres. Sinelnikova writes: "Hailed as the larged curated exhibition of BOS, this was actually a collection of ten exhibitions of Bushwick artists, each curated by a visiting artist. Within each […]
Karen Schifano: Studio Visit
Paul Behnke photo blogs a studio visit with painter Karen Schifano. An exhibition of Schifano's paintings and works on paper, curated by Emily Berger, will be on view at Melville House Gallery, Brooklyn, through September 19, 2014. Behnke notes that "Schifano's minimal compositions, painted in a vivid palette, reveal sensitive, painterly touches when closely inspected. The […]
Sam Moyer: Interview
Alex Bacon interviews artist Sam Moyer on the occasion of her show More Weight at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, on view through June 22, 2014. Moyer comments: " 'Actually I’m not,' [a process-based artist] because when I make my work I’m not thinking about how I want everyone to visualize me in my overalls […]
Lucy Mitchell-Innes on Jay DeFeo
Lucy Mitchell-Innes discusses the exhibition of works by Jay DeFeo on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York through June 7, 2014. Mitchell-Innes comments that in the works on view in the show DeFeo employs "the photographic process and process of development to produce painterly techniques… to make it feel like a painting. And that was […]
Henri Michaux: Adventure of the Symbols
Joseph Nechvatal reviews the exhibition Henri Michaux: Adventure of the Symbols at Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès, Paris, on view through June 28, 2014. Nechvatal writes: "Michaux’s drawings from 1960 depict a sort of behind-the-scenes vibrating world, deep and dense enough that representation finds itself joined together in surreal suppositions. Non-logocentric works like these can perhaps direct us towards […]
African American Abstractionists
Hilarie M. Sheets writes about the "changing complex profile" of African American abstract painters on occasion of the recent exhibition Black in the Abstract, Part 2: Hard Edges / Soft Curves at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. The show featured works by Derrick Adams, McArthur Binion, Nathaniel Donnett, Sam Gilliam, David Hammons, Felrath Hines, Rashid […]
Luc Tuymans: Interview
Amy Bernstein interviews painter Luc Tuymans about his work on the occasion of the exhibition Luc Tuymans: Graphic Works – Kristalnacht to Technicolor at The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, Oregon, on view through June 13, 2014. Tuymans comments that early in his career he felt that abstract […]
Dushko Petrovich: Interview
Bean Gilsdorf interviews artist Dushko Petrovich about his work. Petrovich comments: "I’m certainly into tactile, visceral pleasure, I’m into color, into moving things around, all these things that happen while you paint. But I get irritated with the specialness of painting—it’s bizarre, overemphasized. There’s a Polish poet named Adam Zagajewski who wrote an essay called […]
Andrea Belag: Studio Visit
Sharon Butler visits the studio of painter Andrea Belag whose exhibition S, M, L: Recent Paintings will be on view at DCKT Contemporary, New York from June 6 – July 18, 2014. Butler writes: "Belag's process begins with color. When she was in Japan last year, she found a pocket-sized catalog of color combinations (above, […]
Paul Cézanne: Site/Non-Site
David Rhodes reviews the recent exhibition Cézanne Site/Non-site at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Rhodes writes that in the exhibition "two concepts coined by the New York artist Robert Smithson during the 1960s have been used to explore aspects of the landscape and still life paintings of Paul Cézanne. For Smithson 'site' was the outdoors and […]
Paintings at Bushwick Open Studios
Paul Behnke photoblogs a visit to BOS 2014 – Bushwick Open Studios including images from studio visits with Gary Giordano, Patricia Satterlee, Matthew Neil Gehring, and Jodie Manasevit. The post also includes images from Joyce Robbins: Paint and Clay at Theodore:Art (through June 22), Drunken Angels featuring work by: Farrell Brickhouse, Karen Schwartz, Purvis Young and […]
Maria Lassnig: Painterly Versatility
Viktor Witkowski reviews a retrospective exhibition of works by Maria Lassnig at MOMA PS1, New York, on view through September 1, 2014. Witkowski writes: "One of the traits of a great painter is her painterly versatility and Lassnig is no exception. From early monochromatic abstractions that are reminiscent of Ellsworth Kelly and Don Voisine, to […]
Robert Swain: The Form of Color
Sharon Mizota reviews the exhibition Robert Swain: The Form of Color at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, on view through August 23, 2014. Mizota writes: "Designed specifically for the space and light of the museum, the paintings are not so much individual works as a kind of sensory installation. Although the squares are discrete […]
Lennart Anderson: Road to Arcadia
Daniel Maidman profiles painter Lennart Anderson. Maidman notes that Anderson "applies paint to the canvas with a fully integrated understanding of the relationship between paint as a physical phenomenon, and paint as a medium which depicts. He paints with the intuition of experience, with verve and self-confidence. His brushstrokes are neither too little nor too […]