Raoul Middleman: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Raoul Middleman about his life and work. Middleman remarks: "The form can become an extension of the content. I find in my own work that these things happen organically. Often, it is only after I have finished a painting, that I discover the formal elements, which add to the narration… As […]
Lari Pittman: Really, Really Big Paintings
Christopher Knight reviews the exhibition Lari Pittman: From a Late Western Impaerium at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, on view November 9 – December 21, 2013. Knight writes that "Pittman's inescapable polemic points straight to what this art is: painting… In a lecture Wednesday night to a full auditorium at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Pittman simply […]
Lydia Dona: Studio Visit
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Lydia Dona. Dona discusses at length how the elements in her paintings (color, materials, mark-making, and forms) develop from observations and sensations in her personal life, and also from reactions to significant global issues and events. She cites an interest in "the possiblity of being […]
Balthus: Impossible Realities
Tina Engels reviews the exhibition Balthus: Cats and Girls – Paintings and Provocations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through January 12, 2014. Engels writes: "Balthus employs a mode of thinking that is linked intrinsically, both to the pictorial structure within the works and a visual interior world that holds his […]
Vija Celmins: Interview
Tyler Green interviews painter Vija Celmins about her paintings and career. An exhibition of Celmins' work will be on view at The Art Museum Riga Bourse from April 11 – June 24, 2014. Celmins remarks that early in her career she "started going back to images, after making stroke-like paintings, deKooning-like paintings, and trying to […]
Leon Kossoff: Seeing Differences
In a new video painter Leon Kossoff discusses his work and approach to painting.
Heather Leigh McPherson: Studio Visit
Sharon Butler photoblogs a visit to the studio of painter Heather Leigh McPherson. Butler writes that "the brightly-colored, mask-like images in [McPherson's] new work speak to the disconnect between who we imagine we are, who we are, and who we want to be. Fascinated by the notion that unfixed personhood runs counter to the myth […]
Wendy White: Pick Up a Knock
Stephanie Cristello reviews the exhibition Wendy White: Pick Up a Knock at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, on view through November 9, 2013. Cristello writes that "the exhibition is made up of three parts – the paintings themselves, which are factual references, each with a quote, location, or site to one famous event in soccer history, […]
Iva Gueorguieva: Spill/Frame
Ezrha Jean Black reviews the recent exhibition Iva Gueorguieva: Spill/Frame at ACME, Los Angeles. Black writes that the show title, Spill/Frame "seemed almost a naked admission of its strategies and ambition with a concomitant risk of crashing, careening failure. In almost all of the works on view there was both a willful, self-imposed notion of […]
Painting Forever in Berlin
Viktor Witkowski reviews the multi-venue exhibition Painting Forever at the Berlinische Galerie, the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Neue Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen, Berlin, on view through November 10, 2013. Witkowski writes that the title Painting Forever "comes with a sense of humor and the realization that maybe any […]
Franklin Evans: Interview
Greg Lindquist interviews artist Franklin Evans about his work. Evans comments: "With my work, I am interested in the materiality of painting. I like those kinds of beautiful painting marks that can be stretched and reinterpreted by digital media. So I combine inkjet printing in front of the other painted things. The materialness of painting […]
Altoon Sultan: In Conversation
Jeff Hogue talks to painter Altoon Sultan about her work and career. Sultan comments: "Some artists are quite deliberate in their intention to express meaning in their work; I think of Malevich, for instance, in his Suprematist works. Sometimes such a quest is successful, but I believe it has less to do with intention than […]
Chris Martin: Interview
Ross Simonini interviews painter Chris Martin whose work is currently on view at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles through November 09, 2013. Martin comments: "I think the great masters are people like de Kooning, who consistently opened his formal vocabulary to include every kind of idea—it was a shoulder, or it was a breast, or a […]
Paul Klee at the Bauhaus
Nicholas Fox-Weber writes about Paul Klee's influence as a teacher at the Bauhaus, on the occasion of the exhibition Paul Klee: Making Visible at Tate Modern, on view through March 9, 2014. Fox-Weber cites impressions of Klee by a number of collectors and artists including Anni Albers who "considered [Klee] to be unparalleled in his […]
Christopher Wool @ the Guggenheim
Daniel Creahan reviews the exhibition Christopher Wool at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, on view through January 22, 2014. Creahan writes: "Moving from his bold textual works to sharp spray-painted canvases to his photographs, Wool’s perspective on the urban environment becomes more pronounced, and his willing engagement with its symbolism and semiotics is […]
Jules Olitski: On An Intimate Scale
Anne Russinof photo blogs a visit to the exhibition Jules Olitski On An Intimate Scale… and Friends at Freedman Art, New York, on view through January 31, 2014. The gallery notes that the works on view "present a retrospective overview of Olitski’s paintings through the artist’s distinctive periods: 'Core/Stain' paintings; 'Sprays'; 'Baroque'; 'High Baroque'; and the […]
Lester Johnson: Dark Paintings
John Yau reviews the exhibition Lester Johnson, Dark Paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through November 17, 2013. Yau writes: "Johnson doesn’t demean or pity his subjects and he doesn’t allow us to become sentimental about them. Additionally, he doesn’t let us become voyeurs or let us off the hook, […]
Simon Ling & Chris Ofili: In Conversation
Simon Ling and Chris Ofili discuss painting on the occasion of the exhibition Painting Now: Five Contemporary Artists at Tate Britain, on view from November 12 – February 9. 2014. The show features works by Tomma Abts, Gillian Carnegie, Simon Ling, Lucy McKenzie, and Catherine Story. Ling comments: “Painting is really good at getting you […]
René Magritte: Mystery of the Ordinary
Mario Naves reviews the exhibition Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on view through January 12, 2014. Naves writes: "An illustrator by trade, Magritte didn’t extend himself when putting brush to canvas. The requisite job and nothing more—technique wasn’t allowed to intrude on the artist’s dreamscapes. […]
Joan Waltemath: The Dinwoodies
A.V. Ryan reviews the recent exhibition Joan Waltemath: The Dinwoodies at Schema Projects in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Ryan writes that Waltemath's "drawings engage the architecture of the storefront gallery in such singular and delightful ways that the works might have been composed for the space like an occasional poem. Four of the pieces run floor-to-ceiling and […]