Edvard Munch: More Than The Scream
Ryan Wong reviews the exhibition Munch 150 at the Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, Norway, on view through October 13, 2013. Wong writes: "When Munch died, he left his works — some 1,000 paintings, and thousands more prints and watercolors, to the municipality of Oslo. It was an act of national pride, and one that made this celebration […]
Unpublished Diebenkorn
Liz Hager highlights two new books: Richard Diebenkorn: Abstractions on Paper and Richard Diebenkorn: From the Model published by Kelly’s Cove Press. Both volumes were published on the occasion of the upcoming exhibition The Intimate Diebenkorn: Works on Paper, 1949-1992 at the College of Marin Fine Arts Gallery, on view from September 30 – November […]
New Harmony: Abstraction Between the Wars
E. Baker reviews the exhibition New Harmony: Abstraction between the Wars, 1919–1939 at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, on view through September 8, 2013. Baker writes: "Drawing a connection between the redrawing of political borders and the subsequent exchange of ideas among previously alienated artists, the exhibition theorizes that the surge of creativity in the […]
Polychrome Fiction
Alice Thorson reviews the exhibition Joanne Greenbaum & Jackie Saccoccio: Polychrome Fiction at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas, on view through September 8, 2013. Thorson writes: "There is barely a straight line to be found in either artist’s work: amorphous shapes bleed and overlap, soft webs prevail over grids, cascades […]
Florine Stettheimer at DIA
16 Miles of String
One of a group of bloggers posting in support of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection, Andrew Russeth writes about Florine Stettheimer's Love Flight of a Pink Candy Heart (1930). Russeth comments: "the more time you spend with [Stettheimer's paintings], the stranger and more interesting they get. You notice odd messages and codes that she had […]
Anne Smart: Studio Visit
Painter Anne Smart discusses her work during a group studio visit with Anthony Smart, Mark Skilton, Hilde Skilton, Robin Greenwood, Sarah Greenwood, John Bunker, Emyr Williams, Simon Orman, Kim Earley, Joette Hayashigaw, Alexandra Harley, and John Pluthero. Discussing her painting process, Smart comments: "there is lots of movement of paint and building of the organisation; […]
Glenn Goldberg: Studio Visit
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Glenn Goldberg whose exhibition Other Places is on view at Jason McCoy Gallery, New York through August 16, 2013. Discussing his work Goldberg notes: "I'm looking for a quiet, somewhat mysterious action in my work… philosophically I'm interested in the union of clarity and imprecision… […]
Peter Brotzmann & Hedwig Eberle
Bert Stabler reviews Peter Brotzmann: Left/Right and Hedwig Eberle: Like It Is: Paris Portraits at Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, on view through August 17, 2013. Stabler writes: "Peter Brotzmann’s box-based assemblages use odd metal items and wooden shapes, screen and wire, foam and paint, tape and string. They incompletely suggest miniature landscapes or faces, Cornell-ish […]
Marisa Merz: Interview
Hans Ulrich Obrist visits the home and studio of Marisa Merz. The resulting interviews reads like a play set in various rooms of the house. Moving from dining room to studio to passageway, Merz and Obrist discuss Merz's paintings and sculptures. Merz also hints at some of her influences both in visual art (medieval painting) […]
Why the Impressionists Still Matter
Jed Perl reviews the exhibition Impressionists on the Water at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, on view through October 13, 2013. Perl writes: "These nineteenth-century artists brought an almost scientific attention to the study of nature. And what they found was that the closer they looked at the world, the stranger the […]
Sam Francis: Five Decades
William Poundstone blogs about the exhibition Sam Francis: Five Decades of Abstract Expressionism from California Collections at the Pasdena Museum of California Art, on view through January 5, 2014. Poundstone writes: "Curated by Peter Selz and Debra Burchett-Lere, [the show] begins with the figurative watercolors Francis did as therapy from an army hospital bed in his […]
Catherine Murphy: Two Subjects – Forty Years
John Yau blogs about the work of Catherine Murphy on the occasion of the exhibition Catherine Murphy: Two Subjects – Forty Years, curated by Portia Munson, at the BYRDCLIFFE Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, Woodstock, New York, on view through August 11, 2013. Yau writes that Murphy "is uncompromising in ways that I admire, which […]
Peter Doig: No Foreign Lands
Jackie Wullschlager reviews Peter Doig: No Foreign Lands at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, on view through November 3, 2013. Wullschlager writes that since Doig moved from London to Trinidad, "the tropical landscape transformed his palette, introducing yet more gorgeous hues and chromatic harmonies… and spurred him on to fresh motifs: jungles instead of forests, […]
Abstraction’s Possible Histories
Rachael M. Wilson considers the exhibition Reinventing Abstraction at Cheim & Read, New York (through August 30) in the context of curator Raphael Rubinstein's previous curatorial efforts and influential articles on "provisional painting." Wilson writes that the current exhibition "is compelling, and that the pieces have been selected with a sense of the visually rhythmic—by which […]
Improvisation in Abstraction
Robert Linsley explores the idea of improvisation in relation to abstract painting. Linsley writes: "Improvisation does not mean pulling art out of thin air. It is a congerie of techniques that enable the possibility that the new will appear, the foremost of which is repetition—at least that’s what we can learn from Jazz. The Jazz […]
Tim McFarlane: Interview
Phillip J. Mellen interviews painter Tim McFarlane about his work and process. Speaking about his process, McFarlane comments: "My tendency is to work in layers, and a lot of times I'll go through several paintings on one piece. These days if I find something that I like… I know I did it, but it's go […]
Visiting Forrest Bess
Robert Boyd researches journalist Sigman Byrd's first hand account of a studio visit with Forrest Bess, originally published in the March 11, 1956 edition of the Houston Chronicle. Boyd writes: "Byrd is one of the very few writers who actually went out and visited Bess in his shack on East Matagorda Bay and wrote about […]
Edward Hopper: Drawing Process
Hyperallergic
Alex Heimbach reviews the exhibition Edward Hopper: Drawing at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, on view through October 6, 2013. Citing a suite of preparatory drawings displayed with the painting Rooms for Tourists (1945), Heimbach writes that “curator Carter E. Foster has cleverly arranged the space to showcase how Hopper drafted his final […]
Dominic Beattie: Interview
Interview with painter Dominic Beattie about his work and process. Beattie comments: "I get to the studio early and begin by looking at works made at my last visit, I start trying to make them better, maybe cutting them up and re-gluing them back together in an alternative configuration, or just spray painting over the […]
Jo Baer: In the Land of the Giants
James Cahill reviews the exhibition Jo Baer: In the Land of the Giants at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, on view through September 1, 2013. Cahill writes: "Indeed, the exhibition reminds us that wandering, whether between continents or representational modes, has been a defining aspect of Baer’s life. Over a career spanning seven decades, Baer has […]