Richard Smith: Kite Paintings
Simon Callery and Sam Cornish discuss Richard Smith: Kite Paintings on view at Gimpel Fils, London through January 12, 2013. Cornish begins: "despite how much [Smith's works] play with the physical conventions of painting, in terms of the stretcher etc., they remained something which to me was like an image… they read instantaneously, they read […]
Kathryn Myers: India Studies
Sharon Butler blogs excerpts from an interview with painter Kathryn Myers about her discovery of Indian visual traditions that have influence her series of observational paintings of Indian daily life. Myers recalls: "I went to India for the first time in 1999 on a sabbatical leave… I did not know much about India at all, […]
Bernard Chaet’s Far Horizon
Greg Cook reviews the recent exhibition Bernard Chaet: A Life in Art at Alpha Gallery, Boston. Cook writes that Chaet's "impasto buildup of paint recalls the cement-like clouds of Marsden Hartley’s raw, roughhewn late style, which he pioneered during summers at Gloucester in the 1930s. Chaet also seems to be channeling the vivid meaty textures […]
Jay DeFeo: Sacred & Profane
John Yau considers the work of painter Jay DeFeo. A retrospective of DeFeo's work is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) through February 3, 2012. The exhibition will be on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York from February 28 – June 2, 2013. Yau writes: "DeFeo […]
Dale McNeil: Studio Visit
Paul Behnke visits the studio of painter Dale McNeil. In an essay for an online show of McNeil's work at Curating Contemporary, Behnke writes: "McNeil begins a painting with a seminal symbol, so long in use that it has become embedded in the universal unconsciousness. These familiar symbols are explored like ruins, through the layering […]
Matisse: Process of Creation
Tyler Green talks to Rebecca Rabinow about Henri Matisse and his process of investigating a visual ideas on multiple canvases. Rabinow is one of the three curators of the exhibition Matisse: In Search of True Painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through March 17, 2013. In the web introduction for […]
Otto Dix: Hidden Murals
A report on an interesting group of six recently discovered murals by Otto Dix. The article notes that "Dix most likely made the artwork for a Karneval, or Mardi Gras, celebration on Feb. 19, 1966. In total there are six major pieces and painted door frames. The drawings include a monster, whose appendages each play […]
Arden Bendler Browning: Chaos & Harmony
Maegan Arthurs reviews an exhibition of paintings by Arden Bendler Browning at Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, on view through January 19, 2013. Arthurs writes: "Bendler Browning sees a romance in the varying states of maintenance and decay throughout the urban scene. Her paintings convey an impression of the blurred images we casually observe while walking, […]
Drawing Surrealism in Japan
Hollis Goodall blogs about the origins of surrealism in Japanese art, on the occasion of the exhibition Drawing Surrealism at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on view through January 6, 2013. Goodall writes: "How did surrealism catch on in Japan and become such a dominant force, eventually involving nearly three thousand artists? Like […]
Jon Pestoni at David Kordansky
Photo blog of installation photos from an exhibition of paintings by Jon Pestoni at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, on view through January 12, 2013. The gallery notes that "each work is comprised of a number of procedural ‘moves’, many of which are designed to partially cancel or obscure prior attempts to arrive at a […]
Ken Weathersby: Studio Visit
Martin Bromirski visits the studio of painter Ken Weathersby. Bromirski's photographs document Weathersby's process as described by Chris Ashley: "At a quick glance, his images are of a type one might expect to be manufactured, but instead we see that every single aspect of the work is handcrafted, from the elaborate stretchers and framing, to […]
Russell Tyler & Trudy Benson: Studio Visit
Huey Crowley photoblogs a visit the studios of painters Russell Tyler and Trudy Benson. Crowley writes that Tyler's work is "inspired by 8 bit Nintendo graphics backgrounds, cartoony colors, and sci-fi games… early computer graphics, and textiles from the 80s." "Next to Trudy’s painting," Crowley notes, "I got a glimpse into the secret process of […]
Painting in the Age of Digital Reproduction
Klaus Kertess weighs in on the much discussed exhibition Wade Guyton: OS at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on view through January 13, 2013. Kertess notes that "it was with a combination of trepidation and anticipation that I took my first journey to Wade Guyton’s survey exhibition at the Whitney Museum. When […]
Jay DeFeo: Chancing the Ridiculous
Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective San Francisco Museum of Modern Art November 3, 2012 – June 9, 2013 Whitney Museum of American Art February 28 – June 2, 2013 Jay DeFeo’s reputation as an imporatant painter was established before the eight year period (1958-1966) in which she poured her entire vision and energy into a single […]
The Dark, Shuttered House of Painting
John Yau reviews the exhibition Richard Walker: House Paintings at Alexandre Gallery, New York, on view through January 5, 2013. Yau writes: "There is something decidedly virtuosic and yet powerfully modest in Walker’s synthesis of control and seeming casualness. He has applied thick dabs, short strokes, thinly painted rectangles, and a tangle of calligraphic lines […]
Lothar Götz: The Line of Beauty
Sam Cornish interviews Lothar Götz on the occasion of the recent exhibition The Line of Beauty at Domobaal, London. Götz discusses the particular challenges of creating site specific paintings. Asked about how his painting What Makes Boys Dance? altered the environment Götz comments: "What was interesting when we started to paint everything pink, it become not a […]
Painting in Chelsea
Elisabeth Condon photoblogs current and recent exhibitions on view in Chelsea: Trenton Doyle Hancock: …And Then It All Came Back To Me at James Cohan Gallery (closed Dec 22), Keltie Ferris at Mitchell, Inness & Nash (through January 12), Barnaby Furnas: If Fishes Were Fishes at Marianne Boesky Gallery (through January 9), David Humphrey: New […]
Inventing American Modernism
Roberta Smith reviews the exhibition American Legends: Calder to O’Keeffe at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, on view through May 2013. Smith writes: "By chance 'Legends' coincides with the Museum of Modern Art’s sweeping survey 'Inventing Abstraction: 1910-1925,' which traces the development of a largely geometric form of abstraction, mostly by European and […]
Collin Hatton: Studio Visit
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Studio visit and interview with painter Collin Hatton. Hatton comments on his interest in the "interaction between the materiality and the image interacting and fusing together in some way. I think a big part of these paintings is treating them, treating the paintings as images as well as objects and how those objects react in […]
Matisse: Luminous Gravity
John Goodrich reviews the exhibition Matisse: In Search of True Painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through March 17, 2013. Goodrich writes: "As the 20th century’s greatest colorist, [Matisse] possessed an uncanny instinct for the energy of colors—for the way shifting hues illuminate a painting from within—but other qualities as […]