Cézanne & Chardin’s Visor
John Elderfield considers the true meaning of Cézanne's interest in the painting Self Portrait or Portrait of Chardin Wearing an Eyeshade, 1775 by Jean-Siméon Chardin. Elderfield writes: "we cannot dismiss the possibility that the unclear sentence in Cézanne’s unquestionably authentic letter on Chardin’s self-portrait is not, in fact, about a physical attribute of the pastel: […]
Catherine Goodman: Worlds Within
Karen Wright visits the studio of painter Catherine Goodman on the occasion of the exhibition Catherine Goodman: Worlds Within at Marlborough Fine Art, London, on view from September 12 – October 6, 2012. The press release notes that the paintings "are the result of twenty-five years of working in the Indian Himalayas and are a […]
Svenja Deininger
Photo blog of an exhibition of paintings by Svenja Deininger at Kunsthalle Krems, Vienna, on view through September 30, 2012. The gallery notes that: "The fact that [Deininger] does not work according to what is seen but rather examines the conditions of vision itself can also be sensed in the central significance of the color […]
Painting How You Feel, Not How You Should
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford writes about a selection of painters whose instincts are leading them to make work beyond the limits of "the plane." Rutherford writes: "Professional skateboarders have a saying, 'skate how you feel, not how you should,' and the most experimental and engaging artists have always operated just like that – working how they feel, […]
Peter Geerts: Interview
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Peter Geerts about his work and process. Geerts comments: "The elements of which I want to a painting to be built of, I always have in mind when I start, but I also allow myself the attitude to arrange and play with them in the process of the work. Often comes […]
Printmaking with Ellsworth Kelly
Jeff Jahn interviews Mark and Rae Mahaffey about printmaking with painter Ellsworth Kelly on the occasion of the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly/Prints at the Portland Art Museum through September 16, 2012. Jahn notes that Kelly's "forms are sourced from real life, first carefully observed, then captured in photos and lastly distilled until nothing but the form […]
Jessica Snow: Interview
Klea McKenna and Nikki Grattan visit the studio of painter Jessica Snow. Grattan writes: "Jessica doesn’t want the labor to come through in her paintings; she often begins with multiple sketches to work out the formal qualities she’s after before starting a painting. Aesthetically she wants the brushstrokes to disappear and the layers upon layers […]
On Michael Goldberg’s Sardines
Eye Level
Howard Kaplan blogs about Michael Goldberg’s painting Sardines (1955), the inspiration for Frank O’Hara’s poem Why I Am Not a Painter, which documents the painting’s progress. Kaplan writes: “O’Hara was a very generous friend. He was particularly giving to his painter friends, including Goldberg, in looking at their work and responding to it. Joe LeSueur in […]
Simon Dinnerstein: Luck of the Paint
Kaitlin Pomerantz visits the Brooklyn studio of artist Simon Dinnerstein. Pomerantz writes: "As he lead me through the marks and methods of the Triptych that day, Dinnerstein spoke with a peculiar detachment, as if the work was so great, so interwoven and dense, that it existed entirely on its own, beyond him. This first encounter […]
Ed Moses: Romance of Painting
Alanna Martinez interviews painter Ed Moses about his work and process and his continuing belief in the "romance of painting." Moses remarks: "Sometimes I’ll work on a painting over a couple of months, and sometimes I hit it right off the bat. When I do, what happens is at the end of the day, I […]
Ralph Hunter-Menzies: Interview
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Ralph Hunter-Menzies about his work and process. Hunter-Menzies writes: "I find it is simultaneously productive and undermining to work on a series; each work informs the next and they create a conversation between themselves, but at the same time you have to be constantly trying new colour combinations and marks out, […]
Frank Bowling: In Conversation
Robin Greenwood talks to painter Frank Bowling about his life and work at the exhibition Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip… Frank Bowling's Poured Paintings 1973–8 at Tate Britain, on view through April 30, 2013. Bowling remarks: "What we inherited from the first generation [of abstract expressionists] was the freedom to apply the paint in any which […]
Color: Field and Form
In the next-to-last post of a series about painting and color, Joanne Mattera blogs about several recent New York exhibitions including: Fran Shalom: Paintings Painted at The Painting Center, Debra Ramsay: Desire Lines at Blank Space, and Martha Clippinger: Hopscotch at Elizabeth Harris Gallery.
Abstraction After Warhol
Jed Perl reviews the recent exhibition The Painting Factory: Abstraction After Warhol at MOCA Los Angeles. Perl writes that the press materials refer to "abstraction as 'a painting tradition that was once seen as essentially reductive' and 'monolithic and doctrinaire' – but has 'now become expansive.' In what sense were seminal abstract artists such as […]
My Painting Habit
Laurie Fendrich blogs about what it means to develop a "mature style." Fendrich writes that "All serious painters, no matter the quality of their work, inevitably end up with a mature style. Although my compositions and colors change from one picture to the next, they don’t change so dramatically that they no longer resemble one […]
Learning to Dig
Painter and blogger Jonathan Beer writes about a recent residency in Leipzig, Germany. An exhibition of Beer's work, Happening and History, will be on view at Kathleen Cullen Gallery, New York, from September 6 – October 11, 2012. Beer writes "I worried and wondered what it would be like to leave New York and make work […]
Primary @ Nudashank
Joshua Abelow blogs images of the exhibition Primary at Nudashank, Baltimore, MD, on view through September 14, 2012. The gallery materials state that "Working against convention, these artists are putting into practice an 'abject expressionism' in respect to materials, composition, color and form, sharing a rogue sense of what constitutes beauty. Among other things, the […]
Ying Li: No Middle Way
An essay by Franklin Einspruch (Artblog.net) on the paintings of artist Ying Li. Einspruch curated No Middle Way, a retropective of Li's work, on view at Haverford College, PA, from September 7 – October 12, 2012. Einspruch writes that Li is "a natural artist and so has dug into Yuan Dynasty painting (as well as […]
Josef Albers’ Unguarded Moments
Thomas Micchelli reviews the exhibition Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper at the Morgan Library, New York, on view through October 14, 2012. Micchelli writes: "What is most striking about Albers’ studies, beginning with the adobe paintings and into the later “Homage to the Square” motifs, is how much they seem, like a piece […]
Karen Marston: Rooted in Nostalgia
Sharon Butler blogs about the exhibition Karen Marston: New Paintings at Storefront Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through September 16, 2012 Butler writes: "Influenced by 19th-century landscape masters such as George Inness, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Edwin Church, Marston appears to suggest that our emotional connection with nature is overly mediated and rooted in nostalgia. Also […]