Kristine Moran: Interview
Jonathan Beer and Lily Koto Olive interview painter Kristine Moran about her work and process. Moran comments: "…because my work depends largely on the painting process itself, even the most detailed sketch will at times translate into something completely different on canvas. For the most part, the paintings tend to morph into unexpected territory as […]
Brenda Goodman @ John Davis
Martin Bromirski photo blogs installation photos from the recent exhibition Brenda Goodman: Paintings at John Davis Gallery in Hudson, New York. In a 2007 interview with David Brody, Goodman said about her work: "I… move back and forth between abstraction, figuration and the combination of the two a lot in my work as well as […]
Miró: Painting Politics and Possibilities
James Gibbons writes about the link between Miró’s politics and the experimental nature of his paintings as seen in the exhibition Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape is on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. through August 12, 2012. "Seeking to understand the politics of Miró’s art, as the Ladder of Escape exhibition […]
Matisse’s Template of Grays
On the occasion of the exhibition Matisse: Doubles and Variations on view at the National Gallery of Denmark, Cohenphagen (through October 28 – opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York on December 3), Franklin Einspruch makes an observation about Matisse's technique: "underpainting. Specifically, grays. The colorist of the century worked his magic on […]
Late Matisse: Painterly Architectures
Robin Greenwood considers "an important and relevant question to ask (time and again) about abstract art: what does distinguish it from design?" He continues: "Matisse's late work does contribute quite prominently, if not iconically, to a certain strand in the conjunction of modernism and abstraction which blurs the distinction between art and design, and more specifically […]
Ellsworth Kelly: Slience in the Studio
Sharon Butler blogs some of Ellsworth Kelly's thoughts on being in the studio. "Unlike most other painters I know," Butler writes, "Kelly likes to paint in silence…" Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawing is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York through June 5–September 3, 2012.
Vaulting Limits: Avant Garde Ink Painting
After viewing the recent exhibition Vaulting Limits with works by Cao Jigang, Lin Yan, Wei Jia, Xiao Bing, and Yuan Zuo at the Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, Robert C. Morgan reflects on the development of ink painting among contemporary Chinese painters. Morgan writes "I am taken by the fact that many artists are seemingly […]
Hamlett Dobbins: Meditative Jewels
Paul Behnke blogs about a recent series of work by painter Hamlett Dobbins. Behnke writes: "The forms of the simpler compositions possess a tantric purity while the color evokes the layered, jewel like preciousness of Russian icons. Only in scale do Dobbins' drawings defy this reading. The medium size just begins to flower into the […]
Douglas Florian: Dawn Thieves
As part of her series exploring color in painting, Joanne Mattera blogs about the recent exhibition Douglas Florian: Dawn Thieves at Bravin Lee Programs, New York. Mattera writes: "The color is… largely dry and flat, now fabulously textured, and highly chromatic thanks to Florian's propensity toward complementary hues. As before, the works are modestly sized–larger […]
Sharon Horvath: In Conversation
Jennifer Samet talks with painter Sharon Horvath about her new paintings and her process. Horvath, referring to a recently completed painting, remarks: "It is made of all this cross-hatching and weaving of lines. It is a specific energy. The question is, what energy are you really working with? When you compare painters, there can be […]
Talking Lucian Freud
Sabastian Smee and Michael Auping discuss artist Lucian Freud with Tyler Green. Asked how American's might relate to Freud's work, Auping comments: "Freud doesn't follow a modernist narrative. American art really was the great tail end of the modernist narrative… Freud doesn't fit that narrative at all. He's working in a genre that's the most […]
Ward Schumaker: Interview
Valerie Brennan interviews painter Ward Schumaker about his work and studio practice. Schumaker remarks: "I like to work on a very defined, consistent group… then follow that with a group of things that veer wildly in different directions… Most important and most uncomfortable is that once a direction is decided upon, I have to be […]
Bartolo di Fredi: Small Spectacular
Laura Gilbert reviews the exhibition Bartolo di Fredi, The Adoration of the Magi: A Masterpiece Reconstructed at the Museum of Biblical Art, New York, on view through September 9, 2012. Gilbert writes: "The exhibit, with only seven works, is stunning in its simplicity and beautifully conceived, and it shows off one of this museum's strengths […]
Fritz Chesnut: In Conversation
Michael Shaw interviews artist Fritz Chestnut. Chesnut remarks: "I hope to make something vulnerable in that I am accountable for it, putting it out there and backing it up. Painting for me is a super risky thing and sometimes it comes easily. Other times I have a hard time turning off my mind and am […]
Julie Torres: Interview
Julie Torres discusses the paintings in her exhibition Ghost in the Machine at Storefront Bushwick, on view through August 5, 2012. Of her process Torres comments: "I sort of bang my head against the wall for hours and weeks and months until something happens and when the thing happens, it's bigger than me… it's a […]
Page Whitmore: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Page Whitmore. Whitmore remarks: "I derive immense tactile pleasure from making and materiality. In alignment with some of the tensions in my work, achieving a high level of craft is important to me with the minimalist painting-esque objects, whereas some works I show are industrially manufactured; almost artless. My work has […]
Titian: Poetry in Paint
Martin Herbert talks to Seamus Heaney about Titian, poetry, and painting on the occasion of he cross-disciplinary Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 sponsored by the National Gallery, London. The exhibition/event invited visual artists, poets, choreographers, and composers to respond to three Titian paintings in the National Gallery. Heaney, Herbert writes, "chose to write about The Death of […]
Robert Holyhead
Adele M. Reed reviews the recent exhibition Robert Holyhead at Peer Gallery, London. Reed writes: "Running across the first three walls are three rows of small 'drawings' set out in a grid-like narrative reflecting the stream of creative consiousness that Holyhead travels through before starting work on each final major piece. They present less a […]
Day/Night: Painting in San Francisco
Ann Knickerbocker blogs about abstract paintings seen recently in San Francisco including works by Indira Martina Morre, Teo Gonzalez, Judith Foosaner, Patrick Wilson, Marilyn Levin, Lora Fosberg, and Reed Anderson. Knickerbocker discusses qualities and approaches in the works in terms of day – "stability, continuity, a kind of plotline managed through repetition, a plan" – […]
Howard Hodgkin: In Conversation
Stuart Jeffries talks to painter Howard Hodgkin as the artist approaches his 80th birthday. " 'I am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional situations,' said Hodgkin once. But for the most part, Hodgkin doesn't talk about his work. Paint is, for him, more eloquent than words. […]