Lucian Freud: The Freudian Eye
One year after the death of painter Lucian Freud – a year filled with exhibitions and tributes – Julian Cosma considers Freud's legacy. Cosma writes: "There is an unsavory but persistent question that hangs around the neck of Freud's legacy: would he have been as renowned if his grandfather what not founded modern day psychoanalysis? […]
Eric Aho: Transcending Nature
Ed Beem blogs about the exhibition Transcending Nature: Paintings by Eric Aho at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester NH, on view through September 9, 2012. Beem writes "What intrigued me then and intrigues me now is the virtuosity with which Aho handles paint while modulating along a spectrum of descriptive fidelity from painterly […]
Diebenkorn: Engaging Tradition
An essay on the achievements of Richard Diebenkorn, republished by Mario Naves on the occasion of the exhibition the exhibition Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series, on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. through September 23, 2012. Naves writes: "Matisse is the crucial source for the Ocean Park pictures. Not a few […]
Leif Kath
Steven Alexander blogs about the exhibition Leif Kath: Everlasting Disorder at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, on view through July 27, 2012. Alexander writes that "the group of paintings convey an open-ended playfulness that is supported by the casual handmade quality of each painting's surface. It is evident that the compositions are not predetermined, but […]
Chuck Webster: Interview
Sam Jablon interviews painter Chuck Webster about the work from his recent show of new paintings at ZieherSmith Gallery, New York. Webster comments: "I get a lot of the forms from the world – from an old piece of glass, a detail of Mantegna, the shape of a muffin or an old Roman helmet. They […]
The Symbolist Landscape
Photo blog of paintings from the exhibition Van Gogh to Kandinsky, Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880-1910 at the National Galleries of Scotland on view through October 14, 2012. The exhibition, which includes paintings by lesser known painters such as Jens Ferdinand Willumsen and Akseli Gallen-Kallela is "dedicated to Symbolist landscape painting… a more imaginative, emotional […]
Brenda Goodman: Paint Into Emotion
John Seed interviews painter Brenda Goodman on the occasion of an exhibition of new paintings at John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York, on view from July 19 – August 12, 2012. Seed writes: "Goodman, who has painted for over 50 years, surrenders to the act of painting itself, and lets the emotions — however difficult […]
Karl Hyde: Interview
John Warwicker interviews artist Karl Hyde on the occasion of the exhibition Karl Hyde What's Going on in Your Head When You're Dancing? at Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, on view through July 17, 2012. Hyde remarks: "I've been inspired for years by the working process' of Zen calligraphers, in particular their meditation into the paper […]
There Are No Giants Upstairs
Paul Behnke photoblogs images from the exhibition There Are No Giants Upstairs at Theodore:Art, Brooklyn through July 29, 2012. The show features paintings by Chris Baker, Harriet Korman, Mel Bernstine, Gary Petersen, Steven Charles, and Andrew Seto; a group of artists that James Panero recently noted "share is a deeply felt relationship to paint and […]
Color: Field and Form
In the first of a series of posts about painting and color, Joanne Mattera blogs about several recent New York exhibitions including Anne Truitt: Drawings at Matthew Marks Gallery, Anne Appleby: Paintings at Danese Gallery, Julian Jackson: Crossing at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, Stuart Shils: The Residue of Memory at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, […]
Daniel Levine: Marker
Chris Ashley considers the paintings of Daniel Levine on the occasion of the exhibition Daniel Levine: Marker at Some Walls, Oakland, CA, on view through August 26, 2012. Ashley writes "for convenience sake Levine's paintings might be called monochromes, as they tend towards Monochrome Painting, let's not choose convenience. Let’s say that Levine's paintings are […]
Unknown Corot
Caleb De Jong reviews the exhibition Unknown Corot: Unpublished Drawings at Jill Newhouse Gallery, New York, on view through July 20, 2012. De Jong writes: "Mostly landscapes with lone figures scattered throughout provincial French environs, Corot's drawing moved from David's neo-classicism to later washy painterly charcoal drawings that pre-date Frank Auerbach's drawings of Primrose Hill […]
Painting in Bushwick
Charles Kessler blogs about several impressive painting exhibitions currently on view at the 56 Bogart building in Bushwick, Brooklyn including: Shingo Francis: Bound For Eternity at Bogart Salon (through July 23), There Are No Giants Upstairs at Theodore:Art (through July 29), Text at Studio 10 (through July 22) and Claudia Chaseling: Infiltration at Slag Gallery […]
Diebenkorn: Watcher From the Skies
James Gibbons reviews the exhibition Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series, on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. through September 23, 2012. Gibbons writes: "The interplay of cultivation and erasure that [Dibenkorn] discerned from his bird's-eye perch offers one way to grasp Diebenkorn's later abstractions, which often evoke the sensation of being […]
Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings
Claire Gilman blogs about the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York through June 5–September 3, 2012. Gilman writes that "Kelly has called the plant drawings 'a kind of bridge to a way of seeing that was the basis of the very first abstract paintings,' and indeed, […]
Gary Petersen: Interview
Amanda Church interviews painter Gary Petersen about his work which is on view in the exhibition There Are No Giants Upstairs at Theodore:Art, Brooklyn through July 29, 2012. Petersen remarks: "my work does not 'abstract' from nature, it is just that all these things are in you and if you are in touch with these […]
Alexis Harding: Substance & Accident
David Moxon blogs about the recent exhibition Alexis Harding: Substance and Accident at Mummery + Schnelle, London. Moxon writes: "Harding is one of Britain's most interesting painters working in abstraction today. Underlying even the most structured of appearances, randomness and chance are at the helm, and it is these concepts that prevail in the workings […]
Visions of Arcadia
Andrea Kirsh reviews the exhibition Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view through September 3, 2012. Kirsh writes: "In terms of the exhibition's theme one has to ask, why this subject then? And why such monumental paintings? The previous avante-garde had pointedly rejected the hierarchies of the Academy, […]
Joan Watts: Poems & More
Jenni Higginbotham interviews painter Joan Watts about her practice and the works in her recent exhibition Poems & More at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe. Watts remarks: "I am very attracted to reducing the means by which I create… that has been a process I have been going through ever since I moved to […]
Caro Niederer @ Hauser & Wirth
Caleb De Jong reviews the exhibition Caro Niederer Paintings at Hauser & Wirth, New York, on view through July 27, 2012. De Jong writes: "Niederer's transformation of photograph to hand-made object informs her entire practice… [Her] pre-existing source material, family snapshots, postcards, Indian erotic imagery, is twirled through her chosen medium, in this case paint… […]