Dushko Petrovich: In Studio
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit painter Dushko Petrovich's studio to talk about his work and process. Describing his paintings of flowers, Petrovich remarks: "I was wondering about why we make a painting at all, why you would have an object, why you would represent an object… flowers struck me as the quintessential object, quintessential […]
Ito Jakuchu: Buddhist Beauty
Donald Kuspit reviews the recent exhibition Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Kuspit writes that "It seems possible to link Jukuchu's 18th-century Japanese nature paintings to 19th-century European paintings romanticizing nature… But European paintings that 'romanticize' nature, whether as ingratiatingly idyllic or in […]
Judy Glantzman Goes to Battle
Whitney Kimball interviews painter Judy Glantzman about her process and her new series of work. Kimball writes: " 'The beginnings of paintings are always really nice,' Judy Glantzman tells me, 'because the quality of touch, the hand, are almost the realest moments…and then you have to go the whole friggin' time to get back to […]
Yuskavage on Vuillard
Peter Schjeldahl reports on Lisa Yuskavage's talk on Edouard Vuillard at the Jewish Museum. Schjeldahl writes: "Yuskavage’s analysis of Vuillard's art, and of her own, amounted to a clinic in painting for painting’s sake…. Painters naturally assume the importance of their subjects, she said. Meaning emerges by way of stroke-by-stroke discovery and invention: 'making painting […]
Dana Schutz: Interview
Jarrett Earnest interviews painter Dana Schutz about her work on the occasion of the exhibition Dana Schutz: Piano in the Rain at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, on view through June 16, 2012. Schutz comments: "This idea that narrative is 'bad' might be a leftover from Modernism; a notion that narrative is 'kitschy,' too illustrative, […]
Bram Bogart (1921-2012)
Belgian painter Bram Bogart died May 2, 2012 at the age of 90. In The Guardian obituary, Michael McNay writes: "This sense in his work of the tangible, a coming together of his first job painting houses and his implacably wall-like landscapes, lasted throughout Bogart's lifetime, through to the overwhelming presence of his celebrated late […]
Tom McGrath: Fencing with Painting
John Haber reviews the exhibition Tom McGrath: Profiles in Fugitive Light at Sue Scott Gallery, New York, on view through June 10, 2012. Haber writes: "A chain-link fence runs through [the paintings], parallel and close to the picture plane, while other barriers to entry run in and out of sight… The fence suggests a point […]
Edouard Vuillard: Painting Patronage
David Balzer reviews the exhibition Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 at the Jewish Museum, New York, on view through September 23, 2012. Balzer writes that in the exhibition "one sees not only a fabulously talented painter at work, but also rich context, and multiple stories being told. One of these stories is […]
Chantal Joffe @ Cheim & Read
Phoebe Hoban reviews an exhibition of paintings by Chantal Joffe at Cheim & Read, New York, on view through June 22, 2012. Hoban writes: "The in-your-face impact of [Joffe's] paintings comes as much from scale as technique. These are big blowups of women, exaggerated and poster-like. There is no visible brushwork or impasto – instead […]
Lucian Freud’s Wrong Turn
Thomas Micchelli reviews the exhibition Lucian Freud: Drawings at Acquavella Galleries, New York, on view through June 9, 2012. Micchelli writes: "Freud, who prided himself on his draftsmanship, stopped drawing [in 1958], and didn't pick it up again until years later… The earlier works are not attempts 'at a record,' as the artist described his […]
Geoffrey Rigden
Cuillin Bantock writes about the paintings of Geoffrey Rigden on view at Poussin Gallery, London, through June 30, 2012. Bantock writes that "Rigden, for all his cool, has a razor-sharp awareness of the massive constraints which define a painting, that a painting has only three realities: area (surface plus edge), chroma and facture. The rest […]
Julian Jackson: Crossing
Steven Alexander visits the exhibition Julian Jackson: Crossing at Kathryn Markel Gallery, New York, on view through June 16, 2012. Alexander writes: "The title calls attention to the grid which in these new paintings assumes a more prominent role, echoing not only the edges of the square formats, but beyond that, the architectural environment to […]
Douglas Witmer: Art & Modesty
Libby Rosof interviews painter Douglas Witmer about his work and process. Witmer comments: that: "My approach is completely additive. …I tried to find a way of painting where I couldn’t touch it–so I was dropping color with a turkey baster, kind of like color fields. …Could I just know what my choices are going to […]
Alice Neel: Searching Within
Lily Koto Olive reviews the exhibition Alice Neel: Late Portaits & Still Lifes at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through June 23, 2012. Olive writes that "the interior lives of [Neel's] subjects peer out at us from within their surfaces. Neel's uncanny ability to capture her subjects psychological states in the moments they […]
Tatiana Berg: Studio Visit
As part of their coverage of Bushwick Open Studios, Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball visit the studio of painter Tatiana Berg and interview her about her work. Asked about her three-dimensional "tent" paintings Berg comments: "My tent-paintings arose from a curiosity wondering what a painting looked like broken open, its interior structures and materials exposed. […]
Lauren Luloff: Dark Interiors & Bright Landscapes
Preview of paintings from the exhibition Lauren Luloff: Dark Interiors & Bright Landscapes at Halsey McKay, East Hampton, on view from June 1 – 19, 2012. "Richly layered, complex activity propels the construction of these works as the artist layers bleach-stained bed sheets, muslin, transparent fabric and varying viscosities of oil paint. Luloff's paintings are […]
Sharon Butler, Allison Manch & Robert Yoder
A conversation with Sharon Butler, Allison Manch and Robert Yoder on the occasion of two exhibitions: Squeeze Hard (Hold That Thought) work by Sharon Butler and Allison Manch at SEASON (through June 30, 2012) and Robert Yoder: DILF! at Platform Gallery (through June 16, 2012). Both galleries are located in Seattle, Washington. Of the works […]
Nicole Eisenman: Prints
James Kalm visits the exhibition Nicole Eisenman, Woodcuts, Etchings, Lithographs and Monotypes at Leo Koenig, New York, on view through June 30, 2012. Kalm notes that "this show reveals an abiding attachment and pursuit of, the grand tradition of classic printmaking. While the monotypes display a very painterly sensibility. Eisenman's etchings and lithographs highlight the […]
Elizabeth Gourlay: Studio Visit
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Elizabeth Gourlay. Of her paintings Gourlay writes: "The work is a meditation on color and form. The drawings and paintings emerge from a gradual yet progressive layering that leads to a complex network of shifting shapes and colors. The shapes and lines create my own […]
Dr. Barnes’ Art of Painting
On the occasion of the opening of the new Barnes Foundation musuem in Philadelphia, Jed Perl re-reads The Art of Painting and The Art of Renoir by Dr. Albert C. Barnes. Both books, Perl writes "have a blunt, evangelical force; they’re textbooks dedicated to transcendent values, written at a time when Barnes, a friend and […]