Katherine Bradford: A New Hero
David Cohen reviews the exhibition Katherine Bradford: New Work at Edward Thorp Gallery, on view through June 9, 2012. Cohen writes that in Bradford's work "there is the peculiar poetic charm of provisional painting – a sense of blah, of nonchalance, of not quite caring about the slapdash, scruffy, Brooklyn-esque 'work in progress' look. But, […]
Mary Jones: Studio Visit
Max Estenger visits the studio of painter Mary Jones. Estenger writes that Jones' recent painting "are her most muscular paintings with form and mass dominating where once thin washes of paint predominated. Her introduction a few years ago of spray paint is now incorporated seamlessly and some of the schematic ghosts from her earliest work […]
Ronald Bladen: New York Paintings
Phillis Ideal reviews the recent exhibition Ronald Bladen: New York Paintings, 1955-1962 at Loretta Howard Gallery, New York. "Bladen never loses sight of this basic intuition that reflects the history of the exploration in art. This is sophisticated work that transcends formal concerns. It has the connectedness of a child making a sand castle, intuitively […]
Frank Stella’s Fine Disregard
Thomas Micchelli considers Frank Stella's early and new work on view in two exhibitions Frank Stella: Black, Aluminum and Copper Paintings at L&M Arts (through June 2, 2012) and Frank Stella: New Work at Freedman Art (through September 27, 2012). Micchelli writes that Stella's assertion 'What you see is what you see' is a comment […]
George Nick: Judging by Appearances
Larry Groff posts an extensive tribute to painter George Nick to accompany the exhibition Galvanized Truth: A Tribute to George Nick, featuring 37 of Nick's colleagues and students, Curated by Kim Alemian, on view at The Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts through September 9, 2012. Groff's post includes quotes from Nick's teaching as well […]
Ariel Dill: Oscillations
Sharon Butler visits the exhibition Ariel Dill: Oscillations at Southfirst Gallery, Williamsburg, on view through May 27, 2012. Butler writes: "Rather than hanging the paintings in a traditional white cube, Dill has painted the bottom half of the wall grey, referencing images of Gertrude Stein's salon and signalling a more intimate, less didactic approach. Rejecting […]
George Nick: Galvanized Truth
Ed Beem blogs about the exhibition Galvanized Truth: A Tribute to George Nick, featuring 37 of Nick's colleagues and students, on view at The Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts through September 9, 2012. Beem quotes painter Christopher Chippendale, who remarks that "Nick insisted that our painting be autonomous from the world they depicted, not […]
Cézanne’s Bathers: Built to Disturb
Jack Flam discusses the implications of Cézanne's "de-eroticized" approach to the figure in The Large Bathers (1906), part of the upcoming exhibition Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view from June 20, 2012 – September 3, 2012. Flam writes that "…Cézanne’s lack of finish created an extraordinarily suggestive […]
George Grosz: Dallas Paintings
Betsy Lewis blogs about the exhibtion Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas at the Dallas Museum of Art, on view through August 19, 2012. Lewis writes: "While earlier works are sharply outlined satires of darkening German politics, Grosz adopted a style for the Dallas series that's thrilled to be dancing, dressing up, and […]
Alice Neel: Late Portraits & Still Lifes
A. Bregman blogs about the exhibition Alice Neel: Late Portraits & Still Lifes at David Zwirner, New York, on view through June 23, 2012. Bregman writes that Neel's "depictions are at once traditionally representational and non-traditionally provocative, with the images of her neighbors, friends, family, and other New Yorkers portrayed in a way that questions […]
Frank Bowling: Middle of the Day
Courtney J. Martin interviews painter Frank Bowling. Bowling recalls "I was engaged with all those people, especially Newman. He turned the Mark Rothko shape on its side. You had to have permission to get past Newman. It was like a wall, so I thought you should open it up, open up the surface. My poured […]
Nick Lamia: In Studio
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Nick Lamia whose exhibition Nick Lamia: Coppice is on view at Jason McCoy Gallery, New York through June 29, 2012. Lamia notes: "I'm trying to come up with imagery that is successfully combining technology and ecology and doing that by trying to combine geometric and […]
Empty & Full
Barry Schwabsky reflects on two recent exhibitions: Stanley Whitney: Left to Right at Team Gallery and Jacqueline Humphries at Greene Naftali Gallery. Schwabsky writes: "For a long time.. the abstract painter had to negotiate the anxiety that he might be doing or showing too little; more recently he has also had to worry about doing […]
Whistler’s Etchings of Suggestion
Naoko Takahatake blogs about the exhibition Whistler’s Etchings: An Art of Suggestion at LACMA, on view through July 22, 2012. Takahatake writes: "Whistler was disparaged as 'an artist of incomplete performance,' his Venice etchings having been 'done with a swiftness and dash that preclude anything like care and finish.'While many of the prints on view […]
HJ Bott: Rhythm & Rhetoric
Robert Boyd reviews the exhibition HJ Bott: Rhythm & Rhetoric at Anya Tish Gallery, Houston, TX, on view through June 9, 2012. Boyd writes: " 'Displacement of Volume' or DoV is a geometric form that has been appearing in Bott's paintings and sculptural objects since 1972… beyond whatever meaning that DoV has for Bott, it […]
Michael Berryhill at KANSAS
James Kalm visits the exhibition Michael Berryhill: Incidental Western at Kansas Gallery, New York, on view through June 23, 2012. Kalm notes that "Constructing his pictures from a mélange of early Modernist and Metaphysical styles representing the nescient phase of Surrealism, Berryhill scrapes and overworks the pictures until the have the luster of scrimshaw. Imagery […]
James Erikson: Monoliths Or Monuments
Paul Behnke photo blogs a visit to the studio of painter James Erikson. Behnke writes: "Erikson makes quiet, yet insistent paintings – process oriented, oil on canvas, works that linger in the mind of the viewer, demanding interpretation. In the same way a passage of music can seem familiar, though it has never been heard, […]
Thick and Thin in Chelsea
Elisabeth Condon photoblogs a visit to several painting shows currently on view in Chelsea including: Dana Schutz: Piano in the Rain at Friedrich Petzel, Five by Five: Tom Burckhardt, Carrie Moyer, Kanishka Raja, Jane South, and Sarah Walker (Curated by Barbara Takenaga) at DC Moore Gallery, Jutta Koether at Bortolami, Chuck Webster at ZieherSmith, and […]
David Paulson: Painting From the Cave
Peter Acheson writes about the exhibition David Paulson: Recent Works at Jonathan Burden LLC, New York, on view through June 23, 2012. Acheson writes that Paulson "wants to shoulder the weights carried by Cubism, DeChirico, DeKooning, Soutine and Guston one more time before their issues are deemed irrevelant to the contemporary dialogue. He is confronting […]
Thomas Nozkowski: Subtle Subversive
John Yau considers the work of Thomas Nozkowski on the occasion of the exhibition New Editions and Related Drawings at Senior & Shopmaker Gallery, New York, on view through June 16. Yau writes: "if [Nozkowski] likes a motif in a painting that he's working on, but knows it has to go, he will move it […]