The Subtle Madness of Larry Poons & Jean Dubuffet
Hyperallergic
Robert C. Morgan reviews Jean Dubuffet and Larry Poons: Material Topologies at Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, on view through February 18, 2017. Morgan writes: “We know that both [Dubuffet and Poons] are painters, but culturally, they appear to have been informed by different attributes regarding scale and color, line, and force of visual impact… […]
Katharina Grosse on Canvas
Two Coats of Paint
Sharon Butler reviews works by Katharina Grosse at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on view through March 11, 2017. Butler writes: “The strength of Grosse’s past work rested in the clever, audacious way she combined paint and physical structure. These new paintings on canvas, though ambitious and slick in terms of energy and scale, lack the […]
Max Beckmann @ The Met
London Review of Books
Michael Hofmann reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017. Hofmann writes: “One of the interesting things about Beckmann is how much the paintings moved and morphed under him. The form of the triptych was arrived at adventitiously; he simply had more material […]
Lorraine Shemesh & the Impossibility of the Romantic
Painting: Martin Mugar
Martin Mugar considers the paintings of Lorraine Shemesh. Mugar writes: “Whereas [Shemesh’s] earlier painting retained the notion of an observation of swimmers in a recognizable setting, the latest work puts the observer in with the observed. She does not rely on a romantic search for connections between herself and the environment that allows [Edwin] Dickinson […]
Victor Pasmore: Towards a New Reality
The Spectator
Martin Gayford reviews Victor Pasmore: Towards a New Reality at Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham Lakeside Arts, on view through February 19, 2017. Gayford observes: “Few artists made more abrupt stylistic swerves. Consequently, [Pasmore’s] career was a thesaurus of all the possibilities open to a 20th-century painter, from dingy social realism to millenarian modernism.”
Tamara Gonzales @ Klaus von Nichtssagend
Hyperallergic
Hrag Vartanian reviews Tamara Gonzales: Ometeoli at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York, on view through February 11, 2017. Vartanian writes: “Gonzales is known for incorporating visual culture that has traditionally been more associated with lived culture — lace, graffiti, embroidery, textiles — rather than the world of art galleries. … Her true subject matter […]
De Kooning & Zao Wou-Ki Trace Paths to Abstraction
Hamptons Art Hub
Charles A. Riley II reviews Willem de Kooning | Zao Wou-Ki at Lévy Gorvy Gallery, New York, on view through March 5, 2017. Riley writes that the show “features more than 20 paintings from the two artists’ absolute peak decades, the ’40s through the ’70s … The initial presentation certainly makes the case for one […]
Josef Albers: Color is a Whole World
The Art Section
Painter José Heerkens reflects on color and the work of Josef Albers. “Even knowing that visual language is a totally different language than the language of words, each acting on its own level, color is still a very difficult subject to describe. Any form can be described, but trying to catch color in words is impossible… The […]
Postwar: A Revisionist Vision
artcritical
David Carrier reviews Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965 at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, on view through March 26, 2017. Carrier concludes: “This powerful exhibition changes permanently your sense of the history of postwar art. It demonstrates that it is now possible to present a world art history in which the […]
Inventing Downtown
Arteidolia
Ron Morosan reviews Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965 at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, on view through April 1, 2017. Morosan writes: “As we examine more of the evidence presented in Inventing Downtown we start to see how this exhibition shows the missing link in the development of what […]
David Hockney: Pool Paintings
Apollo Magazine
Matthew Sperling writes about David Hockney’s pool paintings. A retrospective of works by David Hockney will be on view at Tate Britain from February 9 – May 29, 2017. Sperling writes: “… on arrival in California … one particular feature of the architecture, previously only seen in black and white photographs, struck Hockney with fresh intensity… […]
Jack Whitten: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Jarrett Earnest interviews painter Jack Whitten whose work is on view at Hauser & Wirth, New York through April 8, 2017. Whitten comments: “Without a doubt, the sculpture has had more influence on my painting than anything else. The concept of light is different in a sculptor’s mind than it is in a painter’s. When […]
Eleanore Mikus @ Craig F. Starr
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Eleanore Mikus: Tablets and Related Works, 1960–69 at Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York, on view through March 25, 2017. Yau rites: “[Eleanore Mikus] brought together nuance and structure, making them into a subtly captivating experience… she is clearly uninterested in the perfection we associate with the Minimalist aesthetic, and with artists […]
Ruth Pastine @ Brian Gross
Squarecylinder
David M. Roth reviews Ruth Pastine: Witness at Brian Gross Gallery, San Francisco, on view through February 25, 2017. Roth writes: “Ruth Pastine’s supersaturated color-field paintings unite two seemingly contradictory characteristics: sensuality and remoteness. How might that work? Smashingly well, as it turns out. The Ojai-based artist blends vertical bands of strong color into gradients […]
Tal R: Interview
Hyperallergic
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Tal R whose exhibition Tal R: Keyhole is on view at Cheim & Read through February 11, 2017. Tal R remarks: “Bonnard and Matisse are much more dangerous to get close to than some Surrealist painter from Helsinki in the 1940s. Think about the artists your mother would like (and who […]
Sean Scully @ Timothy Taylor Gallery
Saturation Point
John Stephens reviews the recent exhibition Sean Scully: Horizon at Timothy Taylor Gallery, London. Stephens writes: “I’d say [Scully] owes his success over the decades since the 70s not only to his deft and confident handling of paint but also to his understanding, not just of modernist abstraction but of the history of Western painting. […]
Henri Fantin-Latour @ the Musée du Luxembourg
Hyperallergic
Joseph Nechvatal reviews Henri Fantin-Latour: À fleur de peau at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, on view through February 12, 2017. Nechvatal writes: “Henri Fantin-Latour’s 19th-century Realist paintings … remind us that the real must be processed through the flesh and the blood of our eyes. In his early, clear-eyed (yet lovely) paintings that celebrate […]
Lee Lozano @ KARMA
Art in America
Eric Sutphin reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Lee Lozano: c. 1962 at KARMA, New York. Sutphin writes: “The recent exhibition at Karma offered an important and illuminating look at Lozano’s rarely seen early work, from around 1962 … The paintings here (all untitled) can be read as studies made on the path toward […]
Hilton Als on Alice Neel
Brooklyn Rail
Hilton Als writes about painter Alice Neel. Alice Neel, Uptown, curated by Hilton Als, will be on view at David Zwirner Gallery, New York from February 23, – April 22, 2017. Als observes: “I am certain that Alice Neel, more than many an American artist, had a deep understanding of affliction. She did not use her […]
Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s
The New Yorker
Peter Schjeldahl reviews Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on view through May 14, 2017. “Starting in the late nineteen-seventies, young American artists plunged, pell-mell, into making figurative paintings. That seemed ridiculously backward by the lights of the time’s reigning vanguards of flinty post-minimalism, cagey conceptualism, […]