Loren Munk: Interview
Hrag Vartanian interivews painter Loren Munk about his recent exhibition of paintings Location, Location, Location at Lesley Heller Workspace. Munk recalls "I realized there was a great big pile of material that could somehow be turned into paintings. I decided to take Ad Reinhardt's quip 'All art comes from art and nothing else' literally. It […]
Kitaj: Portraits and Reflections
Dr Janet McKenzie reviews the recent exhibition RB Kitaj: Portraits and Reflections at Abbot Hall Art Gallery. McKenzie writes: "Kitaj was one of the most formidable and articulate artists to develop a personal iconography drawing inspiration from a range of sources. The human figure is central to his work, and in this he was against […]
Walter Sickert: Dark Alleys
Rebecca Harp blogs about German/British painter Walter Sickert. Harp posts a fantastic image gallery and notes: "I personally think that his nude paintings are his best works, but I have included here below as many as I could find. Following Degas' advice, Sickert painted in the studio, working from drawings and memory as an escape […]
Rebecca Purdum @ Tilton
Steven Alexander reviews an exhibition of new paintings by Rebecca Purdum at Jack Tilton Gallery, on view through November 5, 2011. Alexander writes: "The surfaces are rich accumulations of interactions and encounters over time, with thicker and thinner, oily and matte areas mingling into a dusky soup that is at once ethereal and utterly physical. […]
Susan Rothenberg: Disparate Images
Sharon Butler blogs about the exhibition of new paintings by Susan Rothenberg on view at Sperone Westwater, New York through October 29 2011. Butler notes: " the driving force in Rothenberg's work continues to be the combination of agitated brushstroke and idiosyncratic composition, which enables the painter to move convincingly from perceptual study of the […]
Gerhard Richter: On Blurring Reality
Kisa Lala blogs about the new film Gerhard Richter Painting from by Soda Pictures directed by Corinna Belz. "Belz filmed the secretive artist at his studios in Cologne in Germany over several months to create a fully immersive studio experience, though the artist seems to rarely forget he is being filmed. Richter says in the […]
Ted Stamm: Paintings at Minus Space
A small, but significant show of paintings and drawings at Minus Space offers a tantalizing re-introduction to Ted Stamm’s paintings.
Eva Hesse: Painter
Paul Behnke photoblogs abstract and figure paintings by Eva Hesse. Eva Hesse Spectres 1960 is on view at the Brooklyn Museum through January 8, 2011.
Charles Tyrrell: Large Scale
Cristín Leach reviews an exhibition of paintings by Charles Tyrrell titled Selection from a New Series at the Royal Hibernian Academy, on view through December 21, 2011. Leach writes:"Monochrome surfaces embrace the turmoil while covering most, or all, of it up, yet what lies beneath carries huge weight… If standing stones, field lines and the […]
Generations of Color
John Haber reviews two exhibitions: Ronnie Landfield: Structure and Color at Stephen Haller Gallery (through October 15, 2011) and Carrie Moyer: Canonical (through October 16, 2011) at CANADA. Haber writes: "Both [artists] work in acrylic and let it flow, big time. One can contemplate its color and other pleasures, or one can dive in to […]
Terrell James: Citizen
Lucia Simek reviews the exhibition Terrell James: Citizen at Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas on view through October 15, 2011. Simek writes: " James’ paintings… are each a testament to paint’s pure, fleeting urge to make merry on some surface… The series Field Studies is beautifully installed on the back wall of the larger gallery, featuring […]
Optic Nerve
Joanne Mattera reviews and photoblogs the exhibition Douglas Melini, Gary Petersen, Sarah Walker at McKenzie Fine Art, New York, on view through October 8, 2011. Mattera writes: "Each [artist] is working with a geometric vocabulary and saying different things. The resulting exhibition is a retinal workout of differing planes and spatial fields, twists and folds, […]
Pietro Longhi’s The Painter in His Studio
Isabella Lores-Chavez discusses an interesting painting by Pietro Longhi, The Painter in His Studio, painted between 1741–44, now on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum. In the painting, she notes, that "Longhi wanted to show the world as it was. The Painter in His Studio shows the intersection of two social realities. The painter […]
Robert Schwartz @ Babcock Galleries
Mario Naves reviews an exhibition of paintings by Robert Schwartz (1947–2000) at Babcock Galleries, New York on view through October 7, 2011. Naves writes: "Schwartz can be fairly neatly fitted into the tradition of Magical Realism, a loosely aligned group of American painters- Jared French is one; Paul Cadmus, another- drawn to enigmatic narratives, hushed […]
De Kooning: Walk on the Wild Side
Laurie Fendrich reviews the exhibition de Kooning: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, on view through January 9, 2012. Fendrich writes: "Many influences lurk in the work – Picasso, Matisse, Gorky, School of Paris contour-driven painting, surrealism, American toothpaste ads (those toothy mouths in his Women paintings). Yet de Kooning […]
John McLaughlin: Against Binocular Vision
Christopher Knight profiles painter John McLaughlin, "L.A.'s first artist of authentically international stature." Knight notes: "What McLaughlin did with these stripped-down tools remains one of the great achievements in 20th century American art. Ignoring accepted rules, his sophisticated paintings pry open perceptual space. Almost surreptitiously, they grab hold of your optical apparatus and undermine conventional […]
Katia Santibañez: Interview
Phong Bui interviews painter Katia Santibañez about life and her work. Santibañez notes: "I do play with different tonalities. And I do think of them as colors. I also think colors relate to the idea of working with the force of opposition, for example, the vertical against the horizontal lines, and how they find their […]
Fate of Romantic Vision & Painting
Mark Stone questions the future of painting as our connection to nature and the direct experience of the physical world yields to technology, social media, and the 24 hour news cycle: "… because visual painting can no longer be engaged outside the mediated experience, what we are given instead are “painted” objects, things to encounter, […]
Ingres at the Morgan
Caleb De Jong reviews Ingres at the Morgan on view at the Morgan Library, New York through November 27, 2011. De Jong writes: "Seventeen drawings in the Library's holdings and three letters are displayed in a single, focused, crystalline room… As direct and immediate as any drawing made in the history of the practice, Ingres […]
Douglas Witmer: Fruitville & School Papers
In A Way to Be in the World, Chris Ashley writes about painter Douglas Witmer's Fruitville and School Papers works. Ashley writes: " As in [Witmer's] paintings, where their making is evident, so too in these works Witmer hides nothing; there are no tricks – the skill is in the decisions and finding, the combining […]