Elizabeth Hazan & Jennifer Riley: Animating Impulses
Sharon Butler reviews the exhibition Soundings: Elizabeth Hazan and Jennifer Riley at Janet Kurnatowski, Brooklyn on view through October 9, 2011. Butler writes that Hazan and Riley are both "interested in shape, line, and the emotional content of color… these paintings, lively and original as they are, also offer a sharp comment on mediated experience […]
Vasari at 500
With the impending re-discovery of Leonardo's The Battle of Anghiari, long thought to be covered by a commissioned work from Giorgio Vasari, Daniel B. Gallagher takes another look at Vasari's paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. "It was there," Gallagher notes, "that Vasari made a triumphal return after two of his staunchest supporters in […]
Colonial Aztec Feather Paintings
Monica Bowen blogs about Colonial Aztec feather paintings. Bowen writes: "…Europeans also were fascinated with feather paintings, not only for their technical skill, but apparently for their delicacy… it doesn’t seem surprising that the Europeans would be drawn to imagery that reinforces the delicacy and fragility (in other words, the weakness) of the Amerindians. And […]
William H. Johnson: American Modern
Robin Meyer reviews the new book William H. Johnson: An American Modern. Meyer writes: "The essays in this collection explore the ways in which Johnson marshaled the ideas and techniques of European modernism to create a highly personal visual language and capture authentically and respectfully the American story with which he was most familiar—that of […]
Raoul de Keyser: Freedom
Caleb de Jong reviews the exhibition Raoul de Keyser: Freedom at David Zwirner Gallery on view through October 29, 2011. De Jong writes: "Modesty and irreverence somehow coexist in de Keyser's pocket size canvases, silence and dialogue form contrapuntal harmonic arrangements within six square inches of oil paint… Despite the parsimonious means, de Keyser’s paintings […]
9th Street Painters Reminisce
Hrag Vartanian posts a great video find: Alcopley, Conrad Marca-Relli, Joe Stefanelli, John Stephan, Robert Richenburg, and Will Barnet "discuss the creation of the first Artist's Annual, the 9th St. Show and the continuation of the Annuals at the Stable Gallery."
Sara Bright @ George Lawson
Carmen Winant reviews Sara Bright: New Paintings at George Lawson Gallery, Los Angeles on view through October 15, 2011. Winant writes: "The paintings are quiet and robust, alternating between figuration and abstraction… If gesture is one protagonist in Brights' work, color is its equally important counterpart."
Susanna Bluhm & Cable Griffith
Joey Veltkamp reviews the exhibition Islands – paintings by Susanna Bluhm and Cable Griffith at SOIL, Seattle on view through October 1, 2011. Veltkamp writes that Bluhm and Griffith's paintings are "mystical terra firma. Strange, new islands, populated with references to Guston, early video games, and feminism, are all tied together with a unified of […]
Alex Katz @ Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
[VIDEO] James Kalm visits the exhibition Alex Katz at Gavin Brown's Enterprise on view through October 8, 2011. Kalms notes "a relationship between [Katz's] broad sweeping strokes and some of the painting techniques of the abstract expressionists…"
Loren Munk: Street Viewing
Matthew Farina reviews the exhibition Loren Munk: Location, Location, Location at Lesley Heller Workspace on view through October 16, 2011. Farina writes that Munk's subject matter of "historical fragments and a visual patchwork of record keeping… feels especially homemade and definitively personal despite the artist’s outward preoccupation… With our abilities to chart and graph almost […]
Per Kirkeby: Danish Ab Ex
David Carrier reviews the exhibition Per Kirkeby New Paintings at Michael Werner Gallery, New York. "Like Willem de Kooning, Kirkeby is a virtuoso at creating unity from… visual chaos… We Americans tend to think that Abstract Expressionism is a style of the past, dependent upon a worldview that no longer commands assent. And we have […]
The Madness of Richard Dadd
Kisa Lala blogs about the new book Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum by Nicholas Tromans. Lala writes that after murdering his father, Dadd was "was put away in an asylum where he began work on a series of influential masterpieces… In Troman's book, the author tries to separate Dadd, who was already a […]
Ida Ekblad @ Green Naftali
Joshua Abelow photoblogs installation images of the exhibition Ida Ekblad at Green Naftali Gallery, New York on view through October 15, 2011. Emily Nathan, writing for artnet this week notes: "Along with other younger artists, Ekblad is putting her own stamp on a kind of evocative abstraction that had seemed exhausted by earlier masters, from […]
Stephen Magsig: Interview
Larry Groff interviews painter Stephen Magsig, whose urban landscape paintings "have a more naturalistic color, space and light than what you often see with photorealism." Interestingly Magsig, who paints New York City storefronts and urban views of Detroit, details how he uses digitized photos, viewed on a computer, as part of his studio practice. Magsig […]
Painters as Storytellers
After watching Lech Majewski's new film, The Mill and the Cross, Sharon Butler considers the fate of storytelling in painting. Butler writes: " …we often rush past the history paintings, but in the sixteenth century, these paintings were like epic feature films. Looking at older paintings, especially those painted by Dutch and Flemish masters who […]
Josh Dorman: Interview
In a fascinating interview entitled Translating the Planet Into Something Visible painters Mario Naves and Josh Dorman discuss Dorman's new work and studio process. Dorman notes: "When I'm working, I don’t think about my location in art history or in today's art world. I'm inside the act of painting, cutting, pasting and drawing. The art […]
Graham Nickson: Paths of The Sun
Caleb de Jong reviews the exhibition Graham Nickson: Paintings: 1972–2011 Paths of the Sun on view at Knoedler & Company through October 29, 2011. De Jong writes: "Painted in chunky brick like shapes with incandescent color, Nickson's work sits unashamed in the history of natural representation… Partly as a rebellion against the current ideology disfavoring […]
Tomma Abts at Kunsthalle Dusseldorf
Photoblog of the exhibition Tomma Abts at Kunsthalle Dusseldorf on view through October 9 ,2011. "Although [Abts] follows a predetermined method in her painting, applying purely geometrical shapes to a classic 48 x 38 cm portrait format in layer after layer of oil and acrylic paint, her painting is far removed from serial production. The […]
Hans Burkhardt: Within & Beyond The Mainstream
Preivew of the exhibtion Hans Burkhardt: Within & Beyond The Mainstream on view at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts from September 24 – December 24, 2011. "Arriving in L.A. in 1937, following his association with Arshile Gorky, whose studio he shared in New York from 1928-37, Burkhardt represented L.A.'s earliest and most critical link to the […]
Mark Rothko: 1961
Photoblog of images from the 1961 Mark Rothko exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery accompanying Coline Milliard's post Rothko's Little-Known British Connection Comes Into Focus at the Whitechapel Gallery. Rothko in Britain is currently on view at the Whitechapel Gallery through February 26, 2012.