Self-Taught Painting: The Petullo Collection
Mary Addison Hackett blogs images of self-taught and outsider art from the Anthony Petullo Collection including paintings by James Dixon (1887-early 1970's), Sylvia Levine (1911-1998), James Lloyd (1905-1974), Alfred Wallis, and Justin McCarthy.
Medieval Manuscripts @ the Rauner Library
Altoon Sultan blogs about 15th century manuscripts and rare books on view at the Rauner at Dartmouth College. Sultan writes "When I see the refinement and marvelous detail of the borders surrounding the illuminations, I have a feeling that the makers of these pages loved color, loved ornament, loved nature."
Mythological creature: Susan Bee
Sharon Butler blogs about the recent exhibition Susan Bee: Recalculating (New Paintings) at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn. Butler writes that Bee "presents three separate series of bright, small-scale paintings that explore emotional conflict, trauma, and personal narrative in a movingly idiosyncratic way."
Blinky Palermo’s Abstraction
Eric Zimmerman visits the Blinky Palermo Retrospective now on view at Dia:Beacon and CSS Bard on view through October 31, 2011. Referring to Palermo's Graue Schiebe (1970) Zimmerman notes "The painting's surface is as erratic as its shape, which draws you close and then promptly insists you back up again, a process that can continue […]
Twombly & Poussin: First Look
Curator Nicholas Cullinan narrates a first look at the exhibition Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters.
Gerhard Richter
Cole Carothers shares thoughts on a painting by Gerhard Richter in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Carothers writes: "[Richter's] relationship with action painting feels different. Where the Americans, paint 'inside the painting' as if they are part of an heroic landscape that is new world/American, Richter's mindset is distinctly psychological… His expressiveness seems more tragic, introverted, […]
LACMA’s Ardabil Carpet
Christopher Knight reports on the "breathtaking Ardabil Carpet, an incomparable 16th-century masterpiece… one of the two greatest Persian rugs ever woven." The rug was created "While Titian was busy painting the voluptuous 'Venus of Urbino' in Italy," and, Knight continues, is "A Persian version of a Latin 'hortus conclusus' — literally, an enclosed garden — […]
Allison Schulnik: Interview
Joey Veltkamp interviews painter Allison Schulnik about her work. Schulnik notes: "For me, I work to liberate monsters. I see the paintings as monuments to the rejected, forlorn or foolish. The works are sanctuaries and I am happy to provide that. Happiness and balance is the goal."
Shaped Canvas
A collection of shaped canvas paintings highlighting the variety of painterly possibilities beyond the rectangle – including work from modern masters such as Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly and Blinky Palermo alongside contemporary painters Jan Maarten Voskuil, Victor White, JCJ Vanderheyden, Till Orlando Frijns, and Rupprecht Geiger.
Margie Livingston’s Twenty Gallons
Geoff Tuck posts installation views of Margie Livingston's installation Twenty Gallons at LACE – Los Angeles Contemporary Art Exhibitions, on view through March 25, 2012. Of Livingston's brushstrokes, Tuck writes, "they are objects unto themselves. They are several removes away from the act of painting, and flirt with sculpture but then veer off in a […]
Manet @ Musée d’Orsay
A. Bregman posts installation photos from Manet, the Man who Invented Modernity at the Musée d'Orsay on view through July 17, 2011. Bregman writes: "The exhibition is designed around 12 questions, as based in stylistic elements and evolution of the artist's life," that demonstrate how "[Manet's] vision of modernity was cemented with the revelation of […]
Revealing ‘Unfinished Paintings’
Lily Simonson interviews curators Kristin Calabrese and Joshua Aster about the exhibition Unfinished Paintings at LACE – Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions on view through August 28, 2011. The exhibition features "paintings by 38 different artists at various stages of completion" illuminating the process and decision making that occur in the development of a painting. Calabrese […]
Figure, Memory, Space – Renaissance Drawings
Daniel B. Gallagher reviews the exhibition Figure, Memorie, Spazio: disegni da Fra’Angelico a Leonardo which was on view at Galleria degli Uffizi and Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence (closed June 12, 2011). Gallagher writes: "Precisely because drawing was considered an indispensable daily discipline, it became the privileged means of unlocking the cognitive processes […]
Gillian Ayres at 80
David Moxon posts a 1988 video of Gillian Ayres in 1988 by Geoffrey Robinson on the occasion of the exhibition Gillian Ayres at Arnolfini Gallery on view through July 11, 2011. The video shows Ayres painting and talking about abstraction and her work. Ayres says abstraction is "very clearly the energy of the [20th] century, […]
John Marin, Marsden Hartley & More
Ed Beem reviews two concurrent painting exhibitions at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine: Maine Moderns: Art in Sequinland, 1900-1940 on view through September 11 and John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury on view through October 10. Maine Moderns: Art in Sequinland highlights the importance of Maine in the development of American Modernism. Beem notes […]
Marc Chagall @ the Philadelphia Museum
Ekaterina Popova reviews Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and his Circle on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through July 10, 2011. Popova writes: "While the focus of the event is on Marc Chagall himself, it is especially instructive to view his paintings within the context of his colleagues' work, as well. Extraordinarily […]
Erwin Gross @ Bernd Kugler
[IMAGES] Installation photos from the exhibition Erwin Gross – Malerei on view at Bernd Kugler Gallery, Innsbruck through July 23, 2011. Gross' paintings, which engage "the principle of landscape painting," also engage painting as process relying "…more on reduction than… on addition… A taut surface is produced by stripping and wiping away, by means of […]
Dorothea Rockburne: In My Mind’s Eye
Judith H. Dobrzynski blogs about the retrospective exhibition Dorothea Rockburne: In My Mind's Eye on view at the Parrish Art Museum through August 14, 2011. Dobrzynski writes: "Rockburne has gone her own way. During more than 40 years of working, she's been influenced by 'such wide-ranging sources as mathematics, Renaissance art, astronomy, archeology, and philosophy,' […]
A Painter’s Films
[VIDEO] Jannon Stein writes about the abstract films of painter Hans Richter who "[turned] his talents to film and produces one of the earliest abstract films, Rhythmus 21." Stein's post includes three of Richter's films and also quotes Richter's descriptions of his aims in film-making which could easily describe similar aims in painting: "The film […]