Abstraction’s Ambiguity
Edward M. Gómez looks at abstract painting through the lens of several artists including Joan Mitchell, Louise Fishman, Karl Klingbiel, Gene Mann, and Madeleine Spierer. These painters, Gómez writes, "understand that the ambiguity that is [abstraction's] essence is also its great poetic strength."
Interview with Robert Dukes
Neil Plotkin interviews London-based painter Robert Dukes. Dukes discusses his life and work including his time in art school and painting after the old masters. He also discusses a hiatus from, and return to, painting through "the painting of a coffee mug (1998)… Finally, a realised image as opposed to the gestural paintings I’d been […]
Jane Freilicher
Franklin Einspruch reviews Jane Freilicher: Recent Paintings and Prints at Tibor de Nagy Gallery on view through June 3, 2011. Einspruch calls Freilicher "… one of the last true scions of Giorgio Morandi," he continues "she combines a probing touch with a keen color sense to produce paintings of visceral power out of all proportion […]
Jimbo Blachly Small Pictures
Sharon Butler reviews Jimbo Blachly, Lanquidity, at Winkleman Gallery, New York which was on view from March 25 – April 30, 2011. Butler writes: "… in the best of them, evocative color, easy brushwork and diminutive size remind me of Albert York's enigmatic landscape paintings combined with Bill Jensen's paintings from the eighties."
Written Colours – José Heerkens
Brent Hallard talks with painter José Heerkens. Heerkens discusses the impulses behind his grid-based work including being inspired by landscape – both the Netherlands and the Australian outback "… the structured and the wild. Both are important for me. In my work I need to deal with the tension of extremes, challenging me to find […]
Samuel Rosenberg: A Painter’s Legacy
John Morris blogs about the exhibition A Painter's Legacy: The Students of Samuel Rosenberg. The press release states: "A Painter’s Legacy is an expansive exhibit comprised of the rich and diverse work of individual artists taught and influenced by Samuel Rosenberg. A professor at Carnegie Mellon University (formerly Carnegie Institute of Technology) for 40 years […]
Elizabeth Murray’s Narrative Geometries
Altoon Sultan blogs about Elizabeth Murray's paintings from the mid to late 1970's, works which document Murray's path from "minimalism" to her signature style. Sultan writes that "Murray takes forms that seem so straightforwardly geometric and infuses them with stories and off beat humor." Elizabeth Murray: Painting in the '70s is on view at Pace […]
Paul Pagk: ‘Mesquite Drawings’
Chris Ashley writes about Paul Pagk's drawings and their relationship to his paintings. Ashley writes: "Each work’s image… a combination of field, diagram, and gesture, is a definite structural place … both intimate and monolithic… intentionally ambiguous and open for the purpose of varied personal and public experience." Paul Pagk: Drawings from the Series: The […]
Painted into a (Beautiful Corner)
Kevin Kinsella reviews Malevich and the American Legacy on view at Gagosian Gallery through April 30, 2011. Kinsella begins by recounting an intellectual and physical brawl between Malevich and Tatlin at the opening reception for The Last Futurist Painting Exhibition in 1915. However, he concludes that in the current exhibition that the visual revolution of […]
James Siena: Interview
Robert Ayers interviews painter James Siena about his work on the occasion of his current exhibition on view at Pace Gallery through April 20, 2011. Ayers asks Siena about his process, color, drawing and his new figurative work. Of the figurative work Siena says: "I just had an impulse at one point to draw a […]
Teller of Tales
Hearne Pardee reviews two recently published books: Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations edited by Clark Coolidge and Telling Stories: Philip Guston's Later Works by David Kaufmann. Pardee writes: "Together, Kaufmann and Coolidge offer a framework that helps us understand [Guston's return to figuration], Kaufmann by placing it in its cultural context and Coolidge […]
Ralph Coburn
Vincent Romaniello features a work by painter Ralph Coburn. Coburn's work was the subject of a recent exhibition Ralph Coburn – France, Works on Paper 1949–1956 at David Hall Fine Art in Wellesley, Massachusetts. A contemporary of painter Ellsworth Kelly, Coburn accompanied Kelly to France during the early 1950's. This peroid was formative for both […]
At the Met: Portraits
Painter Altoon Sultan blogs her thoughts a wide range of portraits seen on her recent trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning with Fayum funerary portraits and ending with Degas' Portrait of the Artist Tissot. Musing on "Netherlandish" portrait painters she writes: "[they] have magic in their art. How they are able to paint […]
Variety Trumps Argument
Steven Maine reviews the exhibition The Working Title on view at the Bronx River Art Center through April 29, 2011. The Working Title presents the work of 32 artists. "A lively exhibition," Maine writes, on that questions "the high seriousness with which abstract painters of fifty years ago… Rather than advancing an argument regarding the […]
Lucy Mink
Interview with painter Lucy Mink. Mink discusses her studio practice – "For years I experimented with everything from wax, rubber, latex, cloth, and way too much galkyd. In 2009 I stopped using additional materials with my paint" – and is wonderfully candid about how her painting is integrated in her life – "My studio is […]
13th-14th c. Mexican Panel Painting
As part of a series on recent acquisitions at LACMA, Virginia Fields blogs about Mexican panel painting from the Oaxaca/Guerrero region. About the LACMA panel Fields writes: "Its palette of strong primary colors and the prominent use of step-fret imagery throughout its composition… identify it as an extraordinary example of the artistic tradition referred to […]
David Whitaker
David Moxon posts about British painter David Whitaker (1938-2007). A retrospective of Whitaker's work is on view at the Grudy Art Gallery, Blackpool through May 14, 2011. Moxon writes that Whitaker was "a contemporary of Bridget Riley" and remained "devoted to geometric abstraction… until his premature death in 2007."
Intimate Interiors: Vuillard
Painter Philip Koch blogs his thoughts on Vuillard's paintings of interiors: "Landscape painting might at first glance seem unrelated to Vuillard's interiors, but actually they're close cousins. Vuillard created what might be called "interior jungles" … Anyone who's looked at the overwhelming complexity of a forest interior like those painted by a Barbizon School artist […]
Pierre Soulages
[VIDEO] Painter Jeffrey Collins posts a video of Pierre Soulages painting in his studio. Soulages silently works on one of his signtaure black paintings in the first half of the video. The second half is an interview with Soulages in French.
Provincetown Painting
Beginning with her personal connection to Provincetown painting, Nancy Natale blogs a brief history of painting in Provincetown including the profiles of Charles Webster Hawthorne, Hans Hofmann, Henry Hensche, three "teachers who influenced generations of artists in and outside of Provincetown." Natale also discusses the divisions created by the teachers' "conflicting theories of painting." The […]