Mark Bradford: Silent Strength
Deborah Barlow looks at Mark Bradford's exhibition at the ICA in Boston. Bradford's work can be seen through "many lenses—political, sociological, race-based, gender, abstraction, counter trends, arte povera, inner city aesthetics… maybe this is a show that needs several viewings to appreciate the density of meaning and form that Bradford is pursuing."
Painting Today
Dougal McKenzie reviews Painting Today, recently released in a 2nd edition. "It's certainly hard to resist, and with over 280 painters featured and almost 500 illustrations it may just satisfy those who have exhausted the pages of Phaidon's other seminal 'new painting' book Vitamin P."
A Remarkable Posthumous Debut
David Cohen brings to our attention "a remarkable posthumous debut. Marie-Louise von Motesiczky… protégé to Max Beckmann and later, and to a lesser degree, Oskar Kokoschka, but for all the manifest influence of both, von Motesiczky is an audaciously lyrical painter of expressive, poignant, sometimes haunting allegories."
Blinky Palermo at LACMA
Comprehensive installation photos from Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964–1977 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition runs through January 16, 2011.
Young Eva’s “Ghastly Visages”
Daily Serving selects Eva Hesse, Spectres 1960 for its best of 2010 series even though the exhibition "…seemed destined to play into the mythology that has so disserviced Hesse’s legacy: that of the tortured soul, gone too soon (as if Hesse, like Sylvia Plath, a figure to whom she’s often been illogically linked, died with […]
Bound Lines: Brice Marden’s New Paintings
After having "a mixed relationship with Brice Marden's paintings over the years", painter Altoon Sultan comes away from the current exhibition Brice Marden: Letters at Matthew Marks with a new opinion: "These paintings looked beautiful, sensitive, sensuous, lyrical. Trying to tease out my change of heart I see something different in the work, and probably […]
Takashi Murakami in Rome
At Gagosian Gallery, Rome Artist Takashi Murakami exhibits "two epic paintings… Dragon in Clouds- Red Mutation (2010) and Dragon in Clouds- Indigo Blue (2010) each comprise of nine panels, measure eighteen meters in length and depart from the artist’s usual technicolor palette to revert to more traditional Japanese influences."
Albert Irvin
Painter Albert Irvin "talked to TateShots about three of his paintings; Flodden, St Germain and Empress, pieces that he hadn’t seen since they were last on show at the Tate. Albert explain[s] … how and why he made the trio, as well as offering up his thoughts on his career as an artist."
Five From LA / Kassay, Morris & Overton
James Kalm visits two exhibitions: Five from LA at Galerie Lelong and Kassay, Overton, Morris at Mitchell-Innes and Nash. Five from LA "features paintings by… Whitney Bedford, Kirsten Everberg, Alexandra Grant, Iva Gueorguieva and Annie Lapin… all California based painters who meld representation with abstraction or the mediation of pigment… Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents works […]
Kiki Smith’s L.E.S. Stained Glass Window
A new stained-glass window co-designed by artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans graces the refurbished Eldridge Street Synagogue. Smith's design features symbols of both the United States and the Jewish faith "establishing the identity of the United States, and marrying symbolically the Jewish faith and the immigrant population of the Lower East Side that […]
Conversation with E M Saniga
"A recent conversation between Rebecca Harp and E. M. Saniga, an intriguing and enigmatic artist based in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County… [Saniga] paints rural and urban landscapes, still lifes and figures with a palette, construction and diffused light of his own unique realism"
Trompe l’Oeil: Kaz Oshiro & Steve Wolfe
Ed Schad writes about two exhibitions: Kaz Oshiro, Home Anthology 2 at Las Cienegas Projects and Steve Wolfe on Paper at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Both artists work in trompe l'oeil. Schad writes "There is something about trompe-l'œil … that strikes to the core of art, its illusions both interesting and slightly disappointing. […]
Katharina Grosse at MASS MOCA
Martin Bromirski posts some great installation photos of the recently opened Katharina Grosse exhibition "One Floor Up More Highly" at MASS MOCA. He also posts links to his recent three part post about an artist talk Grosse gave in 2005.
Raw & the Cooked: Hans Hartung
Artcritical's Jonanthan Goodman reviews Hans Hartung at Cheim & Read. Goodman writes: "The canvases at Cheim & Read emphasize Hartung’s trademark lyric gesture:with the help of spray paint, he created works whose lyricism is extreme, bordering on the decorative… Yet is it unwise to write off Hartung’s achievement … in light of a life’s accomplishments, […]
Jim Nutt & Gladys Nilsson
Richard Hull interviews artists and long time partners Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson about their work, influences, and collecting art. Hull writes: "With fierce independence and a nonchalant attitude toward reigning trends in contemporary art, they create paintings and drawings that root from an intense need to make things, and to make them right."
Mondrian at Centre Pompidou
Abstract Painting England reports on the exhibition Mondrian/de Stijl at Centre Pompidou in Paris. "The exhibition explores his commitment to painting from the early years of the twentieth century, through his ground breaking developments with De Stijl combining his ideas on Theosophy with other artists, Theo Van Doesburg and Gerrit Rietveld. They created such a […]
Picasso’s Flesh World
Regina Hackett writes about Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee Picasso in Paris on view at the Seattle Art Museum through January 17, 2011. She writes: "The best thing about the Picasso exhibit … stems from its history. More than 90 percent of the 100-plus paintings, sculptures and drawings were not sold but saved by the […]
Heading North: Lawren Harris
Painter Philip Koch writes about Lawren Harris "a Canadian landscape painter active in the earlier years of the 20th century… a northern equivalent of the American regionalist painters Charles Burchfield and Grant Wood." Koch admires, among other things, the way Harris "can combine the most muscular massive shapes … with the most delicate and lace […]
Rochelle Feinstein
Justin Lieberman visits painter Rochelle Feinstein's studio to discuss her recent painting project The Estate of Rochelle F. Lieberman describes Feinstein's work: "hard to decipher. It is full of jokes, yet oddly lacking in punch lines. Unlike that of many of her postmodernist contemporaries, its elusive meaning has consistently deferred any sort of commodification. Alongside […]
At the Met: Relief Sculpture
Original photos and commentary on relief sculptures on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by painter Altoon Sultan who writes: "… my favorite form of sculpture is the relief, both high and low, which may be because it is closer to painting in being tethered to a plane; sensitivity of line is emphasized and […]