Transcending Despair: Rothko, Herrera, Martin
Tamar Zinn
Tamar Zinn finds comfort from current events in three abstract painting exhibitions: Mark Rothko: Dark Palette at Pace Gallery, New York (through January 7), Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight at the Whitney Museum (through January 9), and Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim Museum (through January 11). Zinn writes: “It is through the arts, as well […]
Outside In: 5 Painters @ Steven Harvey
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Outside In at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, on view through December 31, 2016. The show features works by Andrea Belag, Susanna Coffey, Elliott Green, Stephanie Pierce, and Eleanor Ray Yau writes: “I am thankful for the nameless sensations and wild associations these paintings stirred up. The pleasures they offer are real, […]
Betty Parsons & Abstract Expressionism
Patterns That Connect
Andy Parkinson considers the paintings of Betty Parsons. Parkinson writes: “In her paintings Parsons borrows more from her AbEx contemporaries, but without the all-important scale, Clyfford Still in miniature, almost. Parsons also looks back to earlier European modernist works, those of Paul Klee for example, not only in the modest sized of her canvases but […]
Cubism & War @ the Museo Picasso
The Artblog
Justin O. Walker reviews Cubism and War: The Crystal and the Flame at the Museu Picasso, Barcelona, on view through January 29th 2017. Walker writes: “The exhibit reveals the cubists in Paris were never far from the external specter of ruin, and evidently leery of the internal one. The war to end all wars was […]
Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism
New York Review of Books
J. Hoberman reviews Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view through January 8, 2017. Hoberman writes: “To a degree, ‘Paint the Revolution’ is the story of the three star muralists, Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco, who along with the posthumously canonized Frida Kahlo, defined the new […]
Max Beckmann in New York
Too Much Art
Mario Naves reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017. Naves observes: “Among the most striking aspects of Beckmann’s vision is that, notwithstanding his meditations on human folly and vice, it never descends into nihilism or despair. The paintings bristle and bump with […]
Renoir @ the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Apollo Magazine
Paul Bonaventura reviews Renoir: Intimacy at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, on view through January 22, 2017. Bonaventura writes: “Guillermo Solana, the Thyssen’s artistic director and curator of the show, suggests in the catalogue that Renoir had his brain in his hands. Painting for him was not an intellectual pursuit to be conjectured and argued over, it was […]
Emily Carr & Wolfgang Paalen in British Columbia
Art:21 Magazine
Colin Browne considers the impact of a little known meeting between modernist painter Emily Carr and German surrealist Wolfgang Paalen on their subsequent work.
Beyond Caravaggio @ The National Gallery, London
London Review of Books
Julian Bell reviews Beyond Caravaggio at The National Gallery, London, on view through January 15, 2017. Describing Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ (1602), Bell observes “This is beauty, Caravaggio-style. An object is illuminated and scrutinised until its textures sing out. Comparable pleasures are on offer when Caravaggio paints a glass vase in the National Gallery’s […]
What Diebenkorn & Matisse Taught Me
Getty Iris
Elyn Zimmerman reflects on his studies with Richard Diebenkorn on the occasion of Matisse/Diebenkorn at the Baltimore Museum of Art (through January 29, 2017) and at the San Francisco Museum of Art from March 11 – May 29, 2017. Zimmerman recalls: “A favorite topic [of Diebenkorn’s] was Henri Matisse… Diebenkorn spoke about the difficulty of […]
Pat Steir @ Dominique Lévy
Studio International
Matthew Rudman reviews works by Pat Steir at Dominique Lévy Gallery, London, on view through January 28, 2017. Rudman writes: “Simple enough at first glance, these paintings reward close observation: secondary colours emerge in the chaos, cracks reveal layers beneath, near-transparent layers of oil paint glint in the changing light. As Steir told Interview magazine, this […]
Allison Miller: Accidentally On Purpose
Painting Smoking Eating
Jason Ramos reviews Allison Miller: Screen Jaw Door Arch Prism Corner Bed at The Pit, Glendale, CA, on view through December 12, 2016. Ramos writes: “Splotches, squiggles, stripes, deckles. The namable things in Allison Miller’s paintings exist just over and under the threshold of identifiable, representational imagery. Each of the decisions documented on her canvases […]
Matisse/Diebenkorn @ the Baltimore Museum of Art
Hyperallergic
Barry Nemett reviews Matisse/Diebenkorn at the Baltimore Museum of Art, on view through January 29, 2017. Nemet concludes: “Blurring distance and time, both men unapologetically embraced their aesthetic kindred spirits across oceans and ages, and brought them home. While passions enter artists’ studios, immaculate conceptions don’t. Connections, which give birth to creation, are at the […]
Clarity Haynes: Studio Visit
Gorky's Granddaughter
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Clarity Haynes. Haynes remarks: “Realism with a captial ‘R’ in many ways I do think is inherently political because it isn’t taking us away from the world as we know it, it’s forcing us to look at it.”
The Democracy of Touches: A New Reading of Richard Pousette-Dart
Brooklyn Rail
Phong Bui reflects on two exhibitions: Richard Pousette-Dart: The Centennial at Pace Gallery (closed) and Altered States: The Etchings of Richard Pousette-Dart at Del Deo & Barzune, on view through December 16, 2016. Bui writes: “In confronting such an overwhelmingly tactile yet optical experience, I’ve come to realize the impulse to build up surfaces corresponds […]
Laurie Fendrich @ Louis Stern Fine Arts
Artillery
Suzanne Muchnic profiles painter Laurie Fendrich on the occasion of Fendrich’s exhibition at Louis Stern Fine Arts, on view through December 3, 2016. Muchnic writes: “Beyond their fine craftsmanship and comic edge, Fendrich’s spirited abstractions and [Jane ]Austen’s captivating stories may appear to have little in common. But as critic Mark W. Stevens has noted, […]
Frank Avray Wilson @ Whitford Fine Art
AbCrit
Nick Moore reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Frank Avray Wilson at Whitford Fine Art, London. Moore writes: “The first thing one is aware of walking into a room full of Avray Wilson’s paintings is the vibrant colour; vibrant in that it appears to be alive and pulsing, even glowing, bringing to mind stained […]
Laura Owens @ Sadie Coles
Studio International
Cassie Davies reviews works by Laura Owens at Sadie Coles, London, on view through December 16, 2016. Davies writes: “Much of the artist’s work comes from experimenting and, as this show reveals, the results are unpredictable. While some of Owens’s paintings have familiar links, for the most part, each work stands out as an individual, […]
James Ensor @ The Royal Academy
London Review of Books
T.J. Clark writes about Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on view through January 29, 2017. Clark observes: “Perhaps it is true that an artist’s influences should not interest us much (Ensor’s wish to drop the subject has my sympathy) unless what they give rise to in the […]
Grant Drumheller: Interview
Painting Perceptions
Larry Groff interviews painter Grant Drumheller whose work will be on view at the Prince Street Gallery, New York from December 1 – 29, 2016. Drumheller remarks: “The notion of making a painting is the farthest thing from my mind. I want a painting experience! Even when I am painting a small image, the beginning […]