Julie Mehretu: Can Social Abstraction Succeed?
Art F City
Paddy Johnson reviews Julie Mehretu: Hoodnyx, Voodoo and Stelae at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, on view through October 29, 2016. Johnson writes: “Without the titles, there’s no way to identify the grim events that inspire [Mehretu’s] work. The paintings add little to a path of abstract artist well trodden by now. With them, the mass […]
Painting Joan Mitchell
Beyond Print
Julia Greenstreet writes about the Joan Mitchell’s print collaborations with Kenneth Tyler. Greenstreet writes: “Although Mitchell was a painter above all else (oil on canvas was her preferred medium), she was also an accomplished printmaker and produced a significant graphic oeuvre of prints and artist books… Tyler was struck by Mitchell’s ‘mastery of colour unparalleled […]
Celia Paul @ Victoria Miro
Studio International
Joe Lloyd reviews Celia Paul: Desdemona for Hilton by Celia at Victoria Miro Mayfair, London, on view through October 29, 2016. Lloyd writes: “Three self-portraits, a painting of her sister, a depiction of a room, and a seascape sequence: these are the components that combine to form the English painter Celia Paul’s Desdemona for Hilton […]
Nancy Hagin on Giorgio Morandi
Painting Perceptions
Nancy Hagin considers the work of Giorgio Morandi. Hagin writes: “I marvel at [Morandi’s] various strategies. He loved to play games with the table’s back horizon line and the tops of the objects. He always placed the salmon shape exquisitely, sometimes sandwiching it tightly between forms. The dominant light brownish gray is beautiful. How did […]
Zak Prekop @ Shane Campbell
New City Art
Chris Miller reviews paintings by Zak Prekop at Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, on view through October 22, 2016. Miller writes: “Some works seem to be exploding; others collect the shrapnel that follows. A few feel quiet and mysterious, especially when patterns have been painted, or glued, on the reverse, so images emerge dimly from the back… […]
Florine Stettheimer: Feminist Provocateur
Hyperallergic
Barbara Bloemink considers painter Florine Stettheimer’s important, but often overlooked, contributions as a feminist. Bloemink writes: “Stettheimer never painted ‘fantasies’ — her works are all based on factual, thoroughly researched details — and her style and subject matter were carefully chosen. She prophetically chose to portray unique subjects, including race, sexual orientation, gender, and religion, in […]
Daubigny: Inspiring Impressionism
Apollo Magazine
Sam Kitchener reviews the recent exhibition Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh at the Scottish National Gallery. Kitchener writes: “Just how far Daubigny influenced Monet and vice versa is left open to interpretation here. But a startling use, or rather perception, of colour, had long been a feature of Daubigny’s work… Van Gogh’s work during […]
The Chase: Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed
London Review of Books
Inigo Thomas reconsiders J.M.W. Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway (1844). Thomas asks: “chasing after hares is as old as any ancient rite, but who or what is hunting the hare in Turner’s painting? Is it just a train, and how familiar, really, is that location? You can shut down the iconographical […]
Katherine Bradford: Interview
Bomb Magazine
Samuel Jablon interviews painter Katherine Bradford. Bradford comments: “I think knowing when to stop, knowing when you have a work of art in front of you, now that takes a special kind of eye. And in order to be able to do that you have to be pretty savvy about what’s going on… There has to […]
Joan Semmel: A Woman’s Body
Two Coats of Paint
Sharon Butler blogs about Joan Semmel: New Work at Alexander Gray Associates, New York, on view through October 15, 2016. Butler writes: “Semmel’s lively, lyrical new paintings … depict fragmented sections of the aging female body, often from angles that can only be seen by women themselves. The gloriously large-scale nudes, all self portraits and […]
Hearne Pardee @ Bowery Gallery
On View At
John Goodrich reviews a recent exhibition of works by Hearne Pardee at Bowery Gallery, New York. Goodrich writes: “When artists share their process, they usually call our attention to particularly evocative materials and techniques. Pardee, however, focuses on a different kind of process, one that’s arguably even more fundamental to visual experience: the challenges of […]
Gregory Amenoff: Mind’s Eye
New York Sun Arts
Xico Greenwald reviews Gregory Amenoff: New Paintings at Alexandre Gallery, New York, on view through October 29, 2016. Greenwald writes that Amenoff’s “landscape-based abstractions teeming with organic shapes that suggest trees, caves, plant cells, soil, sky and water. But the forms here are not based on careful observation of the natural world. Rather, these are […]
6 Painters on Abstract Expressionism
RA Magazine
Frank Bowling, Christopher Le Brun, Mali Morris, Vanessa Jackson, Fiona Rae and Sean Scully each share their thoughts on an Abstract Expressionist painter on the occasion of the exhibition Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy, London, on view through January 2, 2017.
Nicole Wittenberg: Interview
Two Coats of Paint
Kate Liebman interviews Nicole Wittenberg on the occasion of Wittenberg’s show The Yellow Kiss at yours mine & ours, New York through October 16, 2016. Wittenberg comments: “I spend a lot of time looking at photographs and things online, facebook, instagram, and also out in the world taking pictures and make observational drawings. I do […]
Lester Johnson’s Painting
Painting: Martin Mugar
Martin Mugar considers the achievements of painter Lester Johnson. Mugar writes: “Lester Johnson’s work is a profound meditation on our being in the world, with all the ambiguities between self and society. A psychologist and a sociologist can use these terms to describe the structure of both but they can’t tell you how it feels […]
Rhetorical Abstraction in the Age of the Incidental Viewer
Hyperallergic
Gwenaël Kerlidou reflects on the work of Frank Stella. Kerlidou writes: “Stella’s main argument boils down to this: How to make paintings that don’t lose the status of paintings by becoming objects — paintings that evacuate the subjectivity of both the painter and the viewer, and replace it with historical necessity? But, by rejecting expression, […]
Ed Moses @ Albertz Benda
Steven Alexander Journal
Steven Alexander blogs about Ed Moses: Painting as Process at Albertz Benda, New York, on view through October 15, 2016. Alexander writes: “Central to Moses’ work is the notion of constructing a painting through a process of interacting with materials, of setting a process in motion, and accepting the results… Bolstered by a large selection of […]
The Soul of Alice Neel
New York Review of Books
Claire Messud reviews the new catalogue Alice Neel: Painter of Modern Life (Mercatorfonds/Yale University Press). The exhibition will be on view at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Netherlands from November 5, 2016 – February 12, 2017. Messud concludes: “This exhilarating compendium of Neel’s oeuvre is remarkably cohesive, in spite of the diversity of Neel’s images and subjects, […]
Bradley Walker Tomlin: A Retrospective
Brooklyn Rail
Joyce Beckenstein reviews Bradley Walker Tomlin: A Retrospective opening at The Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, on view through December 11, 2016. Beckenstein begins: “Filling in the personal and art historical gaps that have lingered in the forty years since Tomlin’s last full dress show, this exhibition deftly tracks this artist’s idiosyncratic style, one that lives […]
Walter Darby Bannard (1934-2016)
Artblog
Franklin Einspruch remembers painter Walter Darby Bannard (1934-2016). Einspruch writes: “[Bannard’s] was a life full of brilliant friends, talented colleagues, and passionate relationships. Throughout it all and up to the end, he painted. When he was painting, canvases tacked to the floor, surrounded by jars of acrylics, and an arsenal of squeegees, brooms, and brushes […]