Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty
Karen Wilkin reviews Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, on view through July 24, 2016. Wilkin writes: "Powerful as Degas’s monotypes of figures are, the most surprising works in 'Strange New Beauty' may be the landscapes. Made in the early 1890s, and sometimes based on shadowy second […]
Albert Kresch: Studio Visit
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Albert Kresch. Kresch comments: "Light is maybe the second most important thing in a painting for me… space [is first] … I studied very early with [Hofmann] I was 18 in 1942 and 43… Push and pull didn't interest me… I wanted to hurl the spectator […]
How Critical Thinking Sabotages Painting
Laurie Fendrich challenges the efficacy of emphasizing critical thinking when teaching painting. Fendrich argues: "Applied to painting, critical thinking too often ends up calling into question the very medium—a deconstructionist impulse that particularly sabotages beginning students. Playing baseball or tennis requires accepting the game as a whole, and so does painting. But unlike baseball or […]
Lois Dodd: Day & Night
John Goodrich reviews Lois Dodd: Day & Night at Alexandre Gallery, New York, on view through April 9, 2016. Goodrich writes: "What does it mean to paint representationally? For a Photorealist, it means a point-by-point recapitulation: the fixed, dispassionate vantage point of a camera. For a more tradition-minded painter, it involves a weighting of masses […]
Raoul Middleman on Rembrandt
Raoul Middleman considers an alternate, more personal reading of Rembrandt's The Night Watch (1642). Middleman writes: "In The Night Watch Saskia seems to be going against the tide of the militia’s marching, heading in the opposing direction, from the left to right instead of from the drummer on the right to the left, strangely detached […]
A Tribute to Jake Berthot
Riad Miah remembers painter Jake Berthot (1939-2015). Jake Berthot: In Color is on view at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York through April 23, 2016. Miah writes: "I pursued Jake Berthot as a teacher and an artist because I believed then and now in his values of what it means to be an artist. The world […]
Martha Armstrong: Interview
Larry Groff interviews painter Martha Armstrong. Armstrong comments: "I certainly start with something or someone I’m looking at, and often I’ll go from beginning to end just looking at each subject. But my whole motive will be to get what I see, and determine how to translate that into painting. That is the first question. […]
On And Off The Grid – Generating Abstraction
Tom Wachunas writes about the exhibition On And Off The Grid – Generating Abstraction: Paintings by Elizabeth Yamin, Emily Berger, Susan Post, and Bosiljka Radista, at Main Hall Art Gallery, Kent State University, North Canton, Ohio, on view through April 6, 2016. Wachunas observes: "I think it’s important to appreciate painterly abstraction in general as […]
On Painting & Painters’ Table @ The New York Studio School
Painters’ Table readers are invited to an artist talk at the New York Studio School.
Neil Callander: Interview
Sam King interviews painter Neil Callander, whose work will be on view in the exhibition Made Realities/Real Situations: Recent Paintings by Neil Callander, Russell Horton and Marc Roder at the Washington Art Association, Washington CT from April 9 – May 7, 2016. Callander comments: "I’m not a certain-minded or directed painter but I am a […]
Gustave Moreau: Paint Is the Language of God
Tim Keane reflects on works by Gustave Moreau on view in the exhibition Les Fleurs du Mal at Nahmad Contemporary, New York, on view through April 9, 2016. Keane writes: "Moreau’s work is charged by an 'awareness' of an especially modern kind — the psychodynamics between a viewer and an image. His scantily clad figures […]
Mira Schor: Death is a Conceptual Artist
Bradley Rubenstein writes about Mira Schor: Death is a Conceptual Artist at Lyles & King, New York, on view through April 24, 2016. Rubenstein observes: "The depiction of power, though its presence is immaterial, has been a source of fascination for painters since, well, there has been painting. Michalangelo, David, Rembrandt, Benglis, Golub, Kruger, and […]
Mark Greenwold at Garth Greenan Gallery
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting talk to painter Mark Greenwold at his exhibition The Rumble of Panic Underlying Everything at Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, on view through March 26, 2016. Greenwold comments: "I'm a formalist… I still feel like my language is essentially a formalist language, essentially a language of abstraction because my paintings […]
Thomas Nozkowski: Interview
Robin Scher interviews painter Thomas Nozkowski on the occasion of his exhibition of Works on Paper at Pace Gallery, New York, on view through March 26, 2016. Nozkowski remarks: "We tend to get obsessed with language and the information that can be carried by language. But I think long before men spoke, certainly before they […]
Rothko and Music
The Art Newspaper
In excerpt from his new book, Mark Rothko: from the Inside Out (Yale University Press), Christopher Rothko reflects on his father’s love of music (in particular Mozart) and its influence on his paintings. Christopher Rothko writes: “Rothko paintings, at their most affective, do engage us in a full-body experience touching all the senses. On the […]
Hilma af Klint: Category Error
Wessie du Toit reflects on the exhibition Hilma af Klint Painting the Unseen at the Serpentine Gallery, London on view through May 15, 2016. Du Toit writes: "Ultimately, though, the greatest value of art-historical anomalies like af Klint does not stem from their elusiveness, nor from their canon-defying dates … It is that their work tends […]
Dennis Kardon: Interview
Crystal "Kitty" Shimski interviews painter Dennis Kardon, whose exhibition Reflections on the Surface is on view at Valentine Gallery, Ridgewood, Queens, through April 3, 2016. Asked about skill in art Kardon comments: "It is a word that has become vastly misunderstood when applied to painting. The problem with the word is that it implies an […]
Joan Brown Herself @ CB1-G
David Pagel reviews Joan Brown Herself: Paintings and Constructions, 1970-1980 at George Adams Gallery at CB1-G, Los Angeles, on view through April 23, 2016. Pagel writes that this "straightforward show is at once enchanting and matter of fact. Nothing fancy animates the powerful pictures of the San Francisco painter (1938-1990), whose work gets more riveting […]
Judith Belzer @ George Lawson
Maria Porges reviews Judith Belzer: Canal Zone: Recent Work from the Panama Project at George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, on view through April 9, 2016. Porges writes: "[Belzer's] intention, it seems, is not to disturb the viewer, but to simply observe, interpret, and record. She describes her experience of studying the canal as being akin […]
Sam Gilliam: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Sam Gilliam. In her introduction Samet notes: "Although Gilliam is best known for his 'Drape' paintings—unstretched canvases stained in vibrant pigments and extended into three-dimensional space—the surfaces of the paintings he has made over a fifty-plus-year career are actually quite diverse. They include the “Black” and “White” paintings: dense thickets of […]