Jessie Fisher: Interview
Chris Lowrance interviews painter Jessie Fisher. Fisher comments: "I think one of the most interesting questions in a painting practice is how to be simultaneously of the present in the work and at the same time speak to a well-articulated lineage. This binary is at the core of painting, as it is essential to develop […]
Medrie MacPhee: Interview
Sharon Butler interviews painter Medrie MacPhee. MacPhee comments: "I have to feel like it’s organic to what I’m doing. I’ve done diptychs and triptychs and sewn canvases together, but never gone off the rectangle. It has to seem as if it’s inherent in the direction of what you’re doing. It can’t be an add-on. I’ve […]
Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago
James Yood reviews Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, on view through June 12, 2016. Yood writes: "… seeing the work [of the Monster Roster artists] together, as it so rarely was during its creation or since, is a valuable experience. As the exhibition’s title […]
Ken Kewley @ Gross McCleaf
John Goodrich reviews works by Ken Kewley recently on view at Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia. Goodrich writes: "Compared to merely decorative paintings, Kewley’s communicate in an elemental language based in the self-sufficiency of common objects. What does it mean to be a petal, amidst a hundred others, spreading above the plane of a table? In some […]
Allison Katz @ Gió Marconi
Ilaria Bombelli reviews Allison Katz: AKA at Gió Marconi, Milan, on view through March 25, 2016. Bombelli writes: "This piercingly calm exhibition features a selection of ten paintings, as well as six posters that hang in the entryway like a sort of musical overture, presenting a suite of blunt, raw scenes that range different rhythms […]
Delacroix at the National Gallery, London
Julian Bell reviews Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art at the National Gallery, London, on view through May 22, 2016. Bell observes: "Facts mattered less to Delacroix than the principle that a painting should form a ‘bridge’ from mind to mind. ‘I have told myself a hundred times that painting – that is, the […]
David Row, Al Held & Amy Sillman
James Kalm visits three New York shows: David Row: Four Decades of Painting at Loretta Howard Gallery (through April 2), Al Held: Black and White Paintings at Cheim & Read (through March 26), and Amy Sillman: Stuff Change at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (closed).
In the Age of Giorgione
Laura Cumming reviews In the Age of Giorgione at The Royal Academy of Arts, London, on view through June 5, 2016. Cumming writes that Giorgione, "this short-lived and nearly mythical figure had such a colossal influence over Italian art – his name translates as the great George – that the early works of Titian, no […]
David Row: Calisthenic Abstraction
Stephen Maine reviews David Row: Four Decades of Painting at Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, on view through April 2, 2016. Maine writes that "The work of New York painter David Row has been labeled 'conceptual abstraction' but the unabashed physicality of his work—of which 15 choice examples are on view at Loretta Howard Gallery—suggests “calisthenic […]
Lois Dodd @ Alexandre Gallery
John Yau reviews Lois Dodd: Day and Night at Alexandre Gallery, New York, on view through April 2, 2016. Yau writes: "Dodd’s sensitivity to light, atmosphere and color — and the way they complement each other — is understated and precise. This is because she largely eschews the dramatic moments of light favored by the […]
Frank Auerbach’s Defeat of Death
Dominic Green writes about the exhibition Frank Auerbach, on view at Tate Britain through March 13, 2016. Green concludes: "We build up life’s layers like impasto, and time scrapes back to the ground, just as Auerbach does each morning. Paint may create three-dimensional illusions in two dimensions; it cannot undo or recover the past. The force […]
The Abstract Image: Panel Discussion
Tom Burckhardt, Clare Grill, and Sangram Majumdar discuss their painting process and its relation to image-making.
John Opper @ David Findlay Jr Gallery
Peter Malone reviews John Opper: The 1980s at David Findlay Jr Gallery, New York, on view through March 19, 2016. Malone writes: "Each image is built of a dominant color, yet within each color there are subtle variations that maintain a shallow atmospheric depth — not enough to sink the color into a distracting illusion, […]
Paul Corio @ McKenzie Fine Art
Steven Alexander blogs about Paul Corio:Ghostzapper at McKenzie Fine Art, New York, on view through March 13, 2016. Alexander writes: "This vibrant and beautifully installed show explores the capricious nature of color, employing both chance and intuition to create configurations that trigger full tilt chromatic dynamism. There is an element of obsessiveness in the complexity […]
Pierre Bonnard @ Palace of the Legion of Honor
Squarecylinder
Mark Van Proyen reviews Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, on view through May 15, 2016. Van Proyen notes that the exhibition enables "a fresh look at the way that Bonnard was able to use the fluctuating warm and cool radiances of the color spectrum to model […]
Early American Portraiture: Paint Becomes “Thing”
Altoon Sultan blogs about the tactility in early American portrait painting. Sultan writes: "There is a quality in early American painting, especially seen in portraits, that fascinates me and elucidates my own work. In these works there is a precise rendering of form using quietly descriptive paint; the form is magically tactile, becoming the thing rather […]
Mernet Larsen: Things People Do
Eleanor Ray reviews the recent exhibition Mernet Larsen: Things People Do at James Cohan Gallery, New York. Ray writes: "In the best paintings, like Alphie (2015), Larsen’s descriptive economy feels expansive rather than reductive… Unusual perspectives in Alphie and Punch (2016) reinforce the mood of selective engagement by shifting the viewer’s perceived distance to foreground […]
Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art
Emily Spicer reviews Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art at the National Gallery, London, on view through May 22, 2016. Spicer writes that "little more than a third of the works on display are by Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). This is because this exhibition isn’t just about Delacroix, but also his influence on the 'rise […]
Craig Manister: Painting the Rhythm of Perception
A reverence for both paint and subject runs throughout Manister’s work, connecting his earlier abstract narratives and his more recent group of sensitively observed still lives.