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.
Carolanna Parlato: A Delicate Balance
Tom McGlynn reviews the recent exhibition Carolanna Parlato: A Delicate Balance at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York. McGlynn writes: "One can see the strong influence of contemporaries ranging from Melissa Meyer to Charles Clough to perhaps even Jonathan Lasker in Parlato’s structural approach to gestural lyricism, a type where marks can retain their separate identities […]
Who Was Hieronymus Bosch?
Tim Smith-Laing considers two exhibitions: Bosch: The Centenary Exhibition at the Prado Museum, Madrid (May 31 September 11) and Jheronimus Bosch: Visions of Genius at the Het Noordbrabants Museum (through May8 ) and what the works on view reveal about the "widely known" but not "well known" artist. Smith-Laing observes "Bosch’s Christ [Mocked] is both crowded […]
Joan Waltemath: Studio Visit
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Joan Waltemath. Discussing her Torso/Roots paintings, Waltemath comments: "They're roughly based on the torso proportions of the body, so that you can have a physical interaction with them as opposed to an intellectual or an image-based response… the physical being in the world is a […]
Amy Sillman @ Sikkema Jenkins
Alfred Mac Adam reviews Amy Sillman: Stuff Change at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, on view through March 12, 2015. Mac Adam observes "[Sillman's] working conceit for this dazzling, wide-ranging show of paintings, drawings, and videos is metabolism. By this, we take her to mean the process that breaks down received material and builds […]
Charlotte Park @ Berry Campbell
Charles A. Riley II reviews Charlotte Park (1918-2010) at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, on view through March 12, 2016. Riley writes: "Jubilee (1955), [is] the most muscular, tactile work in the Berry Campbell show. The dominant color is the orange of an established wood fire, which spreads from edge to edge out of a funnel […]
David Row @ Loretta Howard
Martin Mugar blogs about David Row: Four Decades of Painting at Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, on view through April 2, 2016. Mugar writes: "The introduction of the curvilinear into [Row's] work appears to be lifted from the late paintings of de Kooning. To achieve an understanding of the Abstract Expressionist De Kooning, a notion of […]
Helen O’Leary: The Shelf Life of Facts
Artist Helen O’Leary discusses her artistic background and the origins of her current body of work.
Martha Diamond: Awesome Pursuit of Variety
David Carrier reviews the recent exhibition Martha Diamond: Recent Paintings at Alexandre Gallery, New York. Carrier writes: "Diamond’s happily awesome pursuit of visual variety never slips into cliché, her show is more than the sum of its parts, which is to say your pleasure in each of these painterly pictures involves awareness that many otherwise different […]
Three NYC Painting Shows
John Yau reviews three New York shows: Painting Forward at Thomas Erben (through April 2), Real States at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through March 13), and Subliminal Shifts at Tracy Williams (through March 6). Although focusing his review on many of the younger and mid-career painters in the exhibition, including Clare Grill, Sangram Majumdar, […]
Catherine Haggarty: Studio Visit
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Catherine Haggarty. Haggarty comments: "I never start a painting and think I'm going to arrive at a subject, or I'm going to find it through process… I want mistakes to happen and I want process to intervene and surprise me and interrupt me but … […]
Mernet Larsen: Eye to Eye
Viktor Witkowski blogs about the recent exhibition Mernet Larsen: Things People Do at James Cohan Gallery, New York. Witkowski writes: "Mernet Larsen maintains a sense of human relationships among her depicted characters. Larsen’s constructed worlds are not measured attempts to categorize or create various types. Her character’s faces speak of individuality and are immersed in […]
Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen
Kate Kellaway profiles painter Hilma Af Klint on the occasion of the exhibition Hilma af Klint Painting the Unseen at the Serpentine Gallery, London on view March 3 – May 15, 2016. Kellaway writes: "Between 1906-1915, there followed 193 paintings – an astonishing outpouring – known as the Paintings for the Temple. Whatever one’s misgivings about […]
Margaret Grimes on Ruth Miller
Margaret Grimes writes about the paintings of Ruth Miller. Grimes observes: ” in Miller’s work, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The deliberate nostalgia of the still life objects – none manufactured later than the 1930’s – the autumnal harvest vegetables with their rich, dark colors or highly saturated ones, the […]
Robert Storr on Rick Briggs
An essay by Robert Storr on the paintings of Rick Brigg's whose exhibition Full Circle is on view at the Flecker Gallery, Suffolk County Community College through March 18, 2016. Storr writes: "Briggs is not trying to blow painting to smithereens or starve it into submission – but rather make emphatically material visual objects that […]
Goya’s People & the Modernist Audience
David Sweet reflects on the recent exhibition Goya: The Portraits at The National Gallery, London. Sweet writes that "[Goya] depicts the faces of his subjects as marked or unmarked by experience, altering his painting method to accommodate this insight at the expense of technical and aesthetic pictorial unity… the emphasis on the individual and the […]
What I Learned Working for Ellsworth Kelly
Matthew Garrison writes about his experience as a studio assistant to Ellsworth Kelly. Garrison recalls: "I became an 'assistant to his assistant,' with varied responsibilities: I stretched canvas, prepared the backing of finished paintings, inventoried sketchbooks, and set the studio up for visits. Perfection was always the goal. Kelly explained that the back of a […]
William N. Copley on Serge Charchoune
Blog post revisiting William N. Copley 1960 profile of painter Serge Charchoune, republished on the occasion of the exhibition William N. Copley: The World According to CPLY on view at The Menil Collection, Houston through July 24, 2016. Copley writes: "Considering Charchoune in the light of what observations we have been able to make, we […]