Painting at the Miami Art Fairs
Joanne Mattera photo blogs an extensive selection of paintings from the 2015 Miami Art fairs including Art Basel Miami Beach, Untitled, Pulse, NADA, and Miami Project.
Robert Berlind: Deceptive Simplicity, Regal Elegance
Rebecca Allan remembers painter Robert Berlind. Berlind's work will be on view at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York from January 9 – February 13, 2016. Allan writes: "The movement of Berlind’s vision reminded me of the gestures of a Tai Chi practitioner, gradually encompassing all dimensions of space (and time). We sense the scanning and […]
Robert Ryman: Shades of White
Peter Schjeldahl reviews a retrospective of works by Robert Ryman at Dia:Chelsea, New York, on view through June 18, 2016. Schjeldahl writes: "Ryman’s reductions of painting to basic protocols are engaging only to the extent that you regard painting as an art that is both inherently important and circumstantially in crisis. You must buy into […]
Matthew Metzger: Interview
Gwendolyn Zabicki interviews painter Matthew Metzger. Metzger comments: "I am tied to the belief that paint can be alchemic in a way. I think the illusion that paint has the capability of reconfiguring itself through becoming something other than itself has always been fundamental to painting. … I know it sounds ridiculous or perhaps a […]
Svenja Deininger: Interview
An interview with painter Svenja Deininger whose show Untitled / Head was recently on view at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York. Deininger comments: "My work can be like a sentence. It is about combining single paintings in a space like there are single words in a sentence and finally in a story. In their combination […]
Eleanor Ray @ Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects
John Yau reviews Eleanor Ray: Paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through December 24, 2015. Yau writes: "[Ray's] cropping also reminds us that every view is partial. We cannot step back and see everything; we can only get closer. Within these demarcated areas, Ray uses a lightly textured skin of […]
Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye
Phyllis Tuchman reviews Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, on view through February 14, 2016. Tuchman writes: "Though he exhibited with the Impressionists—and even underwrote some of their most important group exhibitions—it was the modernity of Caillebotte’s compositions, not sketchy stylistic traits, that qualified him for inclusion in […]
Cary Smith @ Fredericks & Freiser
Ken Johnson reviews an exhibition of paintings by Cary Smith at Fredericks & Freiser, New York, on view through January 9, 2016. Johnson writes that "[Smith's] works don’t aim to deflate Modernist art à la Sherrie Levine and others of the Neo-Geo trend of the 1980s. There’s a sense, rather, of personally expressive import to […]
Matt Kleberg: Interview
Matt Phillips interviews painter Matt Kleberg. Kleberg observes that "[the] idea of expectation and disappointment goes back to the form. I love this idea. These paintings are like frames within frames within frames within frames. There’s a lot of framing. There are stripes. Everything is rhythmic. And some have curtains drawn back and everything is […]
Courtney J. Martin on Robert Ryman
Allie Biswas interviews curator Courtney J. Martin about the work of Robert Ryman on the occasion of an exhibition of works by Ryman at Dia:Chelsea, New York, on view through June 18, 2016. Martin comments: "it was never just white paint: at the very beginning, he was simply experimenting. In many ways, it’s not just […]
Donald Judd & Giorgio Morandi: Simple Forms & Depth of Feeling
Altoon Sultan blogs about two exhibitions currently on view at David Zwirner Gallery, New York: Giorgio Morandi and Donald Judd (both on view through December 19). Sultan writes that at the Judd show: "Here was work that was intensely formal––about shape and dimension and repetition and balance and weight and color––that was so beautiful in […]
Stephen Westfall: Interview
Rob Kaiser-Schatzlein interviews painter Stephen Westfall. Westfall comments: "The broken harlequin grid paintings have an element that is a new development inside this developing language of my painting, which I am looking forward to pursuing. Though right now I am kind of locked in to this sense of torqued space. That’s the space that is […]
Simon Callery: Interview
Laurence Noga interviews Simon Callery whose show Flat Paintings was recently on view at FOLD Gallery, London. Callery comments: "The questioning of flatness, which I believe is very important, is that I recognized that flatness is the product of image-based painting. It had to be flat to communicate as clearly as possible. I am not […]
Eleanor Ray & Zach Harris
Xico Greenwald reviews Eleanor Ray: Paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through December 24) and Zach Harris: Must Chill at Feuer/Mesler (through December 19). Greenwald writes that both Harris and Ray's works are products of "expeditions to view Renaissance masterworks in the churches and museums of Italy and France… Ray’s postcard-sized pictures are perfectly suited […]
Simon Hantaï: Blancs
John Mendelsohn reviews the recent exhibition Simon Hantaï: Blancs at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York. Mendelsohn begins: "The Blancs, a series of paintings that Simon Hantaï (1922-2008) created in the early 1970s, have shards of transparent color that are arrayed over expanses of white space. These delicate large-scale works vary in the intensity of their […]
Jane Freilicher & Jane Wilson: Seen and Unseen
Jennifer Landes reviews Jane Freilicher and Jane Wilson: Seen and Unseen at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York, on view through January 18, 2016. Landes writes: "Both born in 1924, [Freilicher and Wilson] were two of the very last of a glittering and venerated generation of artists and writers left standing before their […]
Nikolai Astrup: Painting Norway
Richard Moss previews Nikolai Astrup: Painting Norway (1880 – 1928), which will be on view at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London from February 5 – May 15 2016. Moss writes: "Rather like Stanley Spencer’s, Cookham, it was Astrup’s home at Sandalstrand (now known as ‘Astruptunet’) in the district of Jølster that became his muse and inspiration. […]
Norman Lewis @ PAFA
Andrea Kirsh reviews Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), on view through April 3, 2016. Kirsh writes: "Lewis’ great subject was mankind, not the individual but the community, undifferentiated as to race or background. His abstractions and his processions, parades, marches, and crowd scenes—abstract at a distance […]
Brenda Goodman: Five Decades
Sarah Rose Sharp reviews Brenda Goodman: Selected Works 1961–2015 continues at CCS Center Galleries, Detroit, and Brenda Goodman: A Life on Paper at Paul Kotula Projects (both on view through Dec 19). Rose Sharp writes that Goodman's oeuvre "is a little bit difficult to sum up, perhaps, because over the course of this long and […]
Bill Corbett on Franz Kline
Poet Bill Corbett shares his thoughts on Franz Kline with Noah Dillon. Corbett remarks: "I think he was after the dream of the abstract painters, which was to make drawing and painting one. For these guys — for him, Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning — it was to get the immediacy of drawing, to locate […]