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 […]
Robert Ryman: One Color With the Power of Many
Roberta Smith reviews works by Robert Ryman at Dia:Chelsea, New York, on view through June 18, 2016. Smith writes: "In effect, Mr. Ryman has spent his career circling Point A, proving that there are an infinite number of ways to meet painting’s basic requirements… It helps to think of Mr. Ryman as a kind of philosopher-carpenter […]
Lawren Harris @ the Hammer Museum
Patricia Maloney reviews Lawren Harris: The Idea of North at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, on view through January 24, 2016. Maloney writes: "The paintings in The Idea of North are fluid, frictionless semblances of place, composed of rhythmic forms that fold and undulate. They are ideas instead of sites. Each group shares the distinctive […]
Anne Harris @ Cultivator
Philip A. Hartigan reviews Anne Harris: Coddled and Bruised at Cultivator, Chicago, on view through December 13, 2015. Hartigan writes that "[Harris's] new series mostly consists of roughly-painted torsos, seen from the front. The outline of arms and a body sometimes emerges from the monochromatic ground via thinly painted marks, or is announced loudly with […]
Joseph Nechvatal: Interview
Thyrza Nichols Goodeve interviews artist Joseph Nechvatal whose exhibition Odyssey pandemOnium : a migrational metaphor is on view at Galerie Richard, New York through December 16, 2015. Asked why he refers to his recent works as paintings, Nechvatal responds "Because they are one-of-a-kind painted canvases that have been airbrush spray painted through a computer-robotic driven […]
Jackson Pollock: 1934-1954 @ MoMA
Natasha Kurchanova reviews Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934-1954 at Museum of Modern Art, New York, on view through March 13, 2016. Kurchanova writes: "Apart from large canvases covered by Pollock’s signature all-over web of patterned, dripped or sculpted paint, a range of his smaller abstract paintings adds complexity to our understanding of his work […]
Variations of One: Brice Marden’s Monchromes
Brian Dupont reviews Brice Marden: New Paintings and Drawings at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, on view through December 24, 2015. Dupont writes: "Walking into the central space at 522 22nd Street the viewer is confronted by ‘Summer Square’, a large brown monochrome that stands as a seemingly stark refutation of his paintings of the […]
Frank Owen: Interview
Alexi Worth interviews painter Frank Owen on the occasion of Owen's show Next at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York, on view through December 12, 2015. Asked about beginning his pouring paintings and the influence of Pollock, Owen comments: "I was thinking a lot about Echo: Number 25, 1951; that painting was talismanic for me. In […]
Francis Bacon: Late Paintings
Melissa Stern reviews Francis Bacon: Late Paintings at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on view through December 12, 2015. Stern writes: "Having not really focused on Bacon’s work in quite a while I was blown away by how fresh, shocking, and incredibly beautiful the paintings are… The paintings in the exhibit reflect a change of mood […]
Remembering Paul Reed (1919-2015)
Miguel de Baca remembers painter Paul Reed (1919–2015). De Baca writes:"Reed’s work is celebrated for eliciting a sense of vibrancy from complex color combinations even when areas of thinned pigment overlap, demonstrating his mastery over the unpredictable acrylic medium… Reed’s early work … sustained the interplay between graphic elements and painterly ones and an innovative […]
Caren Canier: Interview
Larry Groff interviews painter Caren Canier. Canier comments: "I have always gone back and forth between painting from life and painting from my imagination. I’ve made figure compositions that were very ambitious and difficult, trying to invent everything from scratch and then I have also always made these little collages. All of these different ways […]
Angela Dufresne: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Angela Dufresne. Dufresne remarks: "I am trying to use some of those strategies that I find in video and music. How can I make painting that is not just navel-gazing, all about paint? I would not stay interested if I didn’t have other things going through my head. Sustained engagement in […]
John Goodyear: Rewind and Reflect
Carl Belz essay on artist John Goodyear, republished on the occasion of the exhibition John Goodyear, Perspectives/Six Decades, at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, on view through January 2, 2015. Belz writes: "John Goodyear’s way not so much makes art as allows art to happen, as if art were somehow there all along, as if […]
Color & Abstraction @ Pulse & Art Basel Miami
Sharon Louden photoblogs a selection of paintings from the 2015 Pulse and Art Basel Miami art fairs including works by: Ronnie Hughes, Eric Butcher, Helen O'Leary, Don Voisine, Heidi Spector, Imi Knoebel, Sadie Benning, Robert Motherwell, Josef Albers, and Barbara Rossi.
William Perehudoff @ Berry Campbell
Piri Halasz reviews the recent show William Perehudoff: A Retrospective at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York. Halasz writes: "In the 1980s, Jules Olitski & Larry Poons were dominating the discussion within color field circles by making somber, 'close-value' paintings, heavily laden with gel. Perehudoff wasn’t. Instead, he was creating bright, always radiant and sometimes positively […]
Maureen Gallace @ 303 Gallery
Barry Schwabsky reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Maureen Gallace at 303 Gallery, New York. Schwabsky observes that "these paintings are, in the end, indifferent to the nostalgia that might color them. They don’t insist on a mood. It would be easy to see them as naive, and easier still as faux-naive, but it’s […]
Joaquin Torres-Garcia: Painting in Three Dimensions
Altoon Sultan blogs about Joaquin Torres-Garcia: The Arcadian Modern at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, on view thorugh February 15, 2016. Sultan writes: "What I'd known of Torres-Garcia's work were paintings such as the one above, which are like complex hieroglyphics, hidden stories of life." She adds, however, that "[the] work by […]
Dennis Loesch: Merge Visible
Geoff Hands reviews the recent show Merge Visible: New Digital Paintings by Dennis Loesch at PM/AM Gallery, London. Hands writes: "It’s worth saying that I was drawn to visit this show, via receiving the press release and seeing his work on-line (how else?), because the apparently abstract imagery is derived, to some significant degree, from […]