Jan Baltzell @ Schmidt Dean
Stan Mir reviews Jan Baltzell: New Work at the Schmidt Dean Gallery, Philadelphia. Mir writes: "Baltzell started her career as a still life painter and teaches courses in it at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, but she says she no longer paints directly from objects. She relies on her memory instead and her understanding […]
Hermine Ford: Studio Visit
Sharon Butler photoblogs a visit to the studio of painter Hermine Ford. Butler writes: "Innovative and expansive on multiple levels – line, color, shape, surface – her own work is uniquely prepossessing and only rewards further contemplation. Building irregularly shaped, sometimes even jagged, oil paintings from exquisite smaller watercolor studies (one is pictured above), Ford […]
Grace Hartigan: Works From 1960-65
John Seed talks to Michael Klein, curator of Grace Hartigan: Works From 1960-65, on view at the X Contemporary Art Fair, Miami from December 1-6, 2015. Klein comments: "… some of Hartigan's paintings of this period are pure abstractions such as Saint Valentine or Pomegranate; others like Grey Eyed Athena have a figurative element to them. […]
Clarity Haynes: The Body, Unrestrained
Christopher Howard reports on a recent artist talk given by painter Clarity Haynes at Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, New York. Howard writes: "Because she works from life, [Haynes] gets to know not only the bodies she depicts but also the person inside them, like the trans bodybuilder Roxanne, whom she finished painting in 2012. 'I really […]
Balthus in Rome
Julie Beckers reviews a retrospective exhibition of works by Balthus at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, on view through January 31, 2016. Beckers notes that "mental isolation is a recurring element in much of Balthus’s work; figures depicted in odd and suggestive angles seem detached from their surroundings, their gaze cannot be caught, giving the […]
Clyfford Still’s Replicas
Patricia Failing reviews Repeat/Recreate: Clyfford Still’s Replicas at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, on view through January 10, 2016. Failing writes: "To evaluate the artist’s assertion that some of his ideas deserved 'survival on more than one stretch of canvas' requires a deep dive into his complex vision of relationships between mind, hand, and painting […]
Julia Jacquette on Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
Julia Jacquette considers Adélaïde Labille-Guiard's Self–Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond (died 1788), 1785 in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jacquette writes: "An entire symposium could be held on the meaning of this painting. Indeed, the Metropolitan’s wall text for it asserts that it […]
Gina Werfel: Interview
Larry Groff interviews painter Gina Werfel. Asked about transitioning to abstraction after years of plein-air painting Werfel comments: "I don’t really feel like I’ve left observational painting behind as much as use it in a different way–collaged and improvisational. So I may start a painting based upon one of my son’s childhood drawings but then […]
Vilhelm Hammershøi: Painting Tranquility
Ken Johnson reviews Painting Tranquility: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershøi from SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark at Scandinavia House, New York, on view through February 27, 2016. Johnson writes that "[Hammershøi's] paintings convey a distinctively modern psychological complexity. But unlike another famous Scandinavian, the Expressionist Edvard Munch, Hammershoi practiced a kind of representational painting […]
EJ Hauser @ Regina Rex
James Kalm talks with painter EJ Hauser at her exhibition Amphibian, on view at Regina Rex, New York, on view through December 6, 2015. Kalm notes that "As a member of the new generation of painters contributing to the Williamsburg and Brooklyn art scene, EJ Hauser has gained recognition for her focused commitment, and experimentation within the […]
Yevgeniya Baras: Studio Visit
Maria Calandra visits the studio of painter Yevgeniya Baras. Calandra writes: "Baras' painted lines, tactile textural build up, and recurring color themes carry through from one work to the next, but for the most part each painting exists in a category of its own. They bring to mind the stream of consciousness marks on Miro's […]
Wifredo Lam Paints a Picture
Blog post revisiting Geri Trotta's 195 profile of painter Wilfredo Lam, republished on the occasion of an exhibition of Lam's paintings at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, on view through February 15, 2016. Trotta writes: "[Lam] works with one color at a time in a spurt of passion until he has put it everywhere he wants […]
Anders Knutsson @ Van Der Plas Gallery
Mary Hrbacek reviews a recent exhibition of works by Anders Knutsson at Van Der Plas Gallery, New York. Hrbacek writes: "Knutsson's hues are emphatically mixed; they are not comprised of raw paint taken straight from the tube in undiluted pigments. Instead, he combines his own pigments in an attempt to explore pure unadulterated light through […]
John Ferren @ David Findlay Jr.
Peter Malone reviews John Ferren (1905–1970) at David Findlay Jr. Gallery, New York, on view through November 28, 2015. Malone notes that Ferren's work was "eclectic and wide ranging. What’s clear, even in the small Findlay exhibition, is how Ferren’s lifelong dedication to Zen and to the spiritual in art informed his many styles in […]
Marcia Hafif @ the Laguna Art Museum
Liz Goldner reviews Marcia Hafif: From the Inventory recently on view at the Laguna Art Museum. Goldner writes: "By studying, 'the colors of the sea, the sky and the sand, the seashells and seaweed, the dark clouds over the horizon in the evening,' Hafif says, she made these vibrant paintings using colors as Indian yellow, […]
Sarah Awad: Gate Paintings
Evan Moffitt reviews the recent exhibition Sarah Awad: Gate Paintings at Diane Rosenstein, Los Angeles. Moffitt writes: "In The Poetics of Space, French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard said of the word 'door' that 'through meaning it encloses, while through poetic expression it opens up.' The same could be said of Awad’s gates and their relationship to […]
Giorgio Morandi at CIMA
Christine Hughes reviews works by Giorgio Morandi at The Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), New York, through June 25, 2016. Hughes writes: "The 1930s is an interesting decade in Morandi’s work. It was a decade when he was finding his voice and made fewer paintings than at any other time. He was teaching etching at […]
Louise Fishman: One Stroke at a Time
John Haber reviews Louise Fishman at Cheim & Read, New York, on view through November 21, 2015. Haber writes: "The lightness starts with the palette, which can hardly help evoking sea and sky … long verticals on largely open fields and in broader strokes brimming over the grid. Both give added prominence to the white […]
George Shaw: Interview
Kate Kellaway interviews painter George Shaw. Shaw comments: "It has been said my work is sentimental. I don’t know why sentimentality has to be a negative quality. What I look for in art are the qualities I admire or don’t admire in human beings. And very rarely do I meet people who aren’t sentimental. I […]
EJ Hauser at Regina Rex
Sharon Butler blogs about EJ Hauser: Amphibian at Regina Rex, New York, on view through December 6, 2015. Butler writes: "Many of the paintings in "Amphibian," EJ Hauser's first solo exhibition at Regina Rex, feature an image of a frog. Or perhaps I should say, an image of an image of an image of a […]