John Walker @ Alexandre Gallery
John Yau reviews John Walker: Looking Out to Sea at Alexandre Gallery, New York, on view through December 22, 2015. Yau writes that "[Walker] embraces the obdurate world of mud and dissipation – the changing seasons of Seal Point, with its bracing tides, cold sunlight and washed up trash and debris. From the jagged stripes […]
John Lees @ Betty Cuningham
Charles Kessler blogs about paintings and drawings by John Lees at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through November 28, 2015. Kessler writes: "[Lees] builds up the paint, scrapes it off, sands it down, and works into it again and again, piling up the paint so much that it becomes a palpable physical presence. […]
Sound Waves: The Paintings of Ann Walsh
Walter Darby Bannard writes about the work of Ann Walsh on the occasion of her exhibition at Alexander/Heath Contemporary, Roanoke, Virginia, on view through November 28, 2015. Bannard writes: "Dematerialized color is a physical impossibility and monocolor – a simple one-colored surface – is an ineffective cliché and by now overdone, so the prerequisite for […]
Brice Marden @ Karma & Matthew Marks
Emmie Francis reviews Brice Marden: Journals at Karma (through November 15) and Brice Marden: New Paintings & Drawings at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (through December 24). Francis notes synergies between the two shows writing: "Marden has remained consistently interrogative of precise material form and what value it contains. When a viewer approaches both his […]
Painting in Greensboro
Sharon Butler blogs about visiting the studios of painters Barbara Campbell Thomas, Christopher Thomas, Mariam Stephan, and Jennifer Meanley, and ceramicist Ibrahim Said on a recent visit to Greensboro, North Carolina.
Lisa Pressman at Causey Contemporary
John Seed interviews painter Lisa Pressman on the occasion of her show Passing Through at Causey Contemporary, New York, on view through December 13, 2015. Seed introduces the interview by noting that "Pressman is process-oriented and each image represents a kind of gradual accretion of ideas and methods that wouldn't be possible without the broad […]
Inside Richard Diebenkorn’s Sketchbooks
Abby Margulies reviews Richard Diebenkorn: The Sketchbooks Revealed at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, on view through February 8, 2016. Margulies writes: "While major scholarly analysis of the sketchbooks has yet to be undertaken, the initial research and resulting exhibition reveal an aspect of Diebenkorn’s process that’s gone unexplored: he was making simple sketches from […]
Flora Crockett @ Meredith Ward Fine Art
Roberta Smith reviews Flora Crockett: 1892-1979 at Meredith Ward Fine Art, New York, on view through November 14, 2015. Smith writes: "… at the moment about two dozen of Ms. Crockett’s sparkling late paintings, with their bright tangles of jazzy lines and shapes floating on pale, brushy backgrounds, form a surprising exhibition at Meredith Ward […]
Louise Fishman @ Cheim & Read
Alexxa Gotthardt traces the history of influences on Louise Fishman's paintings and considers Fishman's current show at Cheim & Read, New York, on view through November 21, 2015. Gotthardt writes: "In All Her Colors, Fishman drew from the colors her mother used, 'often influenced by Matisse and Renoir,' she explains. The painting, however, layered with […]
Ahab, the Pequod and Frank Stella
Martin Mugar reflects on Frank Stella: A Retrospective at The Whitney Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 7, 2016. Mugar writes: "There is an analogy here to Stella and his relationship to the long optical tradition of western painting. The crew of the Pequod which experiences a hands on feel for the […]
Goya’s Portraits
T.J. Clark reviews Goya: The Portraits at the National Gallery, London, on view through January 10, 2016. Discussing Goya's The Countess of Fernán Núñez, Clark writes that "never has a painting worked so hard to de-realise the setting and stance of its sitter … and yet never has the resultant dream world appeared so much […]
Ellsworth Kelly: Profile
Rachel Cooke profiles artist Ellsworth Kelly. Cooke writes: "It is not only that [Kelly's] paintings are abstract; they are not personal, either. 'I felt very much that painting [in the 50s] was too personal. I wanted to do anonymous work, like the old masters.' He thinks for a moment. 'You know, I met Giacometti. He […]
Louis Eilshemius & Bob Thompson
James Kalm visits the recent exhibition Naked at the Edge: Louis Eilshemius and Bob Thompson at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York. Kalm notes: "… though [Eilshemius and Thompson are] separated by more than just time, and inclination, this show hangs together beautifully, and presents those kinds of contrasts that allows one to appreciate each artist's […]
Sense & Sensibility @ Lennon Weinberg
Jonathan Stevenson reviews A Few Days at Lennon Weinberg, New York, on view through December 19, 2015. Stevenson writes that the show features paintings "from all twenty of the painters the gallery has represented since it opened in 1988, range from 1957 to 2014. In terms of style and school, they are not thoroughly cohesive, […]
Let’s Get Figurative @ Nicelle Beauchene
John Goodrich reviews Let’s Get Figurative at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, on view through November 15, 2015. Goodrich notes: "Absorbing such artworks, one realizes that the coherence of the installation can be partly credited to the intense conversation between them — to their shared enthusiasm for quirky subjects, evocative materials and techniques, and askance […]
John Berger on Giorgio Morandi
Blog post revisiting John Berger's 1955 essay on the work of Giorgio Morandi, republished on the occasion of an exhibition of Morandi paintings at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through December 19, 2015. Berger observes that Morandi's "pictures have the inconsequence of margin notes but they embody true observation. Light never convinces unless […]
Lucy Mink Covello: Interview
Jennifer Samet interiews painter Lucy Mink Covello. Mink comments: "Anything that I paint, I think, 'What can I hide?' and 'What can I say, without having to really come out and say it?' People don’t always want to talk about the real things. There are so many conversations that cannot happen. Every now and then […]
Peter Lanyon’s Gliding Paintings
Sam Cornish reviews Soaring Flight: Peter Lanyon’s Gliding Paintings at The Courtauld Gallery, London, on view through January 17, 2016. Cornish writes: "In general, Lanyon’s realism is seen as an embodied one, concerned with the experience of a particular place at a particular time, in which artist and landscape are figured as completely bound up […]
Frank Stella @ The Whitney
Peter Schjeldahl reviews Frank Stella: A Retrospective at The Whitney Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 7, 2016. Schjeldahl writes that the show "will likely provoke varied opinions, on a scale from great to god-awful. The crowded installation of huge abstract paintings, reliefs, sculptures, and painting-sculpture hybrids, augmented by works on paper, […]
Gregory Amenoff on Pieter Bruegel
Painters on Paintings
Gregory Amenoff considers the cycle of seasons paintings by Pieter Bruegel. Amenoff writes: “In his Seasons cycle, Bruegel lifts much from [Joachim] Patinir structurally and stylistically, but he does something radical and distinct from his predecessor by animating his figures only according to the reality of the seasonal condition in which they appear. The characters […]