Van Gogh + Munch
Philippe Dagen reviews Van Gogh + Munch at the Munch Museet, Oslo, (through September 6) and at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (through January 17, 2016). Dagen writes: "Sometimes the connection seems so obvious it must be deliberate: Munch’s Starry Night of 1922-24 is a tribute to [Van Gogh's] Starry Night over the Rhone of […]
Bonnard @ the Musée d’Orsay
Burlington Magazine
Sarah Whitfield reviews the recent exhibition Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. The show, Whitfield notes, addresses two issues: "Should Bonnard be seen primarily as an easel painter, as fully engaged in the twentieth century as Matisse or Picasso? In which case these decorations, dislodged from their original period settings, tend to […]
Summer Mix @ Turps Banana
Andy Parkinson blogs about several works at Summer Mix at Turps Banana Gallery, on view through August 15, 2015. The show features works by Jessie Browne, Rose Davey, Carlos David, Dan Davis, Matthew Draper, Stuart Elliot, Louise Evans, James Fisher, Kirsten Glass, Kate Groobey, Lewis Henderson, Sam Herbert, Günther Herbst, Reece Jones, Richard Kirwan, Hannah […]
An Abstract Painter’s Pilgrimage to Italy
Painter Barbara Campbell Thomas reflects on ten works of art that from her recent trip to Italy. Introducing the images (of works by Sasetta, Morandi, Inji Efflatoun, Marlene Dumas and others) Thomas writes: "I came to Italy to draw and think, but also to locate an abstract painter’s alternate art history, one perfectly contoured to […]
Stanley Whitney: Step by Step
Tamar Zinn blogs about works by Stanley Whitney at Karma Gallery, New York. Zinn observes that: "By examining Whitney's studies, you see him explore how the rows communicate, how forms variously open up across a row or elbow tightly together. You see him grappling with space, color, and with the tension between line and color. […]
Martha Edelheit on Georgia O’Keeffe
Martha Edelheit remembers a visit with painter Georgia O'Keeffe. Edelheit recalls: "In the living room, the first thing I saw was a large cloud painting, like I’d first seen at a recent Whitney Biennial. How marvelous that someone had finally painted sky and clouds from an airplane’s view. At the Whitney, I was startled to […]
Hank Pitcher: Interview
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Hank Pitcher. Pitcher remarks: "At some point I realized, I am living in Santa Barbara, so why not work outside? Also, there is that Eugène Boudin quote:, 'Two strokes in the field are worth two weeks in the studio.' In the field I often see something I could never make up […]
Yasuo Kuniyoshi @ the Smithsonian
Charles Kessler reviews The Artistic Journey of Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington D.C., on view through August 30, 2015. Kessler notes that the show is "a major exhibition, indeed — 66 paintings and drawings covering [Kuniyoshi's] entire career; and it's the first comprehensive exhibition of his work in the United […]
Jackson Pollock @ Tate Liverpool
John Bunker reviews reviews Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots at Tate Liverpool, on view through October 18, 2015. Bunker writes: "… the ‘Black Pourings’ that are the throbbing dark heart of this exhibition. Crude materiality and brooding imagery seems to be answering something very different but equally ‘… deep seated in contemporary sensibility.’ Pollock’s ‘gothic- ness’ […]
J.M.W. Turner @ the de Young
Mark Van Proyen reviews J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, on view through September 20, 2015. Van Proyen concludes: "Despite whatever claim one might want to make about the complicated relation of Turner’s work to Romanticism (for starters, his politics were of the type that would never embrace the idea […]
Nicholas Krushenick @ the Tang
Sharon Butler blogs about Nicholas Krushenick: Electric Soup at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, on view through August 16, 2015. Butler writes that Krushenick "is best known for fusing popular culture with non-objective abstraction. The result is an aggressive, eye-popping style, full of bold line, highly saturated color, and visual ambiguity… Anticipating the bold […]
Van Gogh and Nature
Charles Giuliano reviews Van Gogh and Nature at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, on view through September 13, 2015. Giuliano writes: "The curators draw extensively from Van Gogh’s letters and from research into the artist’s deep interest in literature and science to explore the influences and themes that dominate much of his work. From […]
Sharon Patten: An Independent Vision
Chris Lowrance, Jennifer Wiggs, and Chris Fletcher discuss Sharon Patten: An Independent Vision at the The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Missouri, on view through August 30, 2015. Chris Lowrance introduces Patten's work, writing: "Patten’s paint is heavy, applied with a knife and so thick that the paintings frequently look different up close than from […]
Joyce Kozloff Remembers Georgia O’Keeffe
Joyce Kozloff remembers a 1972 visit to the home of Georgia O'Keeffe. Kozloff recalls: "One of O’Keeffe’s large paintings of rocks hung behind her as she sat at the table; she had recently completed it. Throughout the 1960s, she had been creating a series of solitary rocks, which nearly filled the paintings’ surfaces. They have […]
Real Painting
Tom Emery reviews Real Painting at at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, on view through August 2, 2015. The show features works by Simon Callery, Adriano Costa, Deb Covell, Angela de la Cruz, Lydia Gifford, David Goerk, Alexis Harding, Jo McGonigal, DJ Simpson, and Finbar Ward. Emery writes that the show questions "20th century modes of thinking […]
Bridget Riley: The Curve Paintings
Geoff Hands reviews Bridget Riley, The Curve Paintings 1961 – 2014 at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, on view through September 6, 2015. Hands concludes: "Bridget Riley’s abstract art is clearly modernist, but notwithstanding her traditional training as a painter (she still produces cartoons for her paintings), her work successfully combines a strongly […]
No Boundaries
Amy Bernstein reviews No Boundaries: Aboriginal Contemporary Abstract Painting at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, OR, on view through Aug 16, 2015. Bernstein writes: "Walking into the exhibition space, I am met by a group of strange peers in the form of paintings. We are painters. We have not met before, but they speak […]
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Interview
Louisa Buck interviews painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose exhibition Verses After Dusk is on view at Serpentine Gallery, London through September 13, 2015. Yiadom-Boakye comments: "For a long time now, I haven’t thought of what I do as portraits—I see them more as figurative paintings. I realised quite early on that I was not so interested […]
Porfirio DiDonna @ Elizabeth Harris
Darragh McNicholas reviews Porfirio DiDonna: Paintings from the 1970s at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, on view through July 31, 2015. McNicholas writes:"… the 6-foot-tall Untitled (pdn63) (1976) dwarfs me. It’s a dark and unyielding expanse of blue-green, with thousands of miniscule dots horizontally positioned along an invisible grid, each dot the amber color of […]
Albert Oehlen’s Genius
Sharon Butler reviews Albert Oehlen: Home and Garden at the New Museum, New York, on view through September 13, 2015. Butler observes: "Oehlen isn’t a worrier. For him painting isn’t about developing a distinctive style or thinking too deeply about a particular shape or line; to the contrary, it’s about creating something unexpected and taking […]