Marsden Hartley in Berlin
Roberta Smith reviews the exhibition Marsden Hartley: Die Deutschen Bilder 1913-1915 at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, on view through June 29, 2014. Smith writes that "between early 1912 and late 1915… [Hartley] produced a stream of paintings that synthesized Cubism and other European modernisms, mixed in non-Western motifs and mysterious symbols and culminated in his […]
Joyce Cairns: Interview
Janet McKenzie interviews painter Joyce Cairns about her work which is on view in the exhibition Beginnings at Tatha Gallery, Fife, Scotland. Cairns comments: "The first war painting followed my mother’s death; it was about my father because some of the memorabilia of his war experience came to light. My mother had been tormented by […]
Painting in Retrograde
Brian Bishop addresses the "lack of forward momentum in the critical dialogue surrounding Painting." Bishop writes: "Painting may now find its home… [n]ot necessarily in opposition to the screen but rather in relation to it, more of a symbiotic relationship. In representational terms, Painting as a window functions differently, it is a disturbance, a passageway […]
Arnold Mesches: Eternal Return
Eliot Markell blogs about the recent exhibition Arnold Mesches: Eternal Return at Life on Mars Gallery, Bushwick. Markell writes: "In the tradition of socialist atheism, Mesches embraces a secular perspective. His paintings do not indulge in speculative metaphysics. They are festooned with feisty decorations that may not soothe the soul, but are soulful… Mesches’s art […]
Joyce Robins: Paint and Clay
John Yau reviews the exhibition Joyce Robins: Paint and Clay at THEODORE: Art, Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through July 20, 2014. Yau writes: "Robins isn’t a ceramics artist so much as an abstract artist working in ceramics and, in that regard, her work shares something with the abstract ceramic pieces of Mary Heilmann and Norbert […]
Sigmar Polke @ MoMA
Jed Perl writes about the exhibition Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963–2010 at MoMA, New York, on view through August 3, 2014. Perl notes that Polke is "something of an artist’s artist. His influence is now at flood tide, the mingling of gadabout hedonism and ostentatious disaffection in paintings, drawings, assemblages, photographs, and films echoed in countless […]
Anselm Kiefer @ MASS MoCA
Christine Hughes visits an on going exhibition of works by Anselm Kiefer from the Hall Art Foundation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachussetts and talks with Director Joseph Thompson about the work. Hughes writes: "… why do I love most of Kiefer’s work? The materiality. The weaving of visual imagery with written word. The encompassing […]
Kent Monkman: The Urban Res
Hrag Vartanian reviews Kent Monkman: The Urban Res at Sargent's Daughters, New York, on view through June 14, 2014. Vartanian writes: "His ability to make the overarching theme of displacement strangely familiar is one of Monkman’s strengths. These are modern and contemporary figures in migration, adapting to the present without blinking an eye. If there […]
Mondrian and His Studios
Charles Darwent writes about the unique role that Mondrian's various studios played in his painting process. The exhibition Mondrian and His Studios is on view at Tate Liverpool, through October 5, 2014. Darwent notes that "Piet Mondrian’s paintings have become some of the best known and most loved works of the twentieth century, and the studios […]
John Altoon at LACMA
Christopher Knight reviews a retrospective exhibition of works by John Altoon at LACMA, on view through September 14, 2014. Knight writes that in Altoon's works: "Voluptuous color and luxurious interpenetrations of sensuous forms conspired to make messy, elegant, often witty abstract pictures. Their hedonistic punch is a delicious indulgence… Like artists as diverse as David […]
Allison Gildersleeve @ Asya Geisberg
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy talk to painter Allison Gildersleeve at her exhibition, Elsewhere at Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York, on view through June 21, 2014. Gildersleeve comments: "I love pattern and I also love paintings that there is no recognizable subject in it but it feels very figurative. They're just piling up these shapes […]
Michael Berryhill @ KANSAS
Dennis Kardon reviews the exhibition Michael Berryhill: Beggars Blanket at Kansas Gallery, New York, on view through June 14, 2014. Kardon writes: "Berryhill is not ambivalent about his ambition… Though modest in scale, the paintings use expensive, thick-weave linen, a high culture archival maneuver that serves to offset some of the low culture references, and […]
Mel Bochner: Strong Language
Richard Kalina reviews the exhibition Mel Bochner: Strong Language at the Jewish Museum, New York, on view through September 21, 2014. Kalina writes: "As Duchamp was wont to do, Bochner pushes up against the resistant core of the quotidian—the unknown and the unknowable residing in the obvious and the ordinary. Language functions as the fundamental […]
Hayal Pozanti: Interview
Joseph Akel interviews painter Hayal Pozanti about her work. Pozanti remarks: "[early on] my practice was based on images that I would collect from the Internet. I was really engrossed in that culture of image collecting, collaging. But I realized that I couldn’t propose something new by appropriating things. I wanted to step away from […]
Supports / Surfaces @ CANADA
Sharon Butler blogs about the exhibition Supports / Surfaces at CANADA Gallery, New York, presented with Galerie Bernard Ceysson, on view though July 20, 2014. The show features works by André-Pierre Arnal, Pierre Buraglio, Louis Cane, Mark Devade, Daniel Dezeuze, Noël Dolla, Jean-Michel Meurice, Bernard Pagés, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Patrick Saytour, Claude Viallat. Butler writes that […]
Sean Scully: Kind of Red
Betty Wood profiles painter Sean Scully on the occasion of his exhibition Kind of Red at Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, on view through July 12, 2014. Commenting on completing his five-part painting Kind of Red (2013) in five days, Scully remarks "… if something’s right, it’s right. I don’t believe in corrections. I believe in the […]
Françoise Gilot on Matisse
Tate Blog
Françoise Gilot shares her memories of traveling with Picasso to meet Matisse. Gilot remarks: “What drew me to Matisse is his desire for finding the strongest and most simple way of expressing a form or character. And also in terms of… mounting the color to the extreme… The difference between Matisse and Picasso is Picasso […]
Polke and Richter: All-overness
Dan Coombs considers the quality of "all-overness" in painting. Coombs writes that "all-overness is a quality that can be drawn out of anything, a doodle, a stain, a meandering drip, the most quotidian black and white photograph, it has the effect of turning the image back into a question, like suspending an image into a […]
Paul Resika & Tyler Loftis: Modern Color
A review of Modern Color: Paintings by Paul Resika and Tyler Loftis at Leigh Morse Fine Arts, New York, on view through June 21, 2014. "[Paul Resika and Tyler Loftis] are 50 years apart in age and experience, but New York’s Leigh Morse Fine Arts gallery has seized an extraordinary opportunity and brought them together […]
Stephanie Pierce: Sight & Sound
Stephanie Pierce’s paintings evoke a sense of place that extends beyond the visual.