Elizabeth Stevens and David Carbone visit several recent New York painting shows including: Philip Pearlstein at Betty Cuningham, Robert De Niro, Sr. at DC Moore, and Hannah van Bart at Marianne Boesky.

Stevens on Pearlstein: " there is a special and subtle pleasure in Pearlstein’s work that people frequently don’t see. It is a lifelong engagement with the same room, the same light, models, rugs, objects, etc., that reveal in their nuanced differences an inexplicable richness, a life lived in looking."

Carbonne on De Niro, Sr.: "Where Pearlstein relies on the slowly-achieved tonal articulation of forms, De Niro is all about broad masses of color holding forms in space while locking those shapes into the surface.

Carbonne on van Bart: "Drawing is the central expressive vehicle in these works; color is secondary to line and tone, mostly serving as an accent to off-white, taupe or grey tones… [van Bart's] lines vary between precisely confident, but without a searching quality, and mannered to appear quivery. If a bit illustrational, they nevertheless project an intriguing quality of enchantment."