Expressionism
Chaïm Soutine at K20
Spike Art Magazine
Hans-Jürgen Hafner reviews Chaïm Soutine, Against the Current at K20, Düsseldorf. Hafner’s review highlights the uniquely visual nature of experiencing a Soutine painting. “Encountering a work by Soutine,” Hafner writes, “you ‘see’ what you ‘get’ exactly by looking at it … a meager, lifeless chicken, hanging slightly aslant against some dark background, an uncanny hole […]
Expressionism Revisited
Painting Perceptions
John Goodrich reviews Crossroads: Lynette Lombard, David Paulson, and Thaddeus Radell at Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, on view through October 8, 2017. Goodrich writes: “Lombard’s paintings are unpopulated by human figures, and also appear to be anchored in immediate observations – though these are heightened by twisting, vertiginous plunges of space. Despite such distortions, Lombard’s sure sense […]
Richard Gerstl @ the Neue Galerie
Hyperallergic
Angelica Frey reviews works by Richard Gerstl at the Neue Galerie, New York, on view through September 25, 2017. Frey writes: “Gerstl was a polarizing figure, a ‘neurotic Narcissus’, as co-founder of the Leopold Museum, Diethard Leopold defined him … Gerstl perfectly embodied the artistic and existential turmoil of Vienna in the last years of […]
Max Beckmann @ The Met
London Review of Books
Michael Hofmann reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017. Hofmann writes: “One of the interesting things about Beckmann is how much the paintings moved and morphed under him. The form of the triptych was arrived at adventitiously; he simply had more material […]
James Ensor @ The Royal Academy
Elizabeth Fullerton reviews the recent exhibition Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Fullerton writes: “In his curation, Tuymans has played down the cliché of his countryman as a romantic outcast. The show’s sixty-six paintings, drawings, and prints primarily from Ensor’s productive early career include satirical images, landscapes, intimate portraits, […]
Max Beckmann in New York
Too Much Art
Mario Naves reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017. Naves observes: “Among the most striking aspects of Beckmann’s vision is that, notwithstanding his meditations on human folly and vice, it never descends into nihilism or despair. The paintings bristle and bump with […]
James Ensor @ The Royal Academy
London Review of Books
T.J. Clark writes about Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on view through January 29, 2017. Clark observes: “Perhaps it is true that an artist’s influences should not interest us much (Ensor’s wish to drop the subject has my sympathy) unless what they give rise to in the […]
Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans
The Guardian
Laura Cumming reviews Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on view through January 29, 2017. Cumming writes: “To find oneself burled up in life’s turbulence – single cells metastasising in unpredictable throngs – that is Ensor’s modern danse macabre. His predecessors may be Bosch and Goya, and perhaps […]
Max Beckmann in New York
Hyperallergic
Jennifer Samet reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017. Samet writes: “Clearly, what New York gave Beckmann was not superficial subject matter, but inspiration in the form of energy. His painterly style, developed and refined out of four decades of working, became […]
Lester Johnson’s Painting
Painting: Martin Mugar
Martin Mugar considers the achievements of painter Lester Johnson. Mugar writes: “Lester Johnson’s work is a profound meditation on our being in the world, with all the ambiguities between self and society. A psychologist and a sociologist can use these terms to describe the structure of both but they can’t tell you how it feels […]
Paula Modersohn-Becker
Studio International
Anna McNay reviews the recent exhibition of works by Paula Modersohn-Becker at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. McNay writes: “[Modersohn-Becker’s] short but highly fertile career – she produced more than 700 paintings in seven years (1900-07), working seven days a week, ‘with a passion that excludes everything else’ – took place at […]
Soutine: Art More Like Life
A modest, yet riveting selection of paintings by Soutine at Paul Kasmin Gallery highlighted the artist’s feverish dedication to “sensations-in-paint.”