Figure
Ridley Howard @ Marinaro Gallery
Arte Fuse
Kate Menard reviews Ridley Howard: Travel Pictures at Marinaro Gallery, New York, on view through June 18, 2017. Menard writes: “While loosely connected to specific locations, the figures in Howard’s Travel Pictures do not interact with their surroundings but seem isolated and caught up in their own private narratives. His meticulous attention to color and […]
Lani Irwin: Embracing the Unknown
Savvy Painter Podcast
Antrese Wood interviews painter Lani Irwin. Irwin makes an interesting connection between painting and dreams: “I like the undercurrents and the overcurrents [of symbolism in painting] … I like to have the objects in the paintings have more that’s there even though I don’t necessarily understand what it is. It’s like a dream … as you start to tell […]
Shared Spaces: Dona Nelson Brings Back The Figure
artcritical
Hearne Pardee reviews Dona Nelson: models stand close to the paintings at Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, on view through May 13, 2017. Pardee begins: “Dona Nelson’s new works excite not just with their vigorous improvisation and inventive use of materials but with a new interactivity among the paintings themselves. After deconstructing conventional painting with […]
The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century
Hyperallergic
David Carbone reviews Timothy Hyman’s new book The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century, published by Thames & Hudson. Carbone writes: “this [book] is not so much an ‘objective’ survey as a personal examination of specific works from the vastness of twentieth century achievements that Hyman believes can serve as a foundation for […]
R. B. Kitaj @ Marlborough Contemporary
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews R. B. Kitaj: The Exile at Home at Marlborough Contemporary, New York, on view through April 8, 2017. Yau writes: “B. Kitaj was passionately–one might almost say, defiantly–a literary painter. That was not a politic thing to be in the postwar art world, when abstraction became the mainstream and even most representational […]
Jordan Kasey: Strangely Lit and Shadowed Paintings
Hyperallergic
Dennis Kardon reviews Jordan Kasey: Exoplanet at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, on view through March 12, 2017. Kardon writes: “The force that drives the engine of Kasey’s work is her eschewal of the flat-earth ideology (collaged, cartoony or photo-derived, super-flat figuration) of many of her contemporaries. Although sharing formal explorations with older painters like […]
Donald Beal: Interview
Painting Perceptions
Larry Groff interviews painter Donald Beal whose work will be on view in On the Shoulder of Giants, curated by Thaddeus Radell, at Westbeth Gallery, New York, on view through March 25, 2017. Beal comments: “The paintings done from life have given me the chops I need to meaningfully push color and tone around until it eventually […]
R.B. Kitaj: Renewal and Resistance
artcritical
David Cohen’s 2003 interview with painter R.B.Kitaj, republished on the occasion of the exhibition R.B.Kitaj: The Exile at Home, curated by Barry Schwabsky, at Marlborough Contemporary, New York, on view through April 8, 2017. “[Kitaj] is living proof of some traits his critic enemies picked up on: a promiscuous lover of big ideas, an inveterate historical […]
Sandro Chia @ Marc Straus
James Kalm Report
James Kalm visits an exhibition of new paintings by Sandro Chia at Marc Straus Gallery, New York, on view through April 2, 2017. Kalm notes: “In this, his first major show with Marc Straus Gallery, [Chia] shows a group of recent paintings, many featuring single figures accompanied by animals. Chia’s masterful feel for the painter’s […]
Lorraine Shemesh & the Impossibility of the Romantic
Painting: Martin Mugar
Martin Mugar considers the paintings of Lorraine Shemesh. Mugar writes: “Whereas [Shemesh’s] earlier painting retained the notion of an observation of swimmers in a recognizable setting, the latest work puts the observer in with the observed. She does not rely on a romantic search for connections between herself and the environment that allows [Edwin] Dickinson […]
David Hockney: Pool Paintings
Apollo Magazine
Matthew Sperling writes about David Hockney’s pool paintings. A retrospective of works by David Hockney will be on view at Tate Britain from February 9 – May 29, 2017. Sperling writes: “… on arrival in California … one particular feature of the architecture, previously only seen in black and white photographs, struck Hockney with fresh intensity… […]
David Hockney @ the Tate
The Guardian
Olivia Laing previews the exhibition David Hockney which will be on view at Tate Britain from February 9 – May 29, 2017. Laing writes: “As a spectacular new retrospective at Tate Britain makes clear … twists and turns in thematic preoccupations and new techniques [explored by Hockney throughout his career] do not represent a lack […]
Bonnard: En toute intimité
Studio International
Anna McNay reviews Bonnard: En toute intimité at the Musée Bonnard, Le Cannet, France, on view through April 23, 2017. McNay begins: “With the title Bonnard: En toute intimité, one might well expect an exhibition focusing on the artist’s nudes, or more erotic elements of his work, but, just as Tracey Emin’s tent, Everyone I […]
William Merritt Chase @ the Museum of Fine Arts Boston
The New Criterion
Franklin Einspruch reviews William Merritt Chase at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, on view through January 16, 2017. Einspruch observes: “There is also Hide and Seek (1888), in which a golden-haired girl (and good heavens, the paint handling on that hair is exceptional), ensconced in the lower left corner of the picture, peers from […]
Dennis Kardon & Alexi Worth in Conversation
artcritical
Dennis Kardon and Alexi Worth discuss their paintings on the occasion of the recent exhibition Dennis Kardon & Alexi Worth: Within Reach at Myers School of Art, the University of Akron. Exhibition curator Matthew Kolodziej noted that Kardon and Worth “share a mutual engagement with how narrative, material, and perception intersect. Within these visual narratives, the […]
Guido Cagnacci @ the Frick
The New Criterion
Franklin Einspruch reviews Cagnacci’s “Repentant Magdalene”: An Italian Baroque Masterpiece from the Norton Simon Museum at the Frick Collection, New York, on view through January 22, 2017. Einspruch observes: “Parts of this scene are exquisite… Parts of this scene are not exquisite… Nevertheless, the whole of the thing is a marvel. Light catches on an […]
Clarity Haynes: Studio Visit
Gorky's Granddaughter
Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy visit the studio of painter Clarity Haynes. Haynes remarks: “Realism with a captial ‘R’ in many ways I do think is inherently political because it isn’t taking us away from the world as we know it, it’s forcing us to look at it.”
Alex Katz: Interview
Hyperallergic
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Alex Katz. Katz remarks: “So many things can be great subject matter. I could be looking at Nefertiti, and that could be something I see today. But it also could be movies and billboards and TV. I think everything in our culture is potential subject matter. You go into these areas […]
Joan Semmel: Interview
Brooklyn Rail
Laila Pedro interviews painter Joan Semmel whose works were recently on view at at Alexander Gray Associates, New York. Semmel remarks: “I talk about [political and cultural] issues because they’re motivational. But I want the work to be seen as my painting, and the painting has been an essential and complete involvement for me, all the way […]
Notes on Euan Uglow
Powers of Observation
Chris Bennett recalls his studies with Euan Uglow. Bennet writes: “[Uglow] was not interested in ‘painting something out of the corner of the eye’ but wanted to ‘attack’ it head on. Everything was to be looked at directly and ‘in focus’; he wasn’t interested in painting the sensation of a glance for example. He would […]