Portraiture
Gwen John at Pallant House
London Review of Books
Alice Spawls reviews Gwen John: Art and Life in Paris and London at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. Spawls observes that: “The pictures themselves are not large or flamboyant, and some are almost austere. But they seem to vibrate. There are suggestions of movement in the cloth, in the stippling of paint (which sometimes looks like […]
John Elderfield on Cézanne’s Portraits
Brooklyn Rail
Phong Bui interviews John Elderfield, curator of Cézanne Portraits on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through July 8, 2018. Elderfield comments: “Cézanne records a face without interpreting. Of course, we will find ourselves interpreting. We do so when we look at the face of someone one on the subway. But […]
Susanna Coffey: Interview
The Studio Visit
John Mitchell interviews painter Susanna Coffey whose exhibition Crimes of the Gods is on view at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, through June 30, 2018. Coffey recalls: “I began to paint self-portraits from observation in order to be a better teacher. To learn about, not a subject, but rather a process of making, […]
Murillo: The Self-Portraits
Studio International
Emily Spicer reviews Murillo: The Self-Portraits at the National Gallery, London, on view through May 21, 2018. Spicer begins: “At least 20 years passed between the Spanish artists Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-82) painting his first self-portrait and his second and, on the surface, they look strikingly similar. The artist is wearing black, has framed his […]
John Mitchell: Studio Visit
cheap & plastique
Heather Morgan interviews painter John Mitchell. An exhibition of Mitchell’s paintings will open September 7, 2018 at Planthouse Gallery, New York. Mitchell comments: “My paintings are not photographic and they’re not perfect representations of the way something looks in real life. They rely on the organic process of seeing and my ability to make a […]
Fragonard’s Merry Company
New York Review of Books
Colin B. Bailey writes about Fragonard: The Fantasy Figures recently on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Bailey writes that the show “[celebrates] the thirty-seven-year-old Fragonard as a practitioner of ‘pure painting’—an action painter avant la lettre. His rainbow palette is ‘parrot colored’—to use a term that was applied to Renoir in the heyday of […]
Alix Bailey: Interview
The Studio Visit
John Mitchell interviews painter Alix Bailey. An exhibition of recent paintings by Bailey is on view at The Painting Center, New York, through February 24, 2018. Bailey comments: “Right now I’m painting mostly larger longer-term paintings of the whole figure and I’m changing the way that I work. I’ve become increasingly interested in finding a […]
Cézanne Portraits: Relentless Intimacy
London Review of Books
T.J. Clark reviews Cézanne Portraits on view at the National Portrait Gallery, London (through February 11) and at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. from March 25 – July 1, 2018. Clark writes: “Certainly the idea that Cézanne’s approach to picture-making is essentially technical and ‘objective’, locked in a painter’s preserve … is useless. It offers […]
Heather Morgan: Interview
The Studio Visit
John Mitchell interviews painter Heather Morgan on the occasion of her exhibition Heavenly Creatures at David & Schweitzer Contemporary, Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through January 28th, 2018. Morgan comments: “The figures I paint today still tend to be eccentric, fringe of society characters, larger than life… I get excited by raw displays of emotion, the […]
Murillo: The Self-Portraits @ the Frick
Apollo Magazine
Louise Nicholson reviews Murillo: The Self-Portraits at the Frick Collection, New York, on view through February 4, 2018. Nicholson writes: “The Frick self-portrait … dominates one room. Viewers must use their imaginations to enliven the now dismal background colour: Murillo’s intended airy blue sky is gone due to the degradation of the smalt pigment he […]
Marcia Marcus @ Eric Firestone Gallery
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Marcia Marcus, Role Play: Paintings 1958 – 1973 at Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, on view through December 2, 2017. Yau writes: “Between 1958 and ’73, the period covered by the exhibition, Marcus achieved something as singular and powerful as any of her more celebrated male counterparts, including Alex Katz and Philip […]
Soutine’s Portraits @ the Courtauld
Evening Standard
Matthew Collings reviews Soutine’s Portraits: Cooks, Waiters & Bellboys at the Courtauld Gallery, London, on view through January 21, 2018. Collings rites: “What things are and how they are treated, whether a body or a bellboy’s buttons, seem to obey purely abstract laws, as if it’s the paint that wants to do it and not […]
Cézanne’s Radical Portraiture
Apollo Magazine
John Elderfield writes about Cézanne Portraits, an exhibition he curated, on view at the National Portrait Gallery, London through February 11, 2018. Elderfield writes that “the content of these paintings matters. One reason, I think, why there has never previously been a survey of Cézanne’s portraits is that his reputation, as it developed in the […]
Jennifer Packer @ The Renaissance Society
Frieze Magazine
Jennifer Piejko reviews Jennifer Packer: Tenderheaded at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, on view through November 5, 2017. Piejko notes that “Packer’s beautifully restrained paintings create a safe space in which to consider questions of mortality, subjectivity and belonging.”
Nicolas Carone: Visualizing the Imaginary and Unseen
Hyperallergic
Carter Ratcliff reviews Nicolas Carone: Imaginary Portraits at Loretta Howard Gallery (through October 28)and The Thing Unseen: A Centennial Celebration of Nicolas Carone, organized by Ro Lohin, at the New York Studio School (closed). Ratcliff notes that “The Studio School catalog is prefaced by one of Carone’s precepts: ‘The process is to draw the thing […]
Alberto Giacometti and Alice Neel
The Nation
Barry Schwabsky investigates connections between the portrait paintings of Alberto Giacometti and those of Alice Neel. Schwabsky observes: “Although Neel and Giacometti both emerged from a left that was aligned with communism, neither one produced anything in a social-realist vein. It would also be wrong to see their insistence on portraiture as an acceptance of individualism. […]
Giacometti, Frontality and Cubism
ARTnews
Blog post revisiting Jonathan Silver’s 1974 article Giacometti, Frontality and Cubism. Silver writes: “I believe a fresh approach to Giacometti’s figurative style will show that its apparent reductiveness—the insistence on frontality, the prevailing monochrome of the paintings and the attenuation of the sculptured figures—represents the common ground between contending aims and mutually limiting conditions in […]
Margaret Clarke @ the National Gallery of Ireland
Apollo Magazine
Tom Walker reviews Margaret Clarke: An Independent Spirit at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, on view through until August 20, 2017. Walker writes: “Throughout her career, Clarke enjoyed commercial success as a portrait painter, receiving several official commissions. But the best of her work in this genre, often done when not working to order, […]
Jenny Dubnau: Interview
Magic Praxis
Clarity Haynes and Kate Hawes interview painter Jenny Dubnau. Dubnau comments: “one of the most interesting aspects of portraiture is the idea … if you’re painting a particular person who lives at a particular time… you’re painting their visage but you’re really also painting the zeitgeist of the times which is inscribed upon their faces and […]
Shawn Thornton’s Intricate Cosmos
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Shawn Thornton: Pareidolia at CUE Art Foundation, New York, on view through May 24, 2017. Yau concludes: “Thornton has likened his work to a “cosmos of small tantric paintings that come together as anthropomorphic circuit boards.” In a number of the paintings, he overlays these circuit boards onto his self-portrait, so that […]