Apollo Magazine
Amy Sillman: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Imelda Barnard interviews painter Amy Sillman on the occasion of her exhibition Landline at Camden Arts Centre, London, on view through January 6, 2019. Sillman remarks: “I feel like I’m working with and against [painting] equally. The piece I’m making for Gallery 3 is structurally ambivalent, it has two sides that are printed on the […]
Etel Adnan: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Gabriel Coxhead interviews artist and poet Etel Adnan whose work is on view at the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, through October 7, 2018. Adnan remarks: “If I were just a painter, maybe my work would have been different, more encompassing. But my writing is rather pessimistic, because of the angle of history I got involved with, being […]
Peter Lanyon: Total Immersion in Landscape
Apollo Magazine
Maggie Gray reviews Peter Lanyon: Cornwall Inside Out recently on view at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, London. Gray writes: “Over the course of his career Lanyon devised a unique approach to painting that relied on his total immersion within the landscape. He would walk, drive, climb, cycle, swim and eventually glide across and over Cornwall; he learnt […]
R.H. Quaytman: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Lidija Haas interviews artist R.H. Quaytman whose exhibition An Evening, Chapter 32 is on view at the Secession, Vienna through January 21, 2018. Haas writes: “[Quaytman] has never once considered abandoning painting, ‘because I think it’s really the best problem in art. The plane, the picture, is the best, deepest problem.’ Photographs on the other […]
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 […]
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 […]
Wayne Thiebaud: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Martin Gayford interviews painter Wayne Thiebaud on the occasion of Thiebaud’s recent exhibiton at White Cube, London. Thiebaud remarks: “‘I’d been working in food, washing dishes. That was my environment. I remember seeing pies laid out, processed food that I’d worked on, so I started painting these triangles and turning them into pies. I thought, […]
Giovanni da Rimini @ the National Gallery, London
Apollo Magazine
Florence Hallett reviews Giovanni da Rimini: A 14th-Century Masterpiece Unveiled at the National Gallery, London, on view through October 8, 2017. Hallett begins: “Jewel-like, and embellished with engrossing details, the exquisite little panel at the centre of the National Gallery’s current exhibition is a rare evocation of Rimini at the turn of the 14th century, […]
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, […]
Frank Bowling: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Imelda Barnard interviews Frank Bowling on the occasion of Bowling’s exhibition Mappa Mundi at Haus der Kunst, Munich, on view through January 7, 2018. Barnard writes: “‘The possibilities of paint are never-ending,’ Frank Bowling tells me… Bowling’s persistent urge to reinvent painting has led him to experiment with elaborate procedures – stitching, staining, pouring, dripping, spilling. […]
Milton Avery’s Unique American Modernism
Apollo Magazine
Matthew Sperling reviews Milton Avery at Victoria Miro, London, on view through July 29, 2017. Sperling writes: “In Excursion on the Thames (1953), one of several pictures in the exhibition deriving from Avery’s only trip to Europe in 1952, the perfect balance is struck between loving observation of the everyday and visionary form-making: the pleasure […]
Markus Lüpertz: Interview
Apollo Magazine
Maggie Gray visits the studio of painter Markus Lüpertz on the occasion of two concurrent retrospectives in Washington D.C.: Markus Lüpertz: Threads of History at the Hirshhorn Museum (May 24 – September 10) and Markus Lüpertz at the Phillips Collection (May 27 – September 3) Lüpertz remarks: “There is nothing new in painting. It is […]
Raphael: The Drawings @ the Ashmolean Museum
Apollo Magazine
Curator Catherine Whistler previews Raphael: The Drawings which will be on view at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from June 1 – September. 3, 2017. Whistler notes: “Looking closely at Raphael drawings is always a moving experience; considering the drawings in terms of their cognitive and affective aspects, rather than as stepping-stones towards the final painting, […]
Camille Pissarro: The First of the Impressionists
Apollo Magazine
Laura Gascoigne reviews Camille Pissarro: The First of the Impressionists at the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, until July 2, 2017. Gascoigne begins: “If asked to name the key figure in Impressionism, few people today would nominate Camille Pissarro… Yet to his contemporaries this quiet revolutionary was the unifying force behind the movement that he had helped […]
Marisa Merz @ the Met Breuer
Apollo Magazine
Lidija Haas reviews Marisa Merz: The Sky is a Great Space at the Met Breuer, New York, on view through May 7, 2017. Haas writes: “What appear to be Merz’s most recent works – paintings of large saintlike female figures in rich golds and reds and blues – seem a little less subtle than the […]
Beyond the Surface: Howard Hodgkin (1932–2017)
Apollo Magazine
Martin Gayford’s 2010 profile of painter Howard Hodgkin (1932–2017), republished to mark the artist’s passing this week at age 84. Gayford notes that “[Hodgkin’s] work is deeply paradoxical. For one thing, it frequently looks abstract at first and even second glance, but it is actually figurative and rooted in his experience… Hodgkin is an intensely emotional […]
Antoni Tàpies: Revulsion and Desire
Apollo Magazine
Robert Barry reviews Antoni Tàpies: Revulsion and Desire at Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, on view through March 18, 2017. Barry writes: “There is a remarkable consistency in the work here, made between 1999 and 2011. All eight paintings eschew canvas for wood, often left raw and unvarnished, and share a sepia-toned palette of browns and […]
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… […]
Paul Nash’s Commitment to the English Landscape
Apollo Magazine
Peter Parker reviews works by Paul Nash at Tate Britain, London, on view through March 5, 2017. Parker writes: “… the overarching theme remains Nash’s lifelong engagement with the English landscape. In his fragmentary autobiography … Nash recalled his sudden youthful awareness in Kensington Gardens of the meaning of place: ‘there was a peculiar spacing […]
Fra Bartolommeo’s Divine Draughtsmanship
Apollo Magazine
David Ekserdjian reviews Fra Bartolommeo: The Divine Renaissance at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, on view through January 15, 2017. Ekserdjian writes: “Fra Bartolommeo is a supremely able and, at his best, ravishingly beautiful draughtsman, but even his warmest admirers could not claim he is limitlessly various… One of the main pleasures of studying […]