Artist Writings
Betty Parsons & Abstract Expressionism
Patterns That Connect
Andy Parkinson considers the paintings of Betty Parsons. Parkinson writes: “In her paintings Parsons borrows more from her AbEx contemporaries, but without the all-important scale, Clyfford Still in miniature, almost. Parsons also looks back to earlier European modernist works, those of Paul Klee for example, not only in the modest sized of her canvases but […]
What Diebenkorn & Matisse Taught Me
Getty Iris
Elyn Zimmerman reflects on his studies with Richard Diebenkorn on the occasion of Matisse/Diebenkorn at the Baltimore Museum of Art (through January 29, 2017) and at the San Francisco Museum of Art from March 11 – May 29, 2017. Zimmerman recalls: “A favorite topic [of Diebenkorn’s] was Henri Matisse… Diebenkorn spoke about the difficulty of […]
Philip Pearlstein on Francis Picabia
ARTnews
Blog post revisiting Philip Pearlstein’s 1970 essay on Francis Picabia on the occasion of the exhibition Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction at MoMA, New York, on view from November 21, 2016 – March 19, 2017. Pearlstein writes: “The effort to try to understand the recent past was so […]
Walter Darby Bannard: Modernism isn’t a style … it’s a working attitude
artcritical
Franklin Einspruch remembers painter Walter Darby Bannard (1934 – 2016) and considers Bannard’s recent paintings as the culmination of a lifelong exploration of abstraction: “Modernism isn’t a style, [Bannard] insisted, it’s a working attitude oriented toward visual excellence. ‘Modernism is aspiring, authoritarian, hierarchical, self-critical, exclusive, vertically structured, and aims for the best,’ he wrote in 1984. But […]
Lois Dodd: Endless Summer
Artdeal Magazine
Addison Parks writes about the work of painter Lois Dodd. Parks observes: “It is a little like Giorgio Morandi. Through World Wars and revolutions we got still-lifes of jars and bottles and glasses, maybe some flowers, maybe a shift in palette. Something that didn’t change in a changing world. The same could be said of […]
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 […]
Nancy Hagin on Giorgio Morandi
Painting Perceptions
Nancy Hagin considers the work of Giorgio Morandi. Hagin writes: “I marvel at [Morandi’s] various strategies. He loved to play games with the table’s back horizon line and the tops of the objects. He always placed the salmon shape exquisitely, sometimes sandwiching it tightly between forms. The dominant light brownish gray is beautiful. How did […]
6 Painters on Abstract Expressionism
RA Magazine
Frank Bowling, Christopher Le Brun, Mali Morris, Vanessa Jackson, Fiona Rae and Sean Scully each share their thoughts on an Abstract Expressionist painter on the occasion of the exhibition Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy, London, on view through January 2, 2017.
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 […]
Rhetorical Abstraction in the Age of the Incidental Viewer
Hyperallergic
Gwenaël Kerlidou reflects on the work of Frank Stella. Kerlidou writes: “Stella’s main argument boils down to this: How to make paintings that don’t lose the status of paintings by becoming objects — paintings that evacuate the subjectivity of both the painter and the viewer, and replace it with historical necessity? But, by rejecting expression, […]
Julie Heffernan on Andrea Mantegna
Painters on Paintings
Julie Heffernan considers Andrea Mantegna’s Parnassus (Mars and Venus) (1497). Analyzing the composition, Heffernan observes: “Venus is not only posed in the middle of the square, she also comprises the central focus of the composition, and she seems to be slightly pushing Mars off the apex of rock that they are occupying. What is Mantegna saying with […]
On Bruegel’s The Harvesters
Peasants and landscape. Of all Bruegel’s seasonal paintings, this one combines these two to greatest effect.
Curt Barnes on Morris Louis
Painters on Paintings
Curt Barnes writes about painter Morris Louis. Barnes writes that although Pollock and Frankenthaler made great achievements in “painting as phenomenon,” Louis “remains the most vivid for me. The usually monumental size of his work could suggest a towering ego, yet somehow it needs to fill your field of vision, occupy an entire wall to […]
Watteau’s Soldiers @ the Frick Collection
In Watteau’s world, more than in any other painter’s, figure to canvas is as actor to stage.
André Masson’s Automatic Drawings
Hyperallergic
Joseph Nechvatal reviews André Masson dans l’antre de la métamorphose at Galerie Natalie Seroussi, Paris, on view through July 31, 2016. Nechvatal writes: “An expanded field of subjects pervades the visual lexicon of Surrealism, but Masson is generally considered to have pioneered the automatic drawing technique with an opulence that borders on the decadent. Masson’s […]
Gregory Amenoff on Pieter Bruegel
Painters on Paintings
Gregory Amenoff considers the cycle of seasons paintings by Pieter Bruegel. Amenoff writes: “In his Seasons cycle, Bruegel lifts much from [Joachim] Patinir structurally and stylistically, but he does something radical and distinct from his predecessor by animating his figures only according to the reality of the seasonal condition in which they appear. The characters […]
Discovering Milton Resnick
Ploughshares
John Skoyles blogs about Milton Resnick: Painter in the Age of Painting, Geoffrey Dorfman’s new manuscript about New York School painter Milton Resnick. Skoyles writes: “The narrative contains transcriptions of interviews about the lives of artists of that period. Dorfman’s and Resnick’s sensibilities complement each other perfectly. As Dorfman notes, ‘There are two voices running […]
The Existential Experience of a Chardin Still Life
Hyperallergic
John Goodrich blogs about viewing Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin’s Seville Orange, Silver Goblet, Apples, Pear and Two Bottles (1750) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Goodrich writes that “the painting provides something of an existential experience. For more conventional artists, painting representationally means starting with a recognizable enough rendering and then adding the ‘art’: suggestive […]
Alex Katz: The Expansive Landscape
Studio and Garden
Altoon Sultan blogs about a recent exhibition of paintings by Alex Katz at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York. Sultan writes: “Alex Katz’s landscape paintings are a paradox: as large as they are, they seem intimate; they portray ordinary views, yet are surprising and extraordinary… Katz’s simple titles––a time of day, a description of place––tell of […]
Ad Reinhardt: Twelve Rules for a New Academy
ARTnews
Ad Reinhardt’s Twelve Rules for a New Academy is the latest post in the ARTNews “Retrospectives” column. Alex Greenberger introduces the text writing: “Much of today’s discussion of contemporary abstraction is centered on ‘Zombie Formalism’—Walter Robinson’s coinage for new work that revisits (or apes, one might say) historical forms of abstraction for purely stylistic reasons. […]