Exhibitions

Pat Steir @ Dominique Lévy
Studio International

Matthew Rudman reviews works by Pat Steir at Dominique Lévy Gallery, London, on view through January 28, 2017. Rudman writes: “Simple enough at first glance, these paintings reward close observation: secondary colours emerge in the chaos, cracks reveal layers beneath, near-transparent layers of oil paint glint in the changing light. As Steir told Interview magazine, this […]

Allison Miller: Accidentally On Purpose
Painting Smoking Eating

Jason Ramos reviews Allison Miller: Screen Jaw Door Arch Prism Corner Bed at The Pit, Glendale, CA, on view through December 12, 2016. Ramos writes: “Splotches, squiggles, stripes, deckles. The namable things in Allison Miller’s paintings exist just over and under the threshold of identifiable, representational imagery. Each of the decisions documented on her canvases […]

Matisse/Diebenkorn @ the Baltimore Museum of Art
Hyperallergic

Barry Nemett reviews Matisse/Diebenkorn at the Baltimore Museum of Art, on view through January 29, 2017. Nemet concludes: “Blurring distance and time, both men unapologetically embraced their aesthetic kindred spirits across oceans and ages, and brought them home. While passions enter artists’ studios, immaculate conceptions don’t. Connections, which give birth to creation, are at the […]

The Democracy of Touches: A New Reading of Richard Pousette-Dart
Brooklyn Rail

Phong Bui reflects on two exhibitions: Richard Pousette-Dart: The Centennial at Pace Gallery (closed) and Altered States: The Etchings of Richard Pousette-Dart at Del Deo & Barzune, on view through December 16, 2016. Bui writes: “In confronting such an overwhelmingly tactile yet optical experience, I’ve come to realize the impulse to build up surfaces corresponds […]

Laurie Fendrich @ Louis Stern Fine Arts
Artillery

Suzanne Muchnic profiles painter Laurie Fendrich on the occasion of Fendrich’s exhibition at Louis Stern Fine Arts, on view through December 3, 2016. Muchnic writes: “Beyond their fine craftsmanship and comic edge, Fendrich’s spirited abstractions and [Jane ]Austen’s captivating stories may appear to have little in common. But as critic Mark W. Stevens has noted, […]

Frank Avray Wilson @ Whitford Fine Art
AbCrit

Nick Moore reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Frank Avray Wilson at Whitford Fine Art, London. Moore writes: “The first thing one is aware of walking into a room full of Avray Wilson’s paintings is the vibrant colour; vibrant in that it appears to be alive and pulsing, even glowing, bringing to mind stained […]

Laura Owens @ Sadie Coles
Studio International

Cassie Davies reviews works by Laura Owens at Sadie Coles, London, on view through December 16, 2016. Davies writes: “Much of the artist’s work comes from experimenting and, as this show reveals, the results are unpredictable. While some of Owens’s paintings have familiar links, for the most part, each work stands out as an individual, […]

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 […]

Fairfield Porter @ Tibor de Nagy
East Hampton Star

Jennifer Landes reviews Fairfield Porter: Things as They Are at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, on view through December 10, 2016. Landes notes: “Porter’s subjects are quotidian, even banal. [Karen] Wilkin says [in her catalogue essay] that in that way he was a 20th-century Vermeer: ‘He could make nothing in particular seem as if it […]

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 […]

Valerie Jaudon @ Von Lintel Gallery
Art Ltd

Peter Frank reviews the recent exhibition Valerie Jaudon: Ways And Means at Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles. Frank writes: “Jaudon has consistently relied on a simple compositional formula based entirely on line. Indeed, her painting starkly betrays P&D’s minimalist roots in the movement’s original strategy, you might say, of overcoming Minimalism’s clarity and obduracy by […]

Théodore Rousseau: Unruly Nature
Apollo Magazine

Laura Gascoigne reviews Théodore Rousseau: Unruly Nature at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, on view through January 8, 2017. Gascoigne begins “The CVs of great artists are seldom studded with successes, and sometimes their failures are more consequential. If the young Théodore Rousseau had won the Prix de Rome in 1829, he would have travelled […]

Mary Jones: Interview
artcritical

Brenda Zlamany interviews painter Mary Jones whose exhibition Proxima b is on view at John Molloy Gallery, New York, through November 26, 2016. Jones comments: “When I use a roller it has a motion and a weight that’s specific to the tool, and an extension of my body. I want it to be physical. It’s […]

Dannielle Tegeder: Interview
Brooklyn Rail

Sarah Goffstein interviews painter Dannielle Tegeder whose installation, Infrastructure, is on view at the Montclair Art Museum through June 30, 2017. Tegeder remarks: “It’s a really interesting question as to whether abstract painting can still have that political impulse and impact. Even though my work embodies ephemeral spaces, I think it also talks about borders […]

Susan Rothenberg @ Sperone Westwater
ARTnews

Andrew Russeth talks to painter Susan Rothenberg about the works in her show at Sperone Westwater, New York, on view through December 20, 2016. Russeth writes that Rothenberg’s new paintings “are focused and tough—stunning, in a word. One shows a ferocious-looking raven with pale pink feathers against what one might call a classic Rothenberg background—patchy […]

Helen Lundeberg: Classic Attitude
The Paris Review Daily

Dan Piepenbring highlights the exhibition Helen Lundeberg: Classic Attitude at Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York, on view through December 17, 2016. Piepenbring writes: “Lundeberg, who died in 1999, was a pivotal figure in the West Coast abstract circle. ‘By classicism I mean, not traditionalism of any sort, but a highly conscious concern with aesthetic structure,” she […]

Keith Cunningham: Unseen Paintings
It's Nice That

Mike Dempsey writes about the “lost” paintings of Keith Cunningham which were recently on view at the Hoxton Gallery, London. Dempsey writes that, Cunningham, a graphic designer who abruptly refused to exhibit his paintings after a successful start to his painting career, “worked in the solitary atmosphere of his chapel studio in Battersea, where he would […]

Brenda Goodman @ Jeff Bailey Gallery
Hyperallergic

John Yau reviews an exhibition of works by Brenda Goodman at Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, New York, on view through December 18, 2016. Yau concludes: “One of the beauties of Goodman’s painting is its refusal to settle for the immediately legible. By making work that can be read as either abstract or figurative, she invites viewers […]

Etal Adnan: The Weight of the World
Art in America

Elizabeth Fullerton reviews the recent exhibition Etal Adnan: The Weight of the World at the Serpentine Gallery, London. Fullerton writes: “Nature and war thread like twin strands through the multifaceted practice of this artist, who is also a poet, writer, and activist … while her vibrant visual output is largely inspired by nature, much of […]

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 […]