Reviews
Agnes Martin @ the Guggenheim Museum
Too Much Art
Mario Naves reviews the Agnes Martin retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, on view through January 11, 2017. Naves writes: “After flirting with biomorphism, Martin settled into her signature groove: patterning—typically, grids or horizontal stripes—laid out with underplayed concision. The color palette, from the get-go, is limited. Grays and off-whites predominate, so much so that […]
Winifred Nicholson & the Pleasures of Colour
Apollo Magazine
Frances Spalding reviews Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, on view through February 12, 2017. Spalding writes: “At the Paterson Gallery, it was she, and not Ben [Nicholson], who enjoyed a howling success. It gained her enough money to buy Bankshead, a Cumbrian farmhouse with a sloping garden, offering a […]
Refiguring the Grid: Ann Gale at the Fralin Museum
The persistent problem Gale’s fine paintings occupy – simple abstract absolutes, multiplied by the complexity and challenges of perception, minus deceptions of illusion.
Just Looking at Art Basel Miami Beach
Discovering tiny shows like these in the midst of the broader spectacle leaves the art fair visitor with a hopeful feeling.
George Negroponte @ Anita Rogers
Steven Alexander Journal
Eric Holzman writes about the work of George Negroponte whose exhibition Gravel Road is on view at Anita Rogers Gallery, New York, through January 7, 2017. Holzman observes: “In his current show … Negroponte uses shaped bits and pieces of cardboard as his support. The work feels softer than the previous body of work as the […]
Norman Lewis: Painting Black and Blue
New City Art
Stephen F. Eisenman reviews Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis at the Chicago Cultural Center, on view through January 8, 2017. Eisenman writes: “[Lewis’] paintings are often blue, and they reference the exhilaration and despair of being black in America. Friend and contemporary of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and the rest, he never attained comparable […]
9 Women and Abstraction @ Zürcher Gallery
Hyperallergic
Thomas Micchelli reviews 1970’s: 9 Women and Abstraction at Zürcher Gallery, New York, on view through December 22, 2016. The show features works by: Lula Blocton, Regina Bogat, Samia Halaby, Hermine Ford, June Leaf, Lizbeth Marano, Kazuko Miyamoto, Lynn Umlauf, and Merrill Wagner. Micchelli writes: “In her highly informative essay on the exhibition’s website, curator […]
Transcending Despair: Rothko, Herrera, Martin
Tamar Zinn
Tamar Zinn finds comfort from current events in three abstract painting exhibitions: Mark Rothko: Dark Palette at Pace Gallery, New York (through January 7), Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight at the Whitney Museum (through January 9), and Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim Museum (through January 11). Zinn writes: “It is through the arts, as well […]
Outside In: 5 Painters @ Steven Harvey
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Outside In at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, on view through December 31, 2016. The show features works by Andrea Belag, Susanna Coffey, Elliott Green, Stephanie Pierce, and Eleanor Ray Yau writes: “I am thankful for the nameless sensations and wild associations these paintings stirred up. The pleasures they offer are real, […]
Cubism & War @ the Museo Picasso
The Artblog
Justin O. Walker reviews Cubism and War: The Crystal and the Flame at the Museu Picasso, Barcelona, on view through January 29th 2017. Walker writes: “The exhibit reveals the cubists in Paris were never far from the external specter of ruin, and evidently leery of the internal one. The war to end all wars was […]
Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism
New York Review of Books
J. Hoberman reviews Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view through January 8, 2017. Hoberman writes: “To a degree, ‘Paint the Revolution’ is the story of the three star muralists, Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco, who along with the posthumously canonized Frida Kahlo, defined the new […]
Max Beckmann in New York
Too Much Art
Mario Naves reviews Max Beckmann in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through February 20, 2017. Naves observes: “Among the most striking aspects of Beckmann’s vision is that, notwithstanding his meditations on human folly and vice, it never descends into nihilism or despair. The paintings bristle and bump with […]
Renoir @ the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Apollo Magazine
Paul Bonaventura reviews Renoir: Intimacy at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, on view through January 22, 2017. Bonaventura writes: “Guillermo Solana, the Thyssen’s artistic director and curator of the show, suggests in the catalogue that Renoir had his brain in his hands. Painting for him was not an intellectual pursuit to be conjectured and argued over, it was […]
Emily Carr & Wolfgang Paalen in British Columbia
Art:21 Magazine
Colin Browne considers the impact of a little known meeting between modernist painter Emily Carr and German surrealist Wolfgang Paalen on their subsequent work.
Beyond Caravaggio @ The National Gallery, London
London Review of Books
Julian Bell reviews Beyond Caravaggio at The National Gallery, London, on view through January 15, 2017. Describing Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ (1602), Bell observes “This is beauty, Caravaggio-style. An object is illuminated and scrutinised until its textures sing out. Comparable pleasures are on offer when Caravaggio paints a glass vase in the National Gallery’s […]
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 […]
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 […]