Reviews
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 […]
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 […]
Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life
The greatest value of this fascinating show might be a reminder that place, not things, has always defined us as a nation, and that engagement with that great theme has given us much of our lasting and most important art.
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 […]
Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh
Studio International
Anna McNay reviews the recent exhibition Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh at the Scottish National Gallery. MacNay writes: “Daubigny (1817-1878) was not only one of the best-known artists in France, but one of the most successful and influential. His pioneering and innovative use of impasto techniques, the palette knife, and a sketchy application of […]
Kyle Staver’s Eloquent Color
Painting Perceptions
John Goodrich reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Kyle Staver at Kent Fine Art, New York. Goodrich writes: “Kyle Staver is a colorist, and one of the best around – which is only to say that in her paintings she makes every color count. In art school, they drill into students the three properties […]
Visions and Revisions: Stanley Lewis at NYSS & Betty Cuningham
Stanley Lewis follows Giacometti’s emotive inroads with more pleasure than doubt, searching stabilized both by perspectival logic and moments of detail.
Merlin James at Sikkema Jenkins
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Merlin James: Paintings For Persons at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., on view through November 12, 2016. Yau writes that James “gets at all sorts of feelings without ever locking them into a narrative. He doesn’t tell us how to read his paintings. He gives us that responsibility and, in that regard, he is […]
McArthur Binion @ Kavi Gupta
New City Art
Elizabeth Lalley reviews McArthur Binion: Seasons at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, on view through November 22, 2016. Lalley writes: “In ‘Seasons,’ Binion’s layered marks form a series of grids. The physicality and repetition of the artist’s cross-hatching process results in pieces that are deceptively uniform from a distance, but upon closer inspection, are filled with […]
Paul Feiler @ Jessica Carlisle
Studio International
Angeria Rigamonti di Cutó reviews works by Paul Feiler recently on view at Jessica Carlisle Gallery, London. Rigamonti Di Cutó writes: “As with other artists working in a constructivist-concrete vein, Feiler’s arrangements of rational, geometric forms yield curiously otherworldly sensations and suggest the tension between what the eye perceives and the brain imagines.”
Helene Appel @ P420
Ruminations
Geoff Hands reviews Helene Appel: Washing up at P420, Bologna, on view through November 12, 2016. Hands writes: “[Appel] may have painted the images from life, eidetic memory or from reproductions (e.g. a photographic image). We do not know (without asking her) and have the option of constructing our own mini-histories for the making and […]
Agnes Martin: A Resolutely Solitary Endeavor
Two Coats of Paint
Sharon Butler blogs about the Agnes Martin retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, on view through January 11, 2017. Butler writes: “Martin’s austere paintings, with neutral palette and delicate line, are beautifully installed in the Guggenheim’s warm white ramp. Unlike other artists, Martin didn’t find her voice until she was well past forty and […]