Reviews — Page 18

Colin Browne considers the impact of a little known meeting between modernist painter Emily Carr and German surrealist Wolfgang Paalen on their subsequent work.

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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,"

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.

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

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

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

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

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