Reviews
Rackstraw Downes @ Betty Cunningham
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Rackstraw Downes: Paintings and Drawings at Betty Cunningham Gallery, New York, on view through October 14, 2018. Yau writes: “In ‘Outdoor Passageway at 15 Rivington,’ Downes recognizes infinite time (the sky above), seasonal time (the air conditioning units), and historical time (the dirty walls), as well as time passing (the passageway). Despite all the […]
David Row @ Loretta Howard
artcritical
Peter Malone reviews David Row: Counter Clockwise at Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, on view through October 20, 2018. Malone writes: “Considering much of current abstract painting’s focus on spontaneity and one-off effects, Row’s tendency to revisit abstract elements embraced by earlier painters—not just Noland but Ellsworth Kelly, Dorothea Rockburne and Al Held, with whom […]
Patrilineations: Jane Fine at Pierogi
In Jane Fine’s recent work, painting’s power to beautify dark feeling, particularly in the more somber-hued small works, is masterfully on display.
Ribera, Mantegna & Bellini
AbCrit
Robin Greenwood reflects on work from two London exhibitions: Ribera: Art of Violence at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and Mantegna and Bellini at the National Gallery, London (both on view through January 27, 2019). Greenwood concludes: “I feel both with Mantegna and Ribera a potent link with art now, if we could but unlock that […]
The Ecstatic Flow of Paint
New York Times
Roberta Smith highlights seven painting shows currently on view in New York: Ed Clark at Mnuchin Gallery (through October 20), Vivian Springford at Almine Rech Gallery (through October 20), Larry Poons at Yares Art (through October 27), Frank Bowling at Alexander Gray Associates (through October 13), Joan Mitchell at Cheim & Read (through November 3), […]
Sharon Butler @ Theodore:Art
Hyperallergic
Paul D’Agostino reviews Sharon Butler: New Paintings at Theodore:Art, Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through October 7, 2018. D’Agostino notes that Butler’s new paintings are based on selections from daily iPad drawings that “readily became not merely an ersatz sketchbook, but also a journal. What’s more, given the textureless surface and inverted, in a sense, light […]
David Bomberg’s Profound Modernism
New York Review of Books
Fran Bigman reviews works by David Bomberg recently on view at the Ben Uri Gallery, London. Bigman writes: “Bomberg’s work, first deemed too radical by many established critics of the time, would later gain the reputation of being too conservative. Bomberg’s entire career can seem like a litany of failure. Labeled an “English Cubist” or […]
Monet & American Abstract Painting
Brooklyn Rail
Norman L Kleeblatt reviews The Water Lilies: American Abstract Painting and the Last (Later) Monet recently on view at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Kleeblatt observes: “Monet’s late work, in particular his now exemplar Water Lilies, offered a new node on the modernist art historical road map that underwrote American Abstract Expressionism. With 20/20 hindsight, late Monet […]
Patrick Heron @ Tate St. Ives
AbCrit
Geoff Hands reviews works by Patrick Heron at Tate St Ives, on view through September 30, 2018. Hands writes: “Heron’s work is often distinguished by its example of colour-shape dexterity and glorious visuality and a chronological display may not have accommodated or extended the potential impact of his achievements. The visual dynamism of the paintings, from all […]
Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire
Studio International
Emily Spicer reviews Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire at the National Gallery, London, on view through October 7, 2018. Spicer writes that the show centers around Cole’s “The Course of Empire series, which charts the rise and fall of civilisation over five canvases – a cautionary tale of the dangers of imperial greed and corruption. These […]
Marc Chagall & the People’s Art School
Hyperallergic
Wilson Tarbox reviews Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevich: The Russian Avant-garde in Vitebsk, 1918–1922, on view at the Centre Pompidou, Paris through July 16, 2018. The exhibition highlights the short lived People’s Art School, started in 1918 by Marc Chagall, and its demise that coincided with the “tension … between Chagall and his particular notion of revolutionary art — […]
Back to the Future: Hao Liang at Gagosian
In elegant blends of old and new, Hao Liang’s show honors Chinese painting’s great landscape tradition as it abates its current “anxious relationship between the ancient and the modern”.
Eugène Delacroix @ The Louvre
Studio International
Joe Lloyd reviews Eugène Delacroix at The Louvre on view through July 23, 2018. Lloyd observes that “the importance Delacroix placed on colour as a vehicle for meaning runs through the Fauvists, Matisse and Picasso and abstract expressionism, right through to much present-day art. To this is joined Delacroix’s painterliness. Even the most harmoniously composed […]
Al Held in Paris: 1952-53
Brooklyn Rail
Tom McGlynn reviews Al Held in Paris: 1952-53 at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, on view through June 15, 2018. McGlynn begins: “Al Held moved to Paris in the early 1950s where he was part of a loose-knit expatriate community of American painters that included Joan Mitchell and Sam Francis. Mitchell, Francis and Held all […]
Tomma Abts @ the Serpentine Gallery
The Guardian
Adrian Searle reviews works by Tomma Abts at the Serpentine Gallery, London, on view through September 9, 2018. Searle writes: “Someone once said Abts’ work reminded them of wallpaper designs from East Germany. The paintings flirt with a kind of datedness. They do not quite belong to their moment. They are hard to place. This is […]
Len Bellinger & Jamison Brosseau
James Kalm Rough Cut
James Kalm visits Len Bellinger: Painting Notes 1993-2018 at David & Schweitzer Contemporary and Jamison Brosseau: Skittles at SARDINE. Both shows are on view through June 3, 2018. In the video Kalm provides a close look at both Bellinger and Brosseau’s works and talks to Bellinger about his paintings and career.
Paul Resika, Geometry and the Sea
artcritical
David Carrier reviews reviews Paul Resika: Geometry and the Sea at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through May 20) and Bookstein Projects (through May 26). Carrier writes: ” … as if working in a highly personal way through a Gombrichian history of figuration, [Resika] juxtaposes backgrounds of clear skies, with yellow suns, with jagged pyramids in the […]
Devastatingly Human
New York Review of Books
Jenny Uglow reviews All Too Human: Bacon, Freud, and a Century of Painting Life at the Tate Britain through August 27, 2018. Uglow begins: “The gripping and dramatic show … merits its title: it is ‘all too human’ in the tender, painful works that form its core. But ‘a century of painting life’ promises something wider—does it smack […]
Elisa Jensen @ David & Schweitzer Contemporary
Whitehot Magazine
Jonathan Goodman reviews Elisa Jensen: 100 Boats and the Fair Wheel, recently on view at David & Schweitzer Contemporary, New York. Goodman writes: “[Jensen’s] offering, which argues for a bronze-age reading of Brooklyn contemporary art, consists of a wall installation of diminutive golden boats, a group of small paintings, a few larger paintings, and a bench […]
Inka Essenhigh @ Miles McEnery Gallery
Hyperallergic
Peter Malone reviews paintings by Inka Essenhigh at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, on view through May 25, 2018. Malone concludes: “What separates Essenhigh … is her willingness to embrace the implications of her narratives and to share her dramatic intuitions openly with the viewer, without abandoning the improvisational spontaneity of her drawing and painting. […]