Reviews
Watteau’s Eloquent Formalism
Painting Perceptions
John Goodrich visits Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection and shares his observations about Watteau’s striking formalism. Goodrich writes: “Superficially, Watteau is all fanciful froth – charming subject matter, feathery modeling, a light, darting touch. But what distinguishes Watteau are his extraordinary and comprehensive intuitions about formal rhythms — in this case, […]
Laura Owens: The Sky Is the Limit
ARTnews
Phyllis Tuchman reviews a mid-career retrospective of Laura Owens’ work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on view through February 4, 2018. Tuchman writes that Owen’s recent abstract works “are bold, handsome works that exemplify how a new wave of artists is approaching the making of abstract paintings. Instead of appropriating, say, […]
Laura Owens: Moving Targets
Art in America
Nancy Princenthal reviews a mid-career retrospective of Laura Owens’ work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on view through February 4, 2018. Princenthal writes: “What critics offer often in defense of abstract painting amounts to proclaiming its unique sincerity—the argument is that good painting is, perhaps singularly, unironic in its quest for transcendent […]
John Walker @ the New York Studio School
Arte Fuse
Jonathan Goodman reviews John Walker: The Sea and The Brush at the New York Studio School, on view through January 21, 2018. Goodman writes: “The directness of Walker’s abstractions, highly patterned in their composition and emotionally direct, claim our attention by virtue of their immediacy and their freedom from pretense. Walker seems to have internalized […]
Ryan Crotty @ High Noon Gallery
Hyperallergic
Stephen Maine reviews Ryan Crotty: Never the Less at High Noon Gallery, New York, on view through February 4, 2018. Maine writes: “To the extent that Crotty’s work is about the fluid movement of color across the surface, it can be viewed in terms of Color Field painters such as Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler […]
Rose Wylie @ the Serpentine Sackler Gallery
Studio International
Joe Lloyd reviews Rose Wylie: Quack Quack at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, on view through February 11, 2018. Lloyd writes: “There is another tension in Wylie’s work, between intentionality and spontaneity… Wylie’s work thrives on memory’s entropy, on the way we organise the floating odds and ends of our minds. Human, all too human, in […]
Sex Object Lesson: Lisa Yuskavage at David Zwirner
In Lisa Yuskavage’s paintings, dark humor and acrid color are mitigated by luminosity and sensitive execution.
Frances Barth @ Silas Van Morisse
artcritical
David Brody reviews Frances Barth: New Paintings, 2011-2017 at Silas Van Morisse Gallery, Bushwick, Brooklyn, on view through December 17, 2017. Brody begins: “Frances Barth’s new paintings combine calm planes of beautiful color with graphic details that suggest landscape, while also subverting easy spatial readings. As with Thomas Nozkowski’s cryptic modes of abstraction, Barth’s uncertain […]
A Road Trip and the American Landscape
If a gallery full of landscape paintings makes one yearn for the places they depict, day after day of driving through the country at 80 miles per hour makes one thankful for the efforts of painters who actually succeeded in locking down the essence of particular places.
Matisse-Bonnard @ the Staedal Museum
AbCrit
Richard Ward reviews Matisse-Bonnard: Long Live Painting at the Staedal Museum Frankfurt, on view through January 14, 2018. Ward notes that the “difference of approach [of the two artists] is visible throughout the exhibition and manifests itself in various ways: Matisse’s primary creation is pictorial space. Even a simple, almost sketch-like painting, such as the amazing ‘Open […]
Lauren Luloff: Drawing (with bleach) from life
Two Coats of Paint
Eileen Jeng Lynch reviews the recent exhibition Lauren Luloff: The Evergreens at Ceysson & Bénétière, New York. Lynch writes: “The title of the show, The Evergreens, derives its name from the eponymous nineteenth-century cemetery in the artist’s Brooklyn neighborhood. Luloff used bleach to paint flora – including sunflowers, hollyhocks, hydrangeas, and blue spruces – in […]
Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting
Aeqai
Karen S. Chambers reviews Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., on view through Jan. 21, 2018. Chambers writes: “The National Gallery of Art … has assembled what may be the definitive exhibition of 17th-century Dutch high-life genre painting, which focuses on the daily […]
Graham Nickson: Light and Geometry
Hyperallergic
Karen Wilkin reviews Graham Nickson: Light and Geometry at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through December 22, 2018. Wilkin writes: “The canvases and watercolors [Nickson] has produced over the years — of flamboyant sunrises and feverish sunsets — address themes that most committed modernists would either scorn or find too frightening to tackle. […]
Impressionists in London @ Tate Britain
Studio International
Francesca Wade reviews Impressionists in London at Tate Britain, on view through May 7, 2018. Wade writes: “In 1904, 37 of [Claude Monet’s] pictures – splendidly evocative hazes of red and blue – were shown in Paris in an exhibition called Views of the Thames. Eight of these works form the centrepiece of this Tate exhibition, […]
Tom McGlynn: Liberating Geometric Shapes
Two Coats of Paint
Sharon Butler reviews Tom McGlynn: Station / Decal / Survey at Rick Wester Fine Arts, New York, on view through December 23, 2017. Butler writes: “The shapes [in McGlynn’s paintings] aren’t symbolic, and they don’t conjure a discrete narrative about internal relationships. But they do provide some evidence of this artist’s specific intention and process. His very […]
Dana Schutz: Building the Boat While Painting
The Nation
Barry Schwabsky reviews an exhibition of works by Dana Schutz at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and subsequently reflects on Schutz’s controversial painting of Emmett Till shown in the recent Whitney Biennial. Schwabsky observes: “It’s in the gap between what can be imagined and what can be represented that art’s capacity for surprise is […]
Murillo: The Self-Portraits @ the Frick
Apollo Magazine
Louise Nicholson reviews Murillo: The Self-Portraits at the Frick Collection, New York, on view through February 4, 2018. Nicholson writes: “The Frick self-portrait … dominates one room. Viewers must use their imaginations to enliven the now dismal background colour: Murillo’s intended airy blue sky is gone due to the degradation of the smalt pigment he […]
Ying Li @ Gross McCleaf Gallery
Broad Street Review
Lev Feigin reviews Ying Li: Sojourn at Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, on view through November 25, 2017. Feigin writes that Li’s paintings “evoke pictorial spaces: vistas on a Swiss lake; autumn mountains near Telluride, Colorado; docked boats on the Maine coast. But come closer and you enter the ridged, luminous labyrinths of her pigments projected over […]
Syd Solomon @ Berry Campbell
Whitehot Magazine
Jonathan Goodman reviews a recent exhibition of works by Syd Solomon at Berry Campbell, New York. Goodman writes that Solomon “opens up a genuine understanding of the abstract-expressionist movement—we see the art and not the painter overwhelming the art. The vertical work called Summer Spell (1985), with its skeins and wisps of color—white, yellow, blur, […]
Wayne Thiebaud @ Allan Stone Projects
Hamptons Art Hub
Sally Grant reviews Wayne Thiebaud: Land Survey at Allan Stone Projects, New York, on view through December 23, 2017. Grant writes: “Thiebaud has frequently revisited certain motifs over the course of his long career and has mastered their painterly enticement. Whether the subject is a cake or a cloud, the artist’s consummate rendering seduces the […]