Reviews
The Beauty of Ugly Painting
New York Times
Charlie Fox considers the allure of “ugly painting” in advance of a mid-career retrospective of works by Laura Owens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, on view November 10, 2017 – February 4, 2018. Fox writes: “Our present moment bristles with an extra-special awfulness, which may explain not only the existence of this new […]
Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction
Hyperallergic
Karen Emenhiser-Harris reviews Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, on view through September 17, 2017. Emenhiser-Harris writes: “According to the Kemper, this is the first museum exhibit in the US to show abstract artwork created exclusively by women of color. Stylistically varied and teeming […]
Mystery and Rapture: Landscapes by Four
Painting Perceptions
Tina Engels blogs about the recent exhibition Mystery and Rapture: Landscapes by Four, curated by William Bailey, at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, Italy. The show featured works by Mario Fallani, Marco Fallani, Dan Gustin, and Langdon Quin. Engels notes that selections made by curator “[William] Bailey [convey] the resonance of different cultural spheres that results […]
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Painting is Presence
The Nation
Ratik Asokan reviews Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s recent exhibition Under-Song For A Cipher at the New Museum, New York. Asokan observes: “For a portraitist, it’s a strange approach. But perhaps we aren’t dealing with portraiture. Abstract painting, as defined by Octavio Paz, ‘suggests contemplation to us—not of what it shows but of a presence which the colors and […]
Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting
Studio International
Donald Stone reviews Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry, on view at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin through September 17, 2017 and the National Gallery of Art, Washington from October 22, 2017 – January 21, 2018. Stone writes: “The organisers of the latest exhibition … want us to see Vermeer […]
Patricia Treib: Interstices
ARTnews
Ella Coon reviews Patricia Treib: Interstices recently on view at Bureau, New York. Coon writes: “Treib’s engagement with ciphers and symbols coupled with her treatment of the canvas as uncharted territory—something to be delicately partitioned or meted out—suggests she is interested in something more than abstracting reality—that is, reducing observable objects and scenes to aestheticized […]
Brenda Goodman Turns Towards the Light
Whitehot Magazine
Deborah Krieger writes about Brenda Goodman’s recent paintings which will be on view in Goodman’s show In a New Space at David & Schweitzer Contemporary, New York, from September 8 – October 1, 2017. Krieger writes: “The visual language and vocabulary Goodman has used—and continues to use—to reflect her frame of mind is always evolving, forever […]
John Walker @ the Center for Maine Contemporary Art
Hyperallergic
Chris Crosman reviews John Walker: From Seal Point at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, on view through October 29, 2017. Corsman writes: “Walker is an unrepentant modernist who has led a resurgence — mostly through uncompromising example — of painters reinvigorating abstraction by looking to nature, ideas, emotion and, especially, place. The Seal Point […]
Gillian Ayres @ the National Museum Cardiff
AbCrit
Nick Moore reviews a retrospective exhibition of paintings by Gillian Ayres at the National Museum, Cardiff, on view through September 3, 2017. Moore begins: “The overarching sense of this exhibition is of a celebration of a painter whose work is vibrant, energetic and ambitious, but perhaps, above all, someone who has lived in painting. Ayres’s rich colour and […]
Women of Abstract Expressionism
Artillery
David DiMichele reviews Women of Abstract Expressionism recently on view at the Palm Springs Museum of Art. The show features works by Mary Abbott, Jay DeFeo, Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Sonia Gechtoff, Judith Godwin, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Deborah Remington, and Ethel Schwabacher. DiMichele writes: “The big surprise in the […]
Bram Bogart: The White Paintings
The Art Section
Erin Lawlor reviews Salon 002: Bram Bogart, Witte de Witte at the Saatchi Gallery, London, on view through September 10, 2017. Lawlor writes: “It might seem a curious challenge to present Bogart’s work through the white paintings; yet this reduction or even denial of colour provides something of the clarity of an x-ray, allowing a […]
Giovanni da Rimini @ the National Gallery, London
Apollo Magazine
Florence Hallett reviews Giovanni da Rimini: A 14th-Century Masterpiece Unveiled at the National Gallery, London, on view through October 8, 2017. Hallett begins: “Jewel-like, and embellished with engrossing details, the exquisite little panel at the centre of the National Gallery’s current exhibition is a rare evocation of Rimini at the turn of the 14th century, […]
Gabriele Evertz & Sanford Wurmfeld @ Minus Space
Hyperallergic
John Yau reviews Gabriele Evertz/Sanford Wurmfeld: Polychromy at MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, New York, on view through August 12, 2017. Yau observes that the two artists’ “work is very different from each other, demonstrating that the ontology of color is a wide-open field — a space where research, color theory, and painting can arrive at very […]
Margaret Clarke @ the National Gallery of Ireland
Apollo Magazine
Tom Walker reviews Margaret Clarke: An Independent Spirit at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, on view through until August 20, 2017. Walker writes: “Throughout her career, Clarke enjoyed commercial success as a portrait painter, receiving several official commissions. But the best of her work in this genre, often done when not working to order, […]
Richard Gerstl @ the Neue Galerie
Hyperallergic
Angelica Frey reviews works by Richard Gerstl at the Neue Galerie, New York, on view through September 25, 2017. Frey writes: “Gerstl was a polarizing figure, a ‘neurotic Narcissus’, as co-founder of the Leopold Museum, Diethard Leopold defined him … Gerstl perfectly embodied the artistic and existential turmoil of Vienna in the last years of […]
Howard Hodgkin: Painting India
The Telegraph Arts
Mark Hudson reviews Howard Hodgkin: Painting India at Hepworth Wakefield, on view through October 8, 2017. Hudson writes: “The paintings he produced in India and in recollection at home are far from straightforward travelogue. For Hodgkin, the subcontinent represented a place apart from the inhibited West, where life was ‘transparent’: with emotion so close to […]
Fernand Léger @ Centre Pompidou-Metz
Hyperallergic
Joseph Nechvatal reviews Fernand Léger: Beauty Is Everywhere at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France, on view through October 30, 2017. Nechvatal notes that he “[prefers] Léger’s work when it points at neurocomputing wetware, biorobotics, and AI-charged automation; when it hums away in the space between the mechanic and the organic. This is when Léger functions as a […]
Raphael: The Drawings
London Review of Books
Charles Hope reviews Raphael: The Drawings at The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, on view through September 3, 2017. Hope writes: “One of the great strengths of the exhibition is the way it illustrates Raphael’s increasing mastery of and obvious pleasure in the medium of drawing during his years in Rome. This comes across most strongly in […]
Helen Frankenthaler @ the Clark Institute
Hyperallergic
Thomas Micchelli reviews As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings (through October 9), and No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts (through September 24). Both exhibitions are on view at at the Clark Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Micchelli writes that both exhibitions “offer a compact, revelatory, and frequently stunning look at an artist whose reputation has been all too often yoked […]
Painting’s Place: Susan Lichtman at Steven Harvey
Susan Lichtman’s paintings engage representation and abstraction, and bring a novel female perspective to Intimist iconography.