New York School

Notes and Reflections on Rothko in Paris
IdeelArt

Dana Gordon reflects on a recent visit to the Mark Rothko retrospective at The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Gordon observes that the 1950s paintings “are [Rotho’s] best. They have the most full expression of color possible. I found them easy to look at, drawing me to them, and they made me want to look […]

James Brooks reconsidered
Two Coats of Paint

Laurie Fendrich reviews James Brooks: A Painting is a Real Thing, curated by Dr. Klaus Ottmann on view at The Parrish Art Museum from August 6–October 15, 2023. Fendrich writes: “On the rare occasions I’ve encountered Brooks’s paintings, I’ve paid them scant attention. Like many, I have walked on by, presumptively ranking him well below […]

On Hans Hofmann & Nicolas de Staël
The New Criterion

Dana Gordon links the evolution of Hans Hofmann’s abstract expressionist paintings of the 1950s to the influence of Nicolas de Staël, whose work was prominent and popular in New York galleries at that time. Gordon asserts: “Both Hofmann and de Staël championed the life of abstract forms, the communicative presence of the material of paint, […]

Ninth Street Women
The New Yorker

Claudia Roth Pierpont reviews Mary Gabriel’s new book Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art (Little, Brown and Company). Roth Pierpont writes: “Mary Gabriel’s timely and ambitious new book, “Ninth Street Women,” provides a multifaceted account of the […]

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 […]

Jack Tworkov on Chaim Soutine
ARTnews

Blog post revisiting Jack Tworkov’s 1950 essay “The Wandering Soutine.” Chaim Soutine: Flesh is on view at the Jewish Museum, New York through September 16, 2018. Tworkov writes: “Soutine derives an immediate advantage by painting from life; because his motive is settled in advance, he does not have to tease it out in the process of painting. […]

Jane Freilicher @ Paul Kasmin Gallery
Vogue Magazine

Julia Felsenthal writes about painter Jane Freilicher. A show of Jane Freilicher’s work, ’50s New York, is on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, through June 9, 2018. Felsenthal notes that Freilicher was “committed … to rooting her practice in the everyday … Domestic spaces were her creative fodder; domestication was not (‘she had […]

Arshile Gorky Landscapes @ Hauser & Wirth
Hyperallergic

Thomas Micchelli reviews Ardent Nature: Arshile Gorky Landscapes, 1943–47 at Hauser & Wirth, New York, on view through December 23, 2017. Micchelli observes: “The drawings in this show are breathtaking in their variety and intensity. Motifs glide in and out; graphite lines trace the contours of unknown plants and body parts, accented by strokes of green, […]

Ad Reinhardt: The Threshold of Perception
artcritical

Justin Sterling reviews the recent exhibition Ad Reinhardt: Blue Paintings at David Zwirner Gallery. Sterling writes: “To see Ad Reinhardt’s paintings one must slow down the pace of everyday life. In the Blue Paintings … dating for the most part from 1950 to 1953, so much medium has been removed from the paint as to […]

Nicolas Carone: Visualizing the Imaginary and Unseen
Hyperallergic

Carter Ratcliff reviews Nicolas Carone: Imaginary Portraits at Loretta Howard Gallery (through October 28)and The Thing Unseen: A Centennial Celebration of Nicolas Carone, organized by Ro Lohin, at the New York Studio School (closed). Ratcliff notes that “The Studio School catalog is prefaced by one of Carone’s precepts: ‘The process is to draw the thing […]

Robert Motherwell: Early Paintings
artcritical

Megan Kincaid reviews Robert Motherwell: Early Paintings at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, on view through October 28, 2017. Kincaid writes: “… Kasmin tackles a body of work that has been overshadowed by Motherwell’s critically lauded early explorations into collage and automatic drawing. Despite the commercial appeal of paintings and their prominence in Motherwell’s later career, […]

Ad Reinhardt: Blue Paintings
Brooklyn Rail

Eleanor Ray reviews Ad Reinhardt: Blue Paintings at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through October 21, 2017. Ray writes: “Our idea of Reinhardt’s work, whether from reproductions or sporadic viewings, might tend to flatten it, and the in-person effect far exceeds that mental image. Having already been a fan of Reinhardt, I was […]

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 […]

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 […]

Milton Avery’s Unique American Modernism
Apollo Magazine

Matthew Sperling reviews Milton Avery at Victoria Miro, London, on view through July 29, 2017. Sperling writes: “In Excursion on the Thames (1953), one of several pictures in the exhibition deriving from Avery’s only trip to Europe in 1952, the perfect balance is struck between loving observation of the everyday and visionary form-making: the pleasure […]

Philip Guston: A Painter and His Muses
The Art Section

Deanna Sirlin reviews Philip Guston and The Poets at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, on view through September 3, 2017. Sirlin concludes: “[Eugenio] Montale writes of his own poetry, ‘The subject matter of my poetry . . . is the human condition considered in itself.’ Whether one is looking at the earliest period of Guston’s pictorial works, […]

John Graham: Maverick Modernist
Hamptons Art Hub

James Croak reviews John Graham: Maverick Modernist at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, on view through July 30, 2017. Croak writes: “Early Modernism in painting, loosely defined as artwork seeking an essentialism constructed between the late 19th century up until WWII, was an intellectual adventure of the first order, having its manifestation in […]

Mercedes Matter @ Mark Borghi
Hyperallergic

Jennifer Samet reviews Mercedes Matter: A Survey: Paintings & Drawings from 1929 to 1998 at Mark Borghi Fine Art, New York, on view through May 26, 2017. Samet writes: “Matter’s insistence on the nude female body, and on still lifes of flowers, drapery, and skulls as the focus of observational painting — for herself and […]

Philip Guston @ the Gallerie dell’Accademia
ARTnews

Sarah Douglas reviews Philip Guston and The Poets at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, on view through September 3, 2017. Douglas writes that “the show, curated by Guston scholar Kosme de Baranano, is built–somewhat loosely–around Guston’s reading of and relationships with poets. There are the whimsical works on paper he made to illustrate his wife Musa […]

Inventing Downtown
Joanne Mattera Art Blog

Joanne Mattera photoblogs a tour of the recent exhibition Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965 at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University. Mattera notes: “Looking back, as this exhibition allows you to do, you see how important these cooperative efforts were, not only for the artists–many of whom went on to stellar […]