Kim Uchiyama at Helm Contemporary
The New Criterion
Dana Gordon reviews Kim Uchiyama: Loggia at Helm Contemporary, New York. Gordon observes: “Sicily brings to mind bright sunlight and thus strong color. At midday, when extended shadows disappear, the colors of the ground, objects, and sky can be close in value—there isn’t a lot of contrast in brightness among colors. This kind of light […]
Bosiljka Raditsa and Elizabeth Yamin
Brooklyn Rail
Jonathan Goodman reviews Accommodating the Object: Bosiljka Raditsa and Elizabeth Yamin at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York. Goodman writes that both artists, “in distinguished fashion, look to an organic abstraction that elaborates on the ab-ex style that immediately preceded them, at the same time pulling away from the past and working […]
Franklin Einspruch: Tangibilia
Tussle
William Corwin reviews Tangibilia, an exhibition of paintings by Franklin Einspruch at THERE Gallery, New York. Corwin asserts: “The strongest, and most enigmatic painting in Tagibilia is Private Life. A pair of lovers wrestle in bed, their bodies tangled in a series of angles and stacks… Wiggly glove-like comic strip hands emerge at different points […]
Maison de Masson
The New Criterion
David Platzer reviews the exhibition André Masson: There is No Finished World at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, France. Platzer’s review walks the reader through the phases of Masson’s career – cubism, surrealism, the influence of eroticism (via de Sade), and mythology – presented in this retrospective.
Interview with Barbara Grossman
Painting Perceptions
Larry Groff interviews fellow painter Barbara Grossman about her career and work. Asked about how “modernist notions of flatness and respecting the picture plane’s integrity benefit [her] work,” Grossman responds: “I believe it is another way to present ‘near and far’ without the conventions of perspective, which is a concept and not at all how […]
Dana Saulnier: Nearly Distant
Looking Glass
Peter Malone reviews Dana Saulnier: Nearly Distant at First Street Gallery, New York. Malone writes: “Unlike many committed abstract painters today who flirt with spatial depth and the occasional image, yet hold fast to the security of the modernist surface, Saulnier shows no discomfort with illusionary space, or modeling, or receding planes, or atmospheric depth, […]
“The Subject of Painting Is Paint”: On Frank Bowling
The Nation
In a though-provoking profile of painter Frank Bowling, John-Baptiste Oduor contemplates Bowling’s “uneasy relationship to the external sources of influence on his work” given his stated interest in paint as subject. “For Bowling,” Oduor observes, “‘the subject of painting is paint.’ This might be a difficult idea to grasp, but accepting it—or at least finding […]
Gustav Klimt Landscapes
Brooklyn Rail
David Carrier reviews Klimt Landscapes at the Neue Galerie, New York. Carrier points out the uniqueness of these pictures observing that “while Impressionism was shown in Klimt’s Vienna, he seemed to have worked in a parallel Austrian universe. His pointillism owes more to the sixth-century Christian mosaics at Ravenna than to Georges Seurat. … perhaps […]
Willem de Kooning and Italy
The Art Newspaper
David Anfam reviews Willem de Kooning L’Italia at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. Noting that a “mix of scholarly mismatch versus magnificent artworks lingers throughout the whole display,” Anfam further observes: “near the start a trio of “abstract parkway landscapes” hang together for the first time: how do Bolton Landing (1957), Detour (1958) and Brown Derby […]
Interview with Margaux Ogden
Bomb Magazine
Tess Bilhartz interviews Margaux Ogden whose exhibition Tidal Locking was recently on view at Tif Sigfrids. Ogden remarks: “Repetition is very present in ancient Roman architecture, and the degradation or evolution of form that happens over time interests me. You start out with a perfect copy, and eventually it is bastardized to a point where […]
Joan Thorne: An Odyssey of Color
Two Coats of Paint
Vittorio Colaizzi reviews Joan Thorne, An Odyssey of Color at David Richard Gallery, New York. In Orango, a row of concentric green arcs – complicated by her signature trembling – frames a riotous zone of magenta, cobalt, and powdery violet. Only after some deciphering does the sequence and nature of layers become apparent, as the […]
Robert Ryman: The Act of Looking
Whitehot Magazine
Joseph Nechvatal reviews Robert Ryman: The Act of Looking at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Nechvatal observes: “The piece with oil on aluminum panel and four bolts called Accord (1985) I think is the best in the show, because the rolled or sprayed ‘pure’ opticality of the white surface (leitmotif of the Ryman style) on […]
Cezanne’s Sensations
NonSite
A 1979 article by Éric Michaud recently republished in NonSite. Michaud writes: “It would be wrong, then, to look for a rational convention in Cézanne’s painting. Émile Bernard only wanted to see in it the essence of things; [Lawrence ] Gowing saw only pure signs. But Cézanne’s painting is no more conventional than language is […]
Reeve Schley: By the River
Tussle
William Corwin reviews a recent exhibition of works by Reeve Schley at Geary, New York. Corwin begins: “In the endless litany of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), we often miss out on one of the most important things, hearing, or seeing a novel interpretation of the world through a foreign set of eyes. Ninety-nine percent […]
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 […]
Chaïm Soutine at K20
Spike Art Magazine
Hans-Jürgen Hafner reviews Chaïm Soutine, Against the Current at K20, Düsseldorf. Hafner’s review highlights the uniquely visual nature of experiencing a Soutine painting. “Encountering a work by Soutine,” Hafner writes, “you ‘see’ what you ‘get’ exactly by looking at it … a meager, lifeless chicken, hanging slightly aslant against some dark background, an uncanny hole […]
Emily Mason: Tone Control
The New Yorker
Jackson Arn reviews Emily Mason: The Thunder Hurried Slow at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Arn observes: “Working your way from the left to the right side of the small, square ‘Like Some Old Fashioned Miracle’ (1972-74), you first find bright yellow and blue cheek to cheek with hunter green, simple as two plus three […]
Matisse and Derain: A study in contrasts
The New Criterion
James Panero reviews Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. After setting the stage with a discussion of Michel Eugène Chevreul’s theory of contrasting color and its influence on impressionist and post-impressionist painting, Panero traces the story of Matisse and Derain working together in […]
Picasso’s Transformations
New York Review of Books
With numerous exhibitions and publications marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death in 1973, 2023 has been a year to reconsider the most famous artist of the 20th century. Reviewing a number of these shows and books about the artist, Jed Perl laments that for all this attention and celebration, “Picasso, a titan among […]