Chris Miller reviews Jane Freilicher: Paintings at Valerie Carberry Gallery (through March 15) and Jane Freilicher: A Painter Among Poets at The Poetry Foundation, Chicago (through February 21).

Miller quotes Freilicher: "To strain after innovation, to worry about being ‘on the cutting edge’—a phrase I hate—reflects concern for a place in history or for one’s career rather than for the authenticity of one’s own painting." Miller adds "[Freilicher] would stubbornly pursue her own quiet 'tentativeness' (as the poet and art critic John Ashbery once put it) … and pursue a more conventional upper middle class lifestyle. The elegance but also the isolation of that life emerges … you can feel Freilicher move from excitement … to refinement … as she ages and hones her domestic ideals with still-lifes and landscapes. It’s a very ordinary world, but it’s been keenly and freshly felt with the optical and expressive qualities that Hans Hoffman encouraged his students to discover."