Yunhee Min writes about the value of craft as seen in the work of painter Will Fowler, whose work is on view through June 30, 2012 at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. Min writes: "Will Fowler's paintings are full of craft, a kind of craft that is peculiar to painting as an object and activity...
Virginia Billeaud Anderson writes about Mark Williams' polypropylene paintings. Anderson writes that Williams' recent work "offers a restless geometric abstraction with ambiguous blurred elements that veer into gestural. You have to stand before Untitled, 2012 at Wade Wilson Art to see its vitality, this work's uneven paint, enhancing imperfections and overall translucence are not visible
Andrea Kirsh reviews the book The Memory Factory; The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna 1900 by Julie M. Johnson (Purdue University Press). Johnson's book, Kirsh writes, calls attention to "a group of women artists who were active in Vienna's art world around 1900 but were entirely written out of later historical accounts." This, Kirsh notes,
A video walk-through of the exhibition Todd Chilton: Steady at Feature, Inc., New York, on view through June 30, 2012. Of his paintings Chilton writes: "The paintings exhibit imperfections that are a result of handmade patterns and geometry. This often heightens optical effects in the patterns, and serves to create a situation in which the
David Sweet reviews two exhibitions Robert Holyhead at Peer Gallery, London (through July 7, 2012) and Geoffrey Rigden at Poussin Gallery, London (through June 30, 2012). Sweet writes that "outside of the issues of art criticism of a formalist sort, one might end up wondering about the contemporary positioning of these two painters and the
In a new video by Art21, Nancy Spero (1926-2009) works on prints and "discusses how collaborations with other artists activated her work by allowing for greater variation. In working with others and drawing from an extensive collection of acquired and original figural images, Spero was able to produce art late into her life. Spero's piece
Paul Behnke photoblogs a studio visit with painter Sharon Butler. Behnke writes that in Butler's work "a mental and technical exactness are displayed as an idea is explored with a deft layering of forms and line that shows the maker's mind at work. This rigor is very often contrasted with the impulsive way the work
Katie Geha interviews painter and sculptor Catherine Lee about her work. Lee remarks: "I have a really strong belief in the power of abstraction. My work refers to things in the world tangentially, but it’s not at all representational. I have a very strong allegiance to abstraction and I think that comes from my early
An essay by Mark Stone on vision - the vital sign of contemporary painting. Stone writes "How we see things is the most important place to start. There are many of us who... want something more visually stimulating, thoughtful and resonant. We want to use our eyes informed by our technologies instead of relying on
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Gregory Amenoff. Showing many new works, Amenoff discusses how his recent paintings have developed and his interest in painting in-between states - twilight and the changes in the seasons.
Robin Laurence reviews the exhibition Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence at the Vancouver Art Gallery, on view through September 3, 2012. Laurence writes that the show "examines how Carr, her contemporaries and present-day practitioners have all expressed an aspiration towards transcendence, towards a state or experience beyond the ordinary." Laurence continues noting that
Amanda Manitach interviews painter Susanna Bluhm about her work currently on view in the exhibition look at the crown with which his mother crowned him at Prole Drift, Seattle, Washington, through July 14, 2012. Manitach writes that Bluhm's "new work at Prole Drift cites the darker passages of the Song of Solomon and comprises fifteen
Jonathan Goodman talks with painter Denise Green on the occasion of the publication of Denise Green: An Artist's Odyssey from the University of Minnesota Press. "In the beginning of the 1980s... I was supporting a new style of painting, one that turned away from the forms of representation in art. So my style changed significantly.
Painter Brian Dupont reviews two recent installations of the exhibition Richard Serra: Drawing, A Retrospective - at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and at The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas. Dupont writes: "Serra's use of paintstick and insistence on drawing as black poses an interesting dichotomy with the metal plates of his sculpture... the
Ed Beem blogs about the exhibition Marsden Hartley: Soliloquy in Dogtown at the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts, on view through October 14, 2012. Beem writes: "Regarded as the province of vagabonds, prostitutes, witches and feral dogs, Dogtown is just the sort of place that fires the artist's imagination... Hartley's interpretation of Dogtown runs toward
Hylan Booker blogs about the paintings and engravings of Hendrik Goltzius. Although known for his printmaking, Booker notes that the "the sensuous and decadent allegorical themes would find bold expression in [Goltzius'] paintings, which he took up in his middle age. His extraordinarily sensitive sense of detail gives one the feeling that here's an artist
Brent Hallard interviews painter Michael Brennan about the development of his work. Brennan remarks: "I think a lot about my painting as (an) object, and the size best suited to the natural mark of the knife I use. I'm not interested in projecting to scale up, like Kline, Still, or Motherwell. I don't want to
James Kalm visits the exhibition Deborah Brown: Freewheeling at the Active Space, Brooklyn, on view through July 1, 2012. Kalm notes: "Brown has transformed her neighborhood views into near fantasy scenes that conflates science-fiction landscapes with Color-Field abstraction. Tall stacks of flattened cars on towers recall the scaffolds of Indian burial platforms, and the hulking
Charles Kessler visits and reviews the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Kessler writes: "There are many good reasons why breaking the Barnes trust was a bad idea... And while a case can be made that this type of installation is a cultural artifact worth preserving, there are other ways, short of wholesale preservation, to document
John Goodrich reviews the exhibition Jean Hélion: Five Decades at Schroeder Romero & Shredder, on view through June 30, 2012. Goodrich writes: "Rather than presuming a role for art - as transcendent object, or omniscient sign - Hélion simply absorbed, with a remarkably astute eye, great instances of traditional painting, and pursued its possibilities in