Jeffrey Dennis blogs his notes on a recent lecture, Clyfford Still: Life Against Death, by David Anfam at Chelsea College of Art, London on May 12, 2011. Dennis writes: "Anfam described Still's utterly serious demeanour, and how his radicalism emerged out of conservative beginnings. His early work reveals an ambition to be part of the
Sharon Butler blogs about the upcoming exhibition Chris Martin: Painting Big on view June 18 - October 23, 2011 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Butler writes: "[Martin's] show at the Corcoran... will prove beyond any doubt [his] love of LARGE. The exhibition... features a site-specific installation of paintings in the museum's central atrium in
Andrew Martin muses on the significance of painter Philip Guston's return to figuration: "Like Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Guston’s figurative turn remains the centerpiece of his personal mythology." Recounting both the severe critical reactions to Guston's rejection of abstraction and Guston's own attitude toward his figurative paintings Martin concludes:
Celia White reviews Gino Severini, futuriste et néoclassique at the Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris on view through July 25, 2011. Focusing on Severini's move from futurist to a neoclassical style, the exhibition, White writes, "simultaneously emphasises the irony that underlies the move from futurism to neoclassicism: that the same mechanical force which once formed a
Interview with painter Inga Dalrymple. Dalrymple discusses her studio practice and influences: "I don’t set out to paint something with an end game in mind. I regularly destroy paintings (by which I mean either scraping back, if I'm using oils, or repainting if I’m using acrylic) not because I don’t always like the results, but
Steven Alexander posts about American Abstract Artists: 75th Anniversary on view at OK Harris Gallery through July 15, 2011. American Abstract Artists is "a democratic artist-run organization founded in 1936 in New York City to promote and foster understanding of abstract and non-objective art." Alexander writes: "This sprawling but beautifully coherent show features the work
Raphael Rubinstein blogs about under-known painter Valerio Adami. Rubinstein writes: "[Adami's] distinctive use of flat color, which he has been employing since the mid-1960s, brilliantly marries the color printing of Hergé's Tintin books and medieval stained-glass; the stylized eroticism of his sinuous line and his eye for the fetish object is every bit as seductive
Misha Kligman blogs about the work of painter Anthony Dobovsky. Kligman writes: "Dobovsky's paintings are small in scale - mere inches. However, the moments, lived experience, thoughts and poetry that the works embody and evoke seem to be massive."
Martin Bromirski blogs installation views of Kimber Smith: Paintings and Works on Paper on view at James Graham & Sons, New York through June 30, 2011. The gallery press release notes: "Smith was ahead of his time in his ability to consider the whole canvas with every brushstroke and his early use of large simple
As rich as any painting: beautiful images of Japanese Woodblock prints from The Barry Rosensteel Japanese Print Collection at the University of Pittsburgh.
Franklin Einspruch reviews the exhibition Leon Kossoff at Mitchell-Innes & Nash on view through June 18, 2011. Einspruch writes that Kossoff "[continues] to work in portraiture and landscape, with a brush loaded with oils as if they were tar, favoring a palette based on a sooty, British gray... [but]... one can see a brightening... a
Interview with Istanbul-based painter Jasmine Justice. "I start with one color and intuitively disperse it onto the canvas or linen. These initial pigment accumulations are all different and usually very exciting to me, so I have started making laser jet print installation pieces out of photographs of them. But after I have shot them, the
Aldrin Valdez interviews painter Michael Voss. Voss says of his work: "One key thing that I’m interested in is some form of simplicity... Simplicity is something that you approach, that’s fleeting, that moves. I’m very drawn to the moment when actually something simple starts to become complicated... I sometimes think of [my paintings], too, as
Michelle Heinz reviews Joan Waltemath: Contingencies at Peregrine Program in Chicago which was on view from April 16 - May 15, 2011. Heinz writes: "While artistic experimentation has been a kind of tour-de-force, somewhere outside of painting, Waltemath has aggressively insisted that paint is still a frontier." In works from 2003-present Waltemath employs a wide
Sharon Butler posts about "the open proposition in contemporary abstraction." She writes: "There is a studied, passive-aggressive incompleteness to much of the most interesting abstract work that painters are making today. But the subversion of closure isn't their only priority. They also harbor a broader concern with multiple forms of imperfection... The painters take a
Considering the work of Edward Hopper and Fairfield Porter, Philip Koch looks at "...the difference between two of the main ways of seeing in painting- one can either move one's eye across the surface or plunge into the painting's depth."
Transcript of painter David Novros' remarks at the Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas on February 12, 2011. Novros' discusses the scarcity of place-specific painting and the necessary (and uncommon) patronage that brings places of painting into being. "John and Dominique [de Menil] created the circumstances and Rothko invented a magnificent painted place... Rothko (and his contemporaries,
Susan Stamberg reports on painter Gustave Caillebotte's paintings of Napoleon III's 'modern' Paris. Unlike his contemporaries Stamberg reports that Caillebotte's paintings mourn the loss of the old Paris and the rise of the modern city. She also discusses Caillebotte's important role as a patron of impressionist painters including Monet and Renoir. His "art collection became
Eric Sutphin reviews the exhibitions Shared Space: Monique Ford and Susan Ross and Emily Berger: New Work at The Painting Center, New York on view through June 18, 2011. Of Ford's and Ross' paintings Sutphin writes that "an essential painterly impulse exists under the surface of each artist's work..." tying together Ross' geometry and Ford's
Joey Veltkamp profiles Seattle-based painter Ken Kelly. Kelly comments that the evocative potential in his newer work, constructed from discrete marks that cross the picture plane, interests him: "That, to me, is the point: the way in which basic, universal configurations of simple units can end up constructing, in a viewers mind, an incredible range