Julie Beckers reviews a retrospective exhibition of works by Balthus at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, on view through January 31, 2016. Beckers notes that "mental isolation is a recurring element in much of Balthus’s work; figures depicted in odd and suggestive angles seem detached from their surroundings, their gaze cannot be caught, giving the
Patricia Failing reviews Repeat/Recreate: Clyfford Still’s Replicas at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, on view through January 10, 2016. Failing writes: "To evaluate the artist’s assertion that some of his ideas deserved 'survival on more than one stretch of canvas' requires a deep dive into his complex vision of relationships between mind, hand, and painting
Julia Jacquette considers Adélaïde Labille-Guiard's Self–Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond (died 1788), 1785 in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jacquette writes: "An entire symposium could be held on the meaning of this painting. Indeed, the Metropolitan’s wall text for it asserts that it
Larry Groff interviews painter Gina Werfel. Asked about transitioning to abstraction after years of plein-air painting Werfel comments: "I don’t really feel like I’ve left observational painting behind as much as use it in a different way–collaged and improvisational. So I may start a painting based upon one of my son’s childhood drawings but then
Ken Johnson reviews Painting Tranquility: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershøi from SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark at Scandinavia House, New York, on view through February 27, 2016. Johnson writes that "[Hammershøi's] paintings convey a distinctively modern psychological complexity. But unlike another famous Scandinavian, the Expressionist Edvard Munch, Hammershoi practiced a kind of representational painting
James Kalm talks with painter EJ Hauser at her exhibition Amphibian, on view at Regina Rex, New York, on view through December 6, 2015. Kalm notes that "As a member of the new generation of painters contributing to the Williamsburg and Brooklyn art scene, EJ Hauser has gained recognition for her focused commitment, and experimentation
Maria Calandra visits the studio of painter Yevgeniya Baras. Calandra writes: "Baras' painted lines, tactile textural build up, and recurring color themes carry through from one work to the next, but for the most part each painting exists in a category of its own. They bring to mind the stream of consciousness marks on Miro's
Blog post revisiting Geri Trotta's 195 profile of painter Wilfredo Lam, republished on the occasion of an exhibition of Lam's paintings at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, on view through February 15, 2016. Trotta writes: "[Lam] works with one color at a time in a spurt of passion until he has put it everywhere he wants
Mary Hrbacek reviews a recent exhibition of works by Anders Knutsson at Van Der Plas Gallery, New York. Hrbacek writes: "Knutsson's hues are emphatically mixed; they are not comprised of raw paint taken straight from the tube in undiluted pigments. Instead, he combines his own pigments in an attempt to explore pure unadulterated light through
Peter Malone reviews John Ferren (1905–1970) at David Findlay Jr. Gallery, New York, on view through November 28, 2015. Malone notes that Ferren's work was "eclectic and wide ranging. What’s clear, even in the small Findlay exhibition, is how Ferren’s lifelong dedication to Zen and to the spiritual in art informed his many styles in
Liz Goldner reviews Marcia Hafif: From the Inventory recently on view at the Laguna Art Museum. Goldner writes: "By studying, 'the colors of the sea, the sky and the sand, the seashells and seaweed, the dark clouds over the horizon in the evening,' Hafif says, she made these vibrant paintings using colors as Indian yellow,
Evan Moffitt reviews the recent exhibition Sarah Awad: Gate Paintings at Diane Rosenstein, Los Angeles. Moffitt writes: "In The Poetics of Space, French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard said of the word 'door' that 'through meaning it encloses, while through poetic expression it opens up.' The same could be said of Awad’s gates and their relationship to
Christine Hughes reviews works by Giorgio Morandi at The Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), New York, through June 25, 2016. Hughes writes: "The 1930s is an interesting decade in Morandi’s work. It was a decade when he was finding his voice and made fewer paintings than at any other time. He was teaching etching
John Haber reviews Louise Fishman at Cheim & Read, New York, on view through November 21, 2015. Haber writes: "The lightness starts with the palette, which can hardly help evoking sea and sky ... long verticals on largely open fields and in broader strokes brimming over the grid. Both give added prominence to the white
Kate Kellaway interviews painter George Shaw. Shaw comments: "It has been said my work is sentimental. I don’t know why sentimentality has to be a negative quality. What I look for in art are the qualities I admire or don’t admire in human beings. And very rarely do I meet people who aren’t sentimental. I
Sharon Butler blogs about EJ Hauser: Amphibian at Regina Rex, New York, on view through December 6, 2015. Butler writes: "Many of the paintings in "Amphibian," EJ Hauser's first solo exhibition at Regina Rex, feature an image of a frog. Or perhaps I should say, an image of an image of an image of a
John Yau reviews John Walker: Looking Out to Sea at Alexandre Gallery, New York, on view through December 22, 2015. Yau writes that "[Walker] embraces the obdurate world of mud and dissipation – the changing seasons of Seal Point, with its bracing tides, cold sunlight and washed up trash and debris. From the jagged stripes
Charles Kessler blogs about paintings and drawings by John Lees at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through November 28, 2015. Kessler writes: "[Lees] builds up the paint, scrapes it off, sands it down, and works into it again and again, piling up the paint so much that it becomes a palpable physical presence.
Walter Darby Bannard writes about the work of Ann Walsh on the occasion of her exhibition at Alexander/Heath Contemporary, Roanoke, Virginia, on view through November 28, 2015. Bannard writes: "Dematerialized color is a physical impossibility and monocolor – a simple one-colored surface – is an ineffective cliché and by now overdone, so the prerequisite for
Emmie Francis reviews Brice Marden: Journals at Karma (through November 15) and Brice Marden: New Paintings & Drawings at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (through December 24). Francis notes synergies between the two shows writing: "Marden has remained consistently interrogative of precise material form and what value it contains. When a viewer approaches both his