Xico Greenwald reviews Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., on view through October 4, 2015. Greenwalk writes: "Though Caillebotte painted numerous views of Haussmann’s Paris, 'Paris Street, Rainy Day' is the showstopper. In a letter to Monet, Caillebotte wrote 'the very great artists attach you even more to
Thomas Micchelli reviews Jackie Saccoccio: Degree of Tilt at Eleven Rivington (through October 18) and Van Doren Waxter, New York (through October 23). Micchelli writes: "If the Abstract Expressionists sought to vanquish the focal points of traditional painting through a balanced fragmentation of the picture plane, Saccoccio does the opposite. Rather than rely on Cubist
Megan Abrahams profiles painter Sara Bright whose exhibition of abstract frescoes is on view at George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, through October 10, 2015. Abrahams writes: "In her beguiling new series of moveable frescoes, Los Angeles artist Sara Bright renders an abstract allusion to poetry. During the last year, Bright has devoted herself to this
Anna McNay reviews Jackson Pollock's Mural: Energy Made Visible at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, on view through November 16, 2015. McNay writes: "Mural (1943) expounds a tension between emotional outburst and Pollock’s command of style, form and handling – something he maintained, even in his apparently automatic and uncontrolled pouring works to come. There
Mark Sheerin speaks to curator Katy Norris about the exhibition Sickert in Dieppe, on view at Pallant House, Chichester through October 4, 2015. "The 25-year-old Sickert was an apprentice of Whistler. But in Dieppe he fell under the influence of Degas... It was Degas who felt himself to be the better role model [than Whistler]
David Rhodes reflects on a recent exhibition of paintings by Suzan Frecon at David Zwirner Gallery, New York. The exhibition catalogue, with an essay by David Cohen was recently published by the gallery. Rhodes writes: "Throughout the exhibition, movement of the brush and bleeds of oil from one color to the next are far from
Patrick Neal reviews Susan Jane Walp, Paintings on Paper at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York (through October 17) and Scott Brodie, Then & Now: Retrospective at Albany Center Gallery, Albany, NY (through October 3). Neal observes that "[Walp's] sensibility as a painter and the paintings she makes feel resolutely bound together drawing the viewer
Alan Pocaro reviews Mimi Lauter: Carnival of Musical Echo at Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, on view through October 3, 2015. Pocaro writes that Lauter's works "are a rare combination of frenzied, physical immediacy tempered by meticulous formal complexity, and feature an elusive narrative with roots in modernist literature and biblical allegory. These gorgeous, large-scale pastel
John Yau reviews Kyle Staver: Tall Tales at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through October 11, 2015. Yau writes: "By revising a variety of well-known myths, and focusing on a moment other than the ones we are familiar with, Staver seems intent on positing a fresh angle, another possibility regarding our
Tracey Harnish blogs about Lisa Adams: America The Beautiful at CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles, on view through October 31, 2015. Harnish writes: "Lisa Adams takes us down a familiar path that is strewn with objects both mundane and transmogrified; the commonplace is ruptured by banalities... Adams has clearly reached for new territory in this show,
Viktor Witkowski blogs about Charles Pollock: A Retrospective at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, on view through September 14, 2015. Witkowski writes: "A similar [to Jackson Pollock and Thomas Hart Benton], if stylized, reach toward the edges can be observed in the paintings by Charles Pollock that he finished during his second sabbatical year in
Rebecca Morris talks with curator Kate MacNamara on the occasion of the exhibition Rebeca Morris: Rose Cut at 365 S. Mision Road, Los Angeles (through November 1, 2015). Morris comments: "I paint with the works flat on the floor and then they need to come up so I can look at them. This looking time
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Jonas Wood. Wood remarks: "It is about how you set up a challenge. Sometimes you only need a couple things to challenge yourself, and other times you need one hundred. I like to have a lot of things going on in the studio the same time – different images and sizes.
David Salle considers "late style" painting in three recent exhibitions: Alex Katz at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, and Malcolm Morley at Sperone Westwater, and Georg Baselitz: Drinkers and Orange Eaters at Skarstedt. Salle begins: "Painting is one of the few things in life for which youth holds no advantage. The diminutions wrought by aging—of muscle mass,
Frances Loeffler interviews artist Allison Katz whose exhibition All is On will be on view at Kunstverein Freiburg from September 18 - November 1, 2015. Katz remarks: "I think painting has this amazing, vulnerable, open-door policy and quality of permission. You can technically always re-enter a painting, that is almost part of the pact of
Jason Stopa interviews painter Keltie Ferris whose work is on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, through October 17, 2015. Ferris comments: "I want to use painting's full arsenal. You can indulge in incredible color in painting, so why wouldn't you? Illusionistic qualities—I never understood why that wasn't part of the Greenbergian arsenal. It's
David Carrier reviews the book Hilma af Klint: The Art of Seeing the Invisible, edited by Kurt Almqvist and Louise Belfrage (Ax:son Johnson Foundation, 2015). Although finding certain aspects of the text wanting, Carrier concludes "Perhaps ... to understand af Klint we need to avoid a rigid distinction between spiritualist diagrams and abstract painting. After
Lita Barrie reviews David Hockney: Painting and Photography at LA Louver (on view through September 19, 2015) and talks to David Hockney and Peter Goulds about the painting, photography, and digital media. Barrie writes: "Hockney's new work is a playful critique of the limitations of photography, that captures fascinating things a fixed perspective can never
Alexi Worth considers Jan van Eyck’s Crucifixion and Last Judgment (ca. 1435 – 40) in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Worth begins: "For the past few years this has been the painting I visit most often. I love how concentrated it is—as if the biggest painting in the Met had
Sam King interviews painter Matthew Lopas whose exhibition (Un)Distorted: Perceptual Paintings, is on view at the Arts & Sciences center for Southeast Arkansas, Pine Bluff, AR, through December 5, 2015. Lopas comments: "There is a great deal of painting that I love, have looked at, and learned from. But resonance is something different from that.