Edward M. Epstein reviews Peter Blume: Nature and Metamorphosis at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, on view through April 12, 2015. Epstein writes: "Precisionism, Surrealism, abstraction, and Pop art all have their moment in the painting and drawing of this lesser-known American artist, who is now getting his due with the Academy’s retrospective...
Mark Pohlad reviews Temptation: The Demons of James Ensor at The Art Institute of Chicago, on view through January 25, 2015. Pohlad writes: "Ensor’s six-foot-tall drawing 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony,' 1887, is the exhibition’s thematic and physical centerpiece, set like an altarpiece at the end of a dark, chapel-like corridor. It’s a dense tangle
Jennifer Samet interviews painter Sarah McEneaney. McEneaney comments: "My paintings are totally and purposefully autobiographical, but are also edited, embellished, and fantasized. It is not true documentary in any way. There are things I am really out there about. I have made work about traumatic events in my life. But there are also things that
Michael Kimmelman reviews the new book Van Gogh: A Power Seething (Icons) by Julian Bell, published by New Harvest. Kimmelman observes that "Bell has written what he describes, rightly, as an 'unmystified' and compassionate biography. It follows the encyclopedic biography by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, published in 2011, a painstaking, brilliant, almost ceaselessly
Ashley Garrett interviews painter Katherine Bernhardt. Bernhardt comments: "I have always tried to use images in my life that I always see. I was trying to make the dumbest or the funniest painting that I could make. The stupidest dumbest craziest and funniest—combining imagery out there from today ... Overload of imagery in Flatbush, things
John Goodrich reviews Double Rhythm: Writings About Painting by Jean Hélion, edited by Deborah Rosenthal (Arcade Publishing). Goodrich notes that "[Hélion's]emphasis on the primal forces of painting and the artist’s improvisational engagement with them — 'The created form becomes creative' — suggests the free-form give-and-take of Abstract Expressionism. But whereas Ab-Ex looked to enveloping sensations,
Nicole Rudick remembers painter Jane Wilson (1924 - 2015) who passed away this week. Rudick writes: "The strata of distant land in [Wilson's] paintings lie like silt at the bottom of a river and remind me of the colored stripes of earth in Malevich’s Red Cavalry. 'I have conquered the lining of the colored sky,'
Roberta Smith reviews Through the Valley: New Paintings by Devin Powers at Lesley Heller Workspace, New York, on view through February 1, 2015. Smith writes that Power's paintings "muster an elaborate physicality while corralling a profusion of references to different cultures, mediums and artifacts within their irregular borders. They might more logically be called painted
Altoon Sultan blogs about Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at MoMA, New York, on view through February 8, 2015. Sultan writes that the show is "an apotheosis of Matisse's work with color and line. Each shape is bounded by fluid lines, each shape carries strong color, and they play with each other across a surface, abutting,
Brian Dupont reviews The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, on view through April 5, 2015. The show features works by works by Richard Aldrich, Joe Bradley, Kerstin Brätsch, Matt Connors, Michaela Eichwald, Nicole Eisenman, Mark Grotjahn, Charline von Heyl, Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu,
Dennis Congdon considers La Pittura di Giardino (The Garden Fresco) in the Villa di Livia. Congdon notes: "I moved slowly, but in that first walk around the Casa di Livia fresco garden room I remember I never stopped. My excitement was too much, not allowing me to stop or study a single spot, but my
August Kleinzahler reviews Richard Estes’ Realism at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on view through February 8, 2015. Kleinzahler writes: "Estes is identified with the photorealist school of painting. With their glossy, often hard finish, an almost enamelled quality, and photographic degree of verisimilitude, his work looks at home in that context. But it might
Anne Sherwood Pundyk reviews Alan Shields: In Motion at The Parrish Art Museum, on view through January 19, 2015. Pundyk writes: "The aspects of Shields’s work that may look dated are the same qualities that fuel its relevance. Look at any current political debate and you’ll find issues germane to his thinking: climate change, global
Dushko Petrovich considers Katharina Grosse's psychylustro, a public painting installation on the Northeast Rail Corridor between 30th Street Station and North Philadelphia Station, Philadelphia, commissioned by the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and curated by Elizabeth Thomas. Petrovich writes: "For passengers traveling south on Amtrak from New York or points farther north, the experience
Barry Schwabsky reviews works by Picasso in three exhibitions: Picasso and Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style at Pace Gallery (closed), Picasso and the Camera at Gagosian Gallery (closed) and Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (through February 16, 2015). Considering Picasso's variations after Delacroix, Schwabsky writes: "With
An essay by Lita Barrie on the Floral paintings of Roland Reiss from the forthcoming monograph Roland Reiss: Painting & Sculpture (2014, Grand Central Press/CSU Fullerton). Barrie writes: "In the Floral Paintings, Reiss uses the flowers as a scaffold to create in-between spaces where surprising things can happen. The flowers float in the center of
Rachel Cooke profiles painter Marlene Dumas on the occasion of her retrospective The Image As Burden which will be on view at Tate Modern from February 5 - May 10, 2015. Cooke writes: "Early on, [Dumas] worked in collage as well as paint: The Image As Burden includes several examples... By the mid-80s, however, she’d
As part of the Backstory series, Zachary Keeting reflects on his work. Zachary Keeting & Anahita Vossoughi: Rockless Volume is on view at Fred Giampietro Gallery, New Haven through February 21, 2015. Keeting writes: "The surfaces [of the paintings] are now riddled with overt gesture, yet they’re still built slowly. I punch, scrape, shake, blot,
Steven Alexander blogs about Eric Holzman: Small Paintings at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York, on view through February 07, 2015. Alexander writes: "While we might call these works landscape paintings, I would say that they are first and foremost paintings, that take elements of landscape as their subject or starting point... particularly the smallest
Larry Groff and Matthew Mattingly interview painter Margaret McCann about her work. McCann also discusses The Figure, a new book she edited, published by Skira/Rizzoli. McCann notes that "Ideally, [painting is] 'two steps forward, one step back' a forward progression. Textures build up richly this way... My compositional spaces are shaped around my experience looking