American Modernism

Matthew Sperling reviews Milton Avery at Victoria Miro, London, on view through July 29, 2017. Sperling writes: "In Excursion on the Thames (1953), one of several pictures in the exhibition deriving from Avery’s only trip to Europe in 1952, the perfect balance is struck between loving observation of the everyday and visionary form-making: the pleasure

James Kalm visits Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry at the Jewish Museum, New York, on view through September 4, 2017. Kalm notes: "Through her involvement in the art world Stettheimer came in contact with the most advanced members of the avant-garde who had flocked to New York, like Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. Not having to

Jill Spalding reviews Marsden Hartley’s Maine at The Met Breuer, New York, on view through June 18, 2017. Spalding writes: "A curatorial triumph for how convincingly Hartley’s meditations on Maine present as defining his modernist vision, the show serves as successfully to broaden our understanding of modernism. These burning canvases are not a style, they

Gaby Collins-Fernandez considers the work of Georgia O'Keeffe. Collins-Fernandez concludes "The openness with which O’Keeffe considers observation allows a viewer to track formal similarities between the works. It’s just that what she was looking at was not so limited—her dreams and thoughts, photographs, landscapes, art she’d seen, edges, shadows, shapes. This variety, and the ease

Barbara Bloemink considers painter Florine Stettheimer's important, but often overlooked, contributions as a feminist. Bloemink writes: "Stettheimer never painted 'fantasies' — her works are all based on factual, thoroughly researched details — and her style and subject matter were carefully chosen. She prophetically chose to portray unique subjects, including race, sexual orientation, gender, and religion,

James Panero reviews Stuart Davis: In Full Swing at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on view through September 25, 2016. Panero writes: "The particular genius of Davis’s subsequent modernist direction was how he went on to integrate European stylistic innovation with his unique Ashcan vision. Through the flattening, flickering, fleeting perspectives of

One of a group of bloggers posting in support of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection, Andrew Russeth writes about Florine Stettheimer's Love Flight of a Pink Candy Heart (1930). Russeth comments: "the more time you spend with [Stettheimer's paintings], the stranger and more interesting they get. You notice odd messages and codes that she