Contributed by Sharon Butler / Cora Cohen panel discussion; Two Coats Open Studio Jun 3; Twenty by Sixteen at Morgan Lehman; Zombie Formalism 12 years later; Last call for Abstract by Definition; more
Author: Two Coats Staff
Zombie Formalism vs. Paul Brown’s abundant abstraction
Contributed by Becky Brown / Living through a changing zeitgeist is a trip. Now into my forties, I see that conditions, styles and ideas that loomed as colossal in one moment can fade into obscurity in the next. My parents are octogenarians in the art world, and they’ve told me artistic and theoretical trends are always cycling; now I’m seeing it happen. When the essays on “Provisional Painting,” “New Casualism,” and “Zombie Formalism” emerged, I was in the throes and early aftermath of a graduate degree in painting from Hunter College. Like many, I thought they articulated something I was seeing and feeling but hadn’t yet named. I did not imagine that within a few years, abstraction would be on the margins of contemporary painting, with figuration taking center stage. Was this backlash related to those critiques or just part of a natural cycle?
Emma Webster: Peculiar but pleasant
Contributed by Will Maddoxx / Last summer, the New York Times reported that someone impersonated Lady Gaga to buy a painting of Emma Webster’s. The piece highlighted the market for these paintings and coincided with an impressive show at Petzel displaying two huge canvases at once grand and sublime. Seeing that “Rues and Leaves Themselves Alone” was opening so soon after that last show, I wondered whether the work would be rushed and uninventive. In fact, the new paintings are very good.
American Abstract Artists in the 1930s
Contributed by Jacob Cartwright / In 1957, Clement Greenberg penned the essay “The Late Thirties in New York,” reflecting on years that were formative for both him and American art. He noted that during that decade “the big event, as I saw it, was the annual show of the American Abstract Artists group.” The artists who formed American Abstract Artists (AAA) first began meeting in 1936, in response to curators like MoMA director Alfred Barr, whose formulation of abstract art didn’t extend beyond the European continent. By 1937, AAA had begun organizing the regular New York City group shows that so impressed Greenberg.
NYC Selected Gallery Guide, May 2026
Yes, we have art fairs in town this month, and I’m looking forward to swinging by ESTHER III, a kind of alternative embodiment of the concept at Estonian House on 243 E. 34th Street from May 13–16. Thomas Erben is bringing work by Mike Cloud and a few of my other favorite NYC galleries will be there, King’s Leap among them. Reserve free tickets now. Also on the must-see list this month is “The Moment and the Distance,” a big Helen Frankenthaler solo at Gagosian,…
The Christophers: NFS
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The art caper is a rich sub-genre of the crime film, populated by some clever and inventive movies. Customarily, they’ve focused on the complexity of a heist; think of Topkapi, Gambit, or Oceans Twelve. More recent ones – The Best Offer, The Burnt Orange Heresy, and The Mastermind – have delved fastidiously into the mentalities of the thieves or fraudsters, and in particular their perverse but rarely inauthentic relationships to beauty. Now there’s one in that vein from Steven Soderbergh, who also directed Oceans Twelve. The Christophers is slick and penetrating…
Eric Wolf: Into the fog
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Few artists – even among those dedicated to the landscape – would look at a body of water and think, “OK, I’m going to spend the next 30 years painting this.” Yet, year by year, Eric Wolf has done just that, driven by a fascination with the daily transformation of water’s surface, its complementary relationship to air, its connection with people, and the peculiarly seductive power of black ink on paper. “Two Waters,” on view at Abri Mars, spans three decades of Wolf’s en plein air ink painting, which he did exclusively at two sites: a pond in Chatham, New York, and a lake in Rangeley, Maine.
Ruby Palmer: Flowers are forever
Contributed by Peter Schroth / Some subjects are immune to age or aesthetic trends. Like the sprout that powers through the crack in the sidewalk, plant life in general and flowers in particular are irrepressible inspirations for art and have breached the territories of artists primarily known for other, more rigorous forms, from Piet Mondrian to Amy Sillman. Ruby Palmer’s show “Garden Theory” at Morgan Lehman Gallery demonstrates yet again that flowers are forever.
At the Whitney Biennial: Ali Eyal’s mirthless amusement park
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The 2026 Whitney Biennial is rightly dialed into the world’s abundant strife, most of the selected artists witnessing and declaring it through materials, context, or concept. Ali Eyal, with his knockout of an oil painting Look Where I Took You – arguably the jewel of the exhibition – takes an exceptionally straight-up approach via content. Composed from the memory of a Baghdad amusement park he and his sister visited before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he was nine, the piece spans the strategic arc of the twenty-first century with improbable lyricism while bravely carrying its immense geopolitical freight.
Sharon’s Substack / April 1, 2026
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Reading Gary Garrels’ remembrance of Brice Marden in Artforum in 2023, I encountered a Rothko quote to the effect that paintings are about basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. I was not inclined to think about my work in that way, so I spent some time reading about basic human emotions, which, in my placid New England family, were generally dismissed without much examination….
NYC Selected Gallery Guide, April 2026
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In “New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art,” an article that recently appeared in the winter issue of October, artist Josh Kline points out that art has long been curated, funded, and institutionalized by the very galleries and collectors who profit from it and the schools that train its participants, without necessarily serving the majority of artists. Most NYC artists are familiar with the story Josh is telling, as many have weathered previous market downturns. Some can remember the 1989 stock market crash, the devastation of 9/11, and the 2008 recession. Now, after what has become a years-long rout, even A-listers like Josh feel compelled to rethink the cost of maintaining a NYC studio as the market for their work has changed.
Barbara Takenaga’s pinballing fantasia
Contributed by Peter Schroth / Barbara Takenaga’s current exhibition at DC Moore, “Parallax,” picks up from her 2024 exhibit “Whatsis” and continues an arc roughly twenty years in the making. The works are acrylic on canvas and panel and range from diminutive rectangles to monumental multi-paneled pieces.Takenaga iterates her signature techniques of pouring and handwork seamlessly, in a lead-and-follow approach that balances randomness, intuition, and calculation.
Two Coats Resident Artist Dale Emmart, April 12–17, 2026
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In April, Two Coats of Paint welcomes resident artist Dale Emmart. Her work reflects a sustained and expansive meditation on rope — in oil, ink on washi, woodcut, and artist books. For her, it is a widely evocative pictorial object owing to its sheer versatility. Essentially unchanged since the Egyptians first documented ropemaking in 4000 BCE, it admits of a remarkable range of associations: industriousness and energy, lethargy and repose, entanglement and freedom.
Lois Dodd: A balm against cynicism
Contributed by David Whelan / I first saw a Lois Dodd painting in 2004. View through Elliot’s Shack Looking South was part of a group show at our college gallery when I was a freshman. The painting absolutely stunned me and served as a touchstone throughout my education and early adulthood. Dodd’s solo show “A Radiant Simplicity” at The Art Gallery at Brooklyn College might have done the same for others.
Rick Briggs and Natasha Sweeten: On painting and writing
On March 15th, painters Natasha Sweeten and Rick Briggs sat down with Hearne Pardee to talk about their work, and about what it means to […]
St. Francis at the Frick
Contributed by Ken Buhler / There is an unsubstantiated claim in Catholic lore that the number of books written about St. Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226) is second only to the number written about Jesus. But keen interest in the life of St. Francis has been continuous. During his lifetime, his many followers had already established a religious order in his name. My particular interest began towards the end of the twentieth century, when my job in the Frick Collection afforded me many hours, essentially alone, in the galleries with Giovanni Bellini’s much-beloved St. Francis in the Desert, which depicts an ecstatic St. Francis in an idyllic landscape.
Tracy Burtz and Claire McConaughy: Vulnerability and resilience at The Painting Center
Contributed by Elizabeth Johnson / Two solo exhibitions at The Painting Center, Claire McConaughy’s “Uncultivated” and Tracy Burtz’s “What She Knows,” respectively present external and internal versions of powerful female spaces, generating an unexpected synthesis.
Kathy Butterly’s small-scale magnitude
Contributed by Bill Arning / Kathy Butterly’s largest survey to date could, in theory, be boring. Thirty-five years of work in the same medium – highly glazed porcelain and earthenware – always at conspicuously small-scale, from four to 14 inches, might sound stultifying. You could perhaps imagine some visitors, having glanced at a sea of colored dots arranged on three massive irregular platforms in roughly chronological order, anticipating a hard slog and a rapid escape.
Doomscrolling 3-D + IRL: The 2026 Whitney Biennial
Contributed by Sharon Butler / The Whitney Biennial 2026 has a knack for knocking the human project, wistfully and ruefully examining the past, and planting dread about the future. Curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, with Beatriz Cifuentes and Carina Martinez, made 300 studio visits, ultimately winnowing the roster down to 56 artists, duos, and collectives. The curators’ definition of what is “American” is expansive; the artists’ birthplaces span the globe, and many have settled in the US after fleeing wars and other forms of political turmoil….
Wifredo Lam’s global reach
Contributed by Margaret McCann / “When I Don’t Sleep I Dream” at the Museum of Modern Art traces the odyssey of Afro-Asian Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam (1902–1982). His 20th-century oeuvre encompasses a prescient global combination of influences. Youthful talent afforded him portraiture study in Spain, where he remained for 15 years. But, like Goya, inclination and events pushed his art past appearances.
