Contributed by Sharon Butler / Here’s a quote and some images by Philip Guston: “I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom. It is a loss from which we suffer, and this pathos motivates […]
Artist’s Notebook
Peter Dudek on Presentational Sculpture*
Guest Contributor Peter Dudek / Lately a presentational mode of sculpture has been popping up all about. The hallmarks are a casual yet formal arrangement of sculptural elements. The constituent parts vary from the made-from-scratch, to the merely found, to the found but altered object. The presentations might include works […]
Tracking Loren MacIver
The snow on the fire escape this morning (courtesy of superstorm Jonas) reminded me of this 2008 piece about Loren MacIver that I originally published in The Brooklyn Rail: In my first college painting course, which I took several years after completing an art history degree, my teacher Arnold Trachtman […]
Barbara Campbell Thomas: Ten Images (or An Abstract Painter�s Pilgrimage to Italy)
Guest Contributor Barbara Campbell Thomas / Journeying to Italy in order to bask in the perfectly toned muscular glow of High Renaissance art is a well-worn artist narrative. But while visiting Italy this past June, I bypassed the usual cast of characters entirely, taking in Florence mostly while dragging my […]
Joshua Sevits: Ten Images
Guest contributor Joshua Sevits / After paying what seemed like highway robbery for admission to the Armory Show and a bizarro salmon sandwich with coffee (black), I found some amazing paintings that are definitely worth sharing. Better late than never, right? For the ten pieces I selected, the unifying factor […]
Artist’s house for sale: Mystic, Connecticut
UPDATE (Dec. 23): We have a contract on the house, but there’s a contingency clause–we agreed to give the buyers time to sell their house–so we can still entertain other offers! When I was a full-time faculty member at a nearby university, we bought this beautiful historic house at […]
Studio update: Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy Program
I’ll be working in Long Island City for the next few months and then heading back to DUMBO, where I’ve been invited to participate in the Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy Program. Two Trees, a major real estate developer in DUMBO, announced last June that they were planning to […]
Colleagues: Judith Schaechter and Eileen Neff
Two of my talented colleagues at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts have solo shows in Chelsea this month. At Claire Oliver, Judith Schaechter presents beautiful but disturbing stained glass lightboxes and kiln-cast glass sculptures about sex and death, and at Bruce Silverstein, Eileen Neff explores perception, mirroring, and memory […]
Looking back: Precisionism, Part I
Contributed by Sharon Butler /Back in the 1920s during the early days of industrialization, the Precisionists were drawn to the welded geometric forms of steel mills, bridges, water towers, smoke stacks, factory complexes, and coal mines.
Dear Tamara, and other letters about art
This month, Raphael Rubinstein is the guest editor of the Rail’s ArtSeen section. Citing letters from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, and the letters that Samuel Beckett wrote to Georges Duthuit about Bram van Velde’s paintings, Rubinstein asked contributors to write a letter. “Perhaps the most important difference […]