To understand how all the moving parts or art careers fit together, sociologist Hannah Wohl spent countless hours trailing collectors at art fairs, talking to dealers, making studio visits with artists at all professional stages, and analyzing hundreds of art reviews.
Books
Art and Books: Kate Russo, Balzac, and the uncertainties of art
All three tales in Super Host are witty, moving, and beautifully written, but its Emma Eastons that raises the most provocative questions about the often torturous relationship between an artist and her work
Ray Carofano: Faces of Pedro
Contributed by Peter Plagens / San Pedro is a tough town. Actually it�s technically part of Los Angeles; L.A. saw to that by making the north-and-south Harbor Freeway and a swath to either side of it, part of the city, so it could run what has become the largest container […]
Art and Books: Joanne Mattera remembers
Contributed by Sharon Butler / How artists apprehend the world is framed largely by their early experiences. Yet, unless artists achieve blue-chip success, we rarely get a firm handle on what those experiences might have been. That’s why Joanne Mattera’s memoir Vita makes compelling reading. Artists like Mattera don’t measure […]
Book report: Mary Gabriel’s Ninth Street Women
Contributed by Brece Honeycutt and Anne Lindberg / Mary Gabriel’s Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler -�Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art (New York: Little Brown and Company, 2018) is a tour de force. The book explores many […]
Laura Blacklow on painterly photo processes
Contributed by Sharon Butler / On the occasion of the Association of International Photography Dealers (AIPAD) sponsored Photography Show that is taking place on Pier 94 in NYC this weekend, I spoke with Laura Blacklow, a Boston-based artist (and once a teacher of mine) who works with alternative photo processes. Exploring the experimental precinct where painting and photography intersect, Blacklow […]
Retro book review: NYC art scene in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s
At the thriftshop recently, I picked up a hardcover edition of Anthony Haden-Guest’s True Colors, The Real Life of the Art World for two bucks. Published in 1996, the book is an amusing account of the1970s-1990s NYC art world, and makes a nice companion to “Reinventing Abstraction,” the exhibition that […]
Painter Mira Schor edits a collection of Jack Tworkov’s writing
I wrote another guest post for Art21 last week about Jack Tworkov’s new collection of writing. I’m just getting around to posting it on Two Coats. Sorry for the delay. Here’s an excerpt. “Owing to its timeless insights about artmaking and life, art teachers traditionally assign Ashcan School painter Robert […]