Contributed by Ken Buhler / One afternoon last summer I decided to go to the National Gallery in London. I was in upstate New York, idly turning the pages of a book of Italian paintings, when I came upon Piero Della Francesca�s Baptism. Its geometric perfection and its eloquence struck me […]
Ideas about Painting
Carter Ratcliff: Art in the age of Trump
Contributed by Carter Ratcliff / Let�s begin with a painting�not sure it�s a work of art�that could have been painted only now, during Trump�s presidency. This is The Republican Club, a group portrait of selected Republican presidents, by Andy Thomas. Hanging now in the White House, it appeared behind Trump during […]
Brian Dupont and Rachael Nevins: Suffering for something beautiful
Contributed by Sharon Butler /�Brian Dupont’s�paintings, on view at Adah Rose Gallery in Bethesda, Maryland, through December 31, are uniquely transfixing for several reasons. One is their lean, industrial look – they�re oil on metal. Another is the sense, owing to the stenciled letters and numbers present, that they reveal�something […]
Unlimited: Painting and political upheaval
Contributed by Sharon Butler / During the 1960s, the world was rocked by massive political upheaval. In May 1968, two weeks of student riots in Paris blasted traditional approaches seemingly across the socio-political board, from government to gender roles to education. Civil rights and anti-war protests roiled the United States. Africa fitfully […]
A brief history of food as art
The latest issue of Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly, called the “Atlas of Eating,” features travel articles related to food, such as “How Food Became Religion in Peru’s Capital City” and “The Humble Beginnings of Goulash.” Editor Jeff Bartholet invited me to contribute something about art and food, so I put together a short history of […]
The backstory: Supports/Surfaces survey at CANADA
In 2011, seeing a relationship to the casualist tendency in contemporary art, I posted about Claude Viallat’s work and the inventive art movement known as “Supports/Surfaces” that took hold in the mid-1960s in the south of France. Expanding the notion of painting, Supports/Surfaces artists stressed the experimental use of non-art […]
The Casualist tendency
This essay, which builds upon an essay about contemporary abstract painting that I wrote for The Brooklyn Rail in 2011, was just published in the January/February 2014 issue of Christie’s Magazine. —– Contributed by Sharon Butler / A few years ago, having operated safely within traditional painting strictures for decades, I […]
Claude Viallat: Exploring Casualist abstraction in 1960s France
I recently stumbled upon old work by Claude Viallat, which strikes me as a precursor to the Casualist aesthetic. Born in Nimes, France in 1936, Claude Viallat used to show at Leo Castelli, and had his last NYC solo show at Cheim & Read in 2002. He attended the Ecole […]
The New Casualists
Contributed by Sharon Butler / The pioneers of abstraction — the Cubists, the Abstract Expressionists, the Minimalists — emerged from firm and identifiable aesthetic roots and developed their own philosophies. In the competitive maelstrom of 20th century art, those philosophies became dogmas, and the dogmas outright manifestos. In the new […]
Why is Wendy White still beneath the radar?
Wendy White, “Hip Replacement,” 2009, 91 1/2 x 196 in In the Fall Arts Preview at The L Magazine, Paddy Johnson wonders why Wendy White hasn’t had the breakout success her work deserves. White’s multi-paneled spray paint canvases have been exhibited in so many places that it’s hard to call […]