At the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, curators Dina Deitsch and Evan Garza have organized “PAINT THINGS: beyond the stretcher,” an exuberant exhibition that focuses on work merging painting, sculptural form, video, performance, and installation strategies. The curators selected artists who are exploring materiality, context and space–physical, social, political, or emotional. I wish Clement Greenberg, the art critic who championed color and
flatness in the 1940s, could see the show. I wonder why painters were so intrigued with Greenberg’s notion of medium specificity back in the day?
Museum Exhibitions
Symbolist landscapes in Scotland, including Munch, Gauguin and Ensor
At one point in my painting life, I was drawn obsessively to Symbolist landscape painting, and I’m still rather fond of it. This summer, the National Galleries of Scotland has mounted a show in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum and the Ateneum Art Museum Finnish National Gallery to organize […]
Happy Birthday, Alex Katz
Contributed by Sharon Butler / I learned via artnet’s Twitter feed that today is Alex Katz birthday, so to celebrate, here are some images from “Alex Katz: Maine/New York,” an exhibition at the Colby Museum of Art that runs through December 30. Curated by Carter Ratcliff, and including work from […]
Sly and witty: Female Surrealists in Los Angeles
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Past surveys of Surrealism have either largely excluded female artists or minimized their contributions, so the exhibition of lady Surrealists at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that runs through May 6, 2012, is a big deal.
Who is Kay Sage?
Contributed by Sharon Butler / A few years ago I was at the Mattatuck Museum checking out the Connecticut Biennial, and I ran across a haunting painting by Kay Sage in the permanent collection. From the painting’s label I learned that Sage had died in 1963, but I didn’t know […]
Abstract Expressionist New York: Line and legacy
Adolph Gottlieb (American, 1903-1974), “Blast, I,” 1957, oil on canvas, 7′ 6″ x 45 1/8.” The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Philip Johnson Fund � Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Hans Hofmann (American, born Germany, 1880�1966), “Memoria in Aeternum,” 1962, oil on canvas, 7′ […]
A 2010 Whitney Biennial biopsy
In their opening remarks on Tuesday, the 2010 Whitney Biennial curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari confessed that they approached the selection process (gasp) open-mindedly, without a preconceived theme. Fortunately, the exhibition itself faithfully reflects their intent, presenting a resonant sampling of contemporary art practice. That is not to say […]
Antoni Tapies at Dia
I’m still in the Hudson River Valley after the opening at John Davis Gallery yesterday. Thanks Martin Bromirski, Maureen Burke, Tracy Helgeson, Chris Quirk, Amy Madden, Beth Gilfilen, and everyone else for making the trip. Today I’m headed to Dia:Beacon to see the Antoni Tapies exhibition. Tapies was born in […]
The Constructivist’s battle against aestheticism
In case you’ve heard the term “constructivism” bandied about in discussions of Shepard Fairey and ObamArt, but aren’t quite sure what it actually means, check out the Tate Modern’s current exhibition, “Aleksandr Rodchenko and Liubov Popova: Defining Constructivism.” In the Telegraph Richard Dorment reports that Rodchenko and Popova thought abstraction […]
Munch: Navigating the messiness of his own present
The Munch exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, curated by Jay A. Clarke, brings together approximately 150 works, including 75 paintings and 75 works on paper by Munch and his peers. It is organized around the following themes: loneliness and solitude, the street, anxiety, love and sexuality, death and […]