Roberta Smith on Pierre Bonnard at the Met: “Working simultaneously on several unstretched canvases tacked directly to the wall, he painted largely from memory with the help of quick sketches and watercolors, burnishing his motifs until they approached incandescence. He said that painting from reality distracted him from the task […]
Museum Exhibitions
Jewel-encrusted vs. diamond-dusted
I spent a few hours rambling around the Met this week and saw the survey of Raqib Shaw’s opulent jewel-encrusted paintings based on Hans Holbein the Younger’s (ca. 1497-1543) paintings. They reminded me of my daughter’s stained-glass craft kits, but of course those don’t have the oppresive glut of obvious […]
Are today’s emerging artists yesterday’s Mad Men?
Clever ideas–once confined to the brainstorming sessions of Mad Men and corporate art directors– have become the backbone of contemporary art practice, especially among recent MFA grads. These emerging artists are perfectly happy to create pieces to suit specific curatorially-prescribed concepts and spaces. Against this cultural backdrop, an exhibition like […]
How Pattern and Decoration broadened the artworld’s horizon
�Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, 1975-1985,� curated by Anne Swartz. Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY. Through Jan. 20. Check out Librado Romero’s NYTimes slide show. Holland Cotter takes a ride to Yonkers and reports that P&D was the last real art movement of the 20th century. […]
Pattern and Decoration revisted in Yonkers
Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, 1975-1985, curated by Anne Swartz. Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY. Through Jan. 20. The HRM presents the work of 11 artists prominent within the movement in the 1970s: Cynthia Carlson, Brad Davis, Valerie Jaudon, Jane Kaufman, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Kim […]
Earl Cunningham’s imaginary landscapes
“Earl Cunningham’s America,” curated by Virginia Mecklenburg. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Through Nov. 4. In the Washington Post, Blake Gopnik reports: “Outsider art is truly peculiar stuff. In some ways, it breaks the rules: It looks coarse and eccentric and up to its own thing. On the other […]
Latin American abstraction, 1930s-1970s
“The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art From the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection,” organized by Gabriel P�rez-Barreiro, curator of Latin American art at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, where it originated. Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY. Through Dec. […]
The dirtiness of desire
In The Guardian, Jonathan Jones scrutinizes the Lucas Cranach exhibition at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London: “Lucas Cranach was not the first artist to paint women naked, but he may be the first to have made it obvious he wanted to go to bed with them. With his […]
Anselm Keifer thinks big
Alan Riding looks at the artist chosen for the innaugural solo show at the Grand Palais in Paris. “Since moving to France in 1993, this German-born artist has turned his 50-acre property in Provence into a sprawling installation, with a former silk factory serving as his studio, and warehouses, greenhouses, […]
Turner Prize shortlist: painters given the brush-off
After awarding Turner Prize to abstract painter Tomma Abts last year, not a single painter makes the 2007 shortlist .
