Writing

Obituary Writing

Dave Hickey and the louche tradition

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / A clear strain in American letters celebrates the capacity of insouciant and unabashedly disreputable people to say things that matter by cutting through the flatulent smog that tends to enshroud orthodoxies. The Lost Generation had Ernest Hemingway, and Baby Boomers had Hunter S. Thompson and Dave Hickey, who passed away in November at 82. These guys particularly Thompson but undeniably Hemingway and Hickey as well showcased their disdain for convention and their embrace of the drunken and the stoned, the naughty and the down-and-out. But all three were dead serious about life and death, and that emerged in their work.

Writing

Thornton Willis: Stripped down guts and lived wisdom

Blogger/artist Steven Alexander reports that, “anyone who is a lover of painting will inevitably feel a rush of recognition — that increasingly rare sense of being in the presence of an authentic voice. At once familiar and challenging, this rich new body of work is like the visual equivalent of […]

Writing

Bouncing blogger Regina Hackett

Regina Hackett, the longtime art critic at the Seattle P-I, which recently laid off all but twenty staffers and ceased publishing a print edition, has joined Lee Rosenbaum (CultureGrrl) over at Arts Journal, the daily digest of arts news and commentary. Hackett and Arts Journal’s editor Douglas McLennan used to […]

Solo Shows Writing

Serban Savu: Ruins of a recent future

David Nolan features work by Serban Savu this month. Savu, part of a group of artists from Cluj, schooled in the tradition of Social Realism, grew up during the 1989 overturn of the Communist regime. He is one of the few painters from this group who still lives and works […]

Solo Shows Writing

Last chance: Peter Doig

In The Brooklyn Rail, Greg Lindquist looks at Peter Doig’s new large-scale paintings, which are up until tomorrow at Gavin Brown and Michael Werner. “While Doig�s current work reflects his recent relocation to Trinidad and the unaccustomed imagery this has inspired, the paintings lack material presence. The canvases in these […]

Group Shows Writing

Artwork delivery: Platform Project Space, NYC

Update (March 9): For snaps of the installation, check out Joanne Mattera Art Blog here. Watch VernissageTV’s video of the blogpix opening. Today (March 3) I’m delivering 5 paintings for the “blogpix” show to Denise Bibro Fine Art’s Platform Project Space. Organized by Olympia Lambert, the show is view March […]

Writing

Online Art in America: Schwabsky on words

Art Fag City reports that Art in America has at long last gone online, which means I can finally share Barry Schwabsky’s recent essay about the uses of words in art. Schwabsky considers Mel Bochner‘s new collection of writing and interviews, Solar System & Rest Rooms: Writings and Interviews, 1965�2007 […]

Conversation Writing

Me-me-me careerism vs. the new generosity

As the Guest Blogger at ART:21 today, I take a look at a few artists who embody the pragmatism and ingenuity of the new Obama administration. “Artists who garner the most attention in any given time period are those whose work, explicitly or implicitly, reflects the deeper political sensibilities of […]

Conversation Writing

Peter Schjeldahl’s insouciance

In The New York Review of Books, Sanford Schwartz considers Peter Schjeldahl’s unique contribution to art criticism. “Schjeldahl addresses us in a conversational prose that moves from point to point with the speed and ease of some high-tech instrument. He is a writer whose colloquial approach masks both a rather […]