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 […]
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 […]
Joan Snyder: Fleshy physicality and broken-bones impact
In the LA Times art blog David Pagel reports that the six paintings and four prints in Snyder�s L.A. solo debut at SolwayJones Gallery are vintage Snyder. “Chewy clots of mismatched materials wrestled into abstract images that are lyrical without being lightweight, visceral without being heavy-handed. The fleshy physicality and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]