Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Kelly Reichardt excels like no other filmmaker at conveying the subtle ravages of time on earth. She brilliantly tackled the epic theme of America’s western expansion in the revisionist westerns Meek’s Cutoff and First Cow and eco-terrorism in Night Moves. But it is the day-to-day yield and subtext of history and politics that most concern her: a young housewife facing down ennui in River of Grass; a friendship deteriorating with age in Old Joy; a young woman seeking a better life unprepared in Wendy and Lucy; women extracting meaning from desolation in the post-feminist Certain Women. For Reichardt, even subdued lives are fully lived and merit sympathetic attention. They include, she insists in Showing Up, the quietly precarious existences of artists. Wise, nuanced, and penetrating, the film is also stealthily hilarious.
Recent Posts
Michael Aaron Lee: The frame is the subject
Contributed by Patrick Neal / The spacious new apartment gallery Nightshift in Crown Heights is in a charming pre-war brownstone. Hardwood floors with Celtic knot patterns, elegant banisters, inlaid lights, and period furniture appear to be complemented by attractive silver and gold metalworks that straddle the walls. Closer inspection reveals that these glistening low-relief wallworks are made of paper coated with graphite and metallic gouache. The illusion of metal is particularly radiant from different points in the entryway, where the shiny exterior textures of each piece capture the sunlight and warm colors of the surrounding room. These paper sculptures, along with drawings and collages, comprise Michael Aaron Lee’s “A Frame is a Line,” his inaugural solo show for the gallery.
Alice Tippit: Other beautiful things
Contributed by Jenny Zoe Casey / The title of Alice Tippit’s show at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, “Surely Any S is Welcome,” refers to a note Gertrude Stein left in the margins of a first-edition copy of Tender Buttons. Like Stein, Tippit thinks deeply about language and enjoys juxtaposition.
Hermitage Amsterdam: The intriguing oddness of the minor Dutch masters
Contributed by David Carrier / The 35 works on display at the Hermitage Amsterdam, including a number of paintings by Rembrandt or his apprentices and some by his followers Carl Fabritius and Ferdinand Bol, afforded me the opportunity to re-assess my views about Dutch art.
NYC Selected Gallery Guide: April, 2023
Painting-centric guide to exhibitions in NYC galleries
Don Porcaro: Timeless sculptures for our time
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / “Time Will Tell,” Don Porcaro’s boffo solo sculpture exhibition at Westwood Gallery, is at once aesthetically rigorous and culturally resonant, and neither quality ever compromises the other.
The Off-Season
Contributed by Sharon Butler / There’s no sweeter time to visit a seaside town than during the springtime off-season, before the tourists jam the streets, take all the parking spots, and hog the waterfront picnic benches. One beautiful morning last week, I dropped everything and drove out to the East End of Long Island to smell the salt air and feel the sea breeze on my face. Enroute, I stopped at three terrific venues.
Hudson Valley Selected Gallery Guide: April, 2023
On April 19, 1783, George Washington issued the Proclamation of Peace, which ended the war between the United States of America and the King of Great Britain. Think about that when you are traipsing around the Hudson Valley this month, looking for art.
CounterPointe: Dances with artists
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Last weekend in Brooklyn, for the tenth time, Norte Maar presented its unique and superlative CounterPointe dance-and-art performances. Each included seven dances, each of them a collaboration between a female choreographer and a female visual artist. Interpreting the programs is doubly subjective given that two main variables – dance and visual art – come into play.
Artist’s notebook: Sue McNally
Artist Sue McNally, a 2015 Two Coats of Paint Resident Artist, lives in Newport, Rhode Island, where her recent work is on view at Overlap, a new artist-run space in the neighborhood. Overlap founder Susie Matthews, who has been making and showing her artwork in Rhode Island for over 25 years, wants the space to appeal to creative thinkers who live amid a bustling tourist trade that favors seascapes over more challenging propositions. To celebrate the opening of the gallery and Sue’s show, Two Coats of Paint invited her to share some of the ideas and influences that have helped shape her work over the years.