Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Just about every piece in Nicole Eisenman�s nobly minatory exhibition �Al-ugh-ories� at the New Museum, up through June 26, pulses with aesthetic energy, turbocharged by a peripatetic erudition that darts assuredly from one caustic historical (sometimes art-historical) reference point to another. The artist is centrally, […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Victor Kanefsky�s effervescent documentary Art Bastard casts 76-year old New York painter Robert Cenedella as a kind of aesthetic Robin Hood who robs from hallowed art tradition to give ordinary people bravura paintings that don�t require them to plumb art history or some other arcane […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Artists� instrumentalization of their children in their work intuitively seems to breach the parental duty of protection, and to exploit their youth at the risk of maladjustment. Sally Mann�s infamously risqu� deployment of her sometimes naked children in her photographs is well short of pedophilic, […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Luminous, though an overused adjective in art writing, is an apt one for Amy Lincoln�s edgy new paintings, mainly of plants, on display at Morgan Lehman in Chelsea. Their vivid color, exacting line, and exotic detail leap out at the viewer, so that the initial […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Russian director Alexander Sokurov�s Francofonia is a strange and intriguing film � a kind of avant-garde point-of-view documentary. Do not mistake the title for �Francophilia.� With considerable snideness and mockery � including magical realist interventions by a fatuous Napoleon, sardonic intonements of �libert�, egalit�, faternit�,� […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Like VOLTA, the Art on Paper fair on Pier 36 was a modestly gauged and user-friendly alternative to the massive and unwieldy Armory Fair. It also presented consistently rich work from a geographically and stylistically broad range of galleries. Here are a few eye-catching selections. […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Given the demonstrated capability, energy, and ambition of Bushwick artist, gallerist, and all-purpose cultural maven Paul D�Agostino, that he would invent his own visual alphabet � as he has for his new show of paintings �Scriptive Formalities� at Life on Mars � isn�t surprising. A […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Michael Mann�s brilliant 1981 neo-noir film Thief � showing in BAM�s February 5-16 Mann retrospective � is paradoxically celebrated for being under-appreciated. Substantively, he makes the one-last-score storyline as ugly-funny as good Tarantino and as tragic as good Polanski, brings out James Caan�s bestial, foulmouthed […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Fred Valentine made his wryly haunting charcoal chiaroscuro drawings of real people �some sweet and tender others damaged and horrific� � on view in “The Pumpkin Festival and other portraits” at Schema Projects in Bushwick � in the early 1990s. That was when Kurt Cobain […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / If they are successful, artists transport those who view their work to a different visual and psychic environment that nonetheless bears some crucial familiarity to the objective one that most people consciously share. The overlapping frames of reference enable critics, artists, and others to talk […]
Two Coats Obituaries@_lisa_tan knows how to fill a space. The waiting room entrances with framed prints of Klee, Matisse, etc, the room framing, the large letters, a video viewing room with chairs for an audience @acceleratorsu in Stockholm.
Two Coats of Paint is celebrating National Daughter’s Day by honoring Lena, who some of you may recall was the mastermind behind our Social Media Services Project a few years ago. She has since opened her own business @honeyhomeofbeauty in #OldMysticCT. Love you @lena.alohalani ❤️🏆❤️ Daughter, visionary, and muse.
Image: @meadowflowerphotography #honeyhomeofbeauty @mystic_disc #mysticct
Latest post, link in profile / Elisa D’Arrigo: Between the beautiful and the grotesque / Contributed by Kay Whitney / There is a fundamental paradox at work in Elisa D’Arrigo’s ceramic objects – while they are unmistakably beautiful, they break every standard for what is considered “beautiful.” They are small, shambolic, eccentric objects lacking symmetry; they are not overtly colorful and don’t attempt to please. They are humble, not loudly announcing nor applauding their own appearance; understated and private, the viewer must come to them. Rather than exhibiting the mechanical surfaces of a wheel-thrown or machine-made object, her forms bear the imprint of her hands and in that way reveal the processes of their making. If there is any other artist with whom her work could be compared only George Ohr, the “mad potter of Biloxi,” comes to mind. His small “puzzle mugs” demonstrate the same sensibility — simultaneously humorous and serious, their extraordinary eccentric surfaces and coloration are reminiscent of D’Arrigo’s, exposing a shared aesthetic. Link in profile
@elisadarrigo1 @elizabethharrisgallery @k.whtny #ceramics #chelseagalleries
Image: Elisa D’Arrigo, Making a Move 6, 2023 7 x 6.5 x 4 inches, courtesy of the artist & Elizabeth Harris Gallery
“Something darkly set itself at our senses’ five thresholds without stepping over them,” a cinematic two-person show @bonnierskonsthall with Tulsa Lovell and Sara-Vide Ericson, is a haunting mediation on the past, the future, and the inexorable force of nature. In terms of craft and content, unlike anything I’ve seen in NYC. Or is it? Images are tagged.
@tildalovell @saravidee #swedishartists #konsthall #theatricalinstallation #manvsnature #bonnierskonsthall
Snapshot: Overlooking the Central Baltic Sea from @fotografiska.stockholm. We saw the @shirin__neshat and @therealpeterlindbergh shows — strange combo, but both moving in their own way. The place is dark and loud — more like a nightclub than a gallery. The bar on the top floor is beautiful.
Latest post, link in profile / Inside: Arthouse art house / Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The set-up of Vasilis Katsoupis’ slickly but somewhat facilely resonant feature debut Inside is deceptively simple. A high-end art thief is helicoptered onto the roof of a luxury Manhattan high-rise and, with the aid of a techie accomplice, hacks into the security system of an absurdly opulent penthouse, owned by a high-end art collector who is evidently away for a season or two. The thief is targeting several of Egon Schiele’s signature vampy drawings and a singularly valuable self-portrait. Link in profile
@insidethefilm #insidethefilm #jonathanstevenson #twocoatsofpaint #filmreview #wilemdafoe #VasilisKatsoupis
Surprise: #PatriciaTreib solo on view in Stockholm @galerie_nordenhake 💥 beautiful paintings, elegantly installed ❤️
Swedish-born and UK-based, artist, activist, writer and eco-feminist Monica Sjöö (31 December 1938 - 8 August 2005) fought for freedom from oppression, but especially for women’s rights. “THE GREAT COSMIC MOTHER” @modernamuseet is her first retrospective. Swipe for the image that was considered blasphemous and obscene in the 1970s.
Rejecting abstract art as a Western male privilege, she asked: “How does one communicate women’s strength, struggle, rising up from oppression, blood, childbirth, sexuality – in stripes and triangles?”
#MonicaSjöö #cosmicmother #modernamuseet #stockholm
