Search Results for "label/New Art Center"

Solo Shows

Kenneth Noland: Generative force and visual dynamism

Contributed by Alex Grimley / In the 1972 documentary Painters Painting, Kenneth Noland is asked by director Emile de Antonio, “What does ‘color field painting’ mean?” The plainspoken artist thinks for a second before answering, “What they generally mean, I think, is that the painting is mostly generated by color, rather than, say, drawing or any other means.” Noland’s matter-of-fact response is indicative of his feeling about such terminology. Labels coined in the 1960s like “color field painting” and “post-painterly abstraction” – “a fairly awkward term,” he remarked – circumscribed his art, categorizing it alongside that of painters like Helen Frankenthaler and Jules Olitski, artists whose aims increasingly diverged from Noland’s. “Kenneth Noland: From Center to Edge,” currently on view at Hunter Dunbar Projects, is a concentrated presentation that illustrates the considerable range of the artist’s practice over four decades, from the 1960s to the early 2000s. 

Continue Reading →
Solo Shows

Diebenkorn at Gagosian: A remarkable curatorial accomplishment 

Contributed by David Carrier / For a long time, I have always thought of Richard Diebenkorn as a great painter. A couple of his paintings were in my local museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, where I treasured seeing them. But he was, so I believed, someone whose development was straightforward, even a little boring. I arrived at Gagosian’s large upstairs gallery on Madison Avenue with low expectations of a thick array of Diebenkorns in that one room. Maybe it had been a mistake, inspired by misguided nostalgia, to take on this assignment. In the event, the exhibition was revelatory, holding me spellbound. This is one reason why I love being an art critic – the surprise.

Continue Reading →
Ideas about Painting

How the term “zombie formalism” killed the next generation

Contributed by Sharon Butler / In 2014, a single phrase reshaped the trajectory of contemporary abstract painting. When the late Walter Robinson – painter, critic, and veteran of the Pictures Generation – coined the derogatory term “zombie formalism” in an essay for Artspace, he set off a chain reaction that would stigmatize a generation of young abstract artists and cast a long shadow over abstraction in general. More than a decade later, the story of zombie formalism reads as a pungent example of aesthetic cynicism and jadedness – a case study in how criticism, commerce, and cultural anxiety can converge to distort and ultimately damage an entire movement.

Continue Reading →
Museum Exhibitions

LA PST Report: Toward better social behavior 

Contributed by Peter Plagens / The first edition of the Getty-sponsored “Pacific Standard Time” slate of exhibitions in 2011 was subtitled simply “Art in L.A., 1945 – 1980,” and it aimed to elucidate Southern California’s contribution to American postwar modern art. In 2017, the second iteration was called “LA/LA,” indicating the city’s Latin American art and artists. This time around PST has declared a more specific theme, “Art and Science Collide,” reminiscent of one of those noble Rose Parade rubrics…

Continue Reading →
Gallery shows

Past, present, and future: The complementary visions of Jodi Hays and Michi Meko

Contributed by Jenny Zoe Casey / In a fascinating and inspired pairing, “The Burden of Wait” at Susan Inglett brings together painters Michi Meko and Jodi Hays and explores the different ways in which inhabitants of a particular region – here the American South – can experience it. Landscape is an important influence for both artists, but their approaches are mostly in opposition.

Continue Reading →
Museum Exhibitions

Surface, flourish, complexity at the Hessel Museum

Contributed by Anne Swartz / Since its origins in the 1970s, practitioners and advocators of the Pattern and Decoration movement have countered claims that decorative art lacked seriousness. In America at the time, critical arguments focused on the exhaustion of painting, positioning it as an outmoded visual form. Several artists resisted this affront. Instead, they embraced images for their pleasure, opposing the notion of immediacy often considered synonymous with other mediums such as photography.

Continue Reading →