Contributed by David Carrier / Emilio Vedova (1919–2006), who lived and worked in Venice, was once aptly dubbed the Jackson Pollock of the barricades. Employing that American painter’s gestural technique, Vedova made political art. “Rivoluzione Vedova” – “Revolution Vedova” – is an appreciative retrospective of his work on the third floor of the spacious M9 Museum of the 20th Century in Mestre, a very short train ride from Venice.
Tag: abstract expressionism
The real deal: James Brooks reconsidered
Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / “A Painting is a Real Thing,” the Parrish Museum’s current exhibition of the work of the Abstract Expressionist painter James Brooks (1906–1992), is his first comprehensive retrospective in 35 years. On the rare occasions I’ve encountered Brooks’s paintings, I’ve paid them scant attention. Like many, I have walked on by, presumptively ranking him well below the likes of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. With this survey of more than 100 paintings, drawings, and prints, I find myself reconsidering Brooks’s status. With the 176-page catalog containing essays by adjunct curator Klaus Ottmann and artist-writer Michael Solomon, the show makes a case that Brooks’s art is more original and important – both within and beyond the context of the AbEx movement – than most of us thought.
Rebecca Purdum: Touch, tactility, materiality
Contributed by Carol Diamond / In very good art, stark opposites like life and death, night and day, and pain and joy co-exist in harmonious juxtaposition, eliciting the powerful fusion of vastly different emotions through empathy and imagination. The eight large paintings in Rebecca Purdum, Breathing Painting, currently on view at […]
Spencer Lewis�s mesmerizing formlessness
Contributed by Patrick Neal / Spencer Lewis�s large, colorful, gestural abstractions, on view at Harper�s Chelsea, are deliciously physical and boldly display the process of their own creation. Visible from the street and hung close together, the paintings get right in your face as you enter the gallery. Gallerist Harper […]
Jill Nathanson: Remarkable synesthesia
Contributed by Kim Uchiyama / Intriguingly titled Light Phrase, Jill Nathansons current exhibition at Berry Campbell Gallery features luminous planes of crystalline color meeting and overlapping in harmony. The color is sensual, the light carefully calibrated, the edges thoughtfully considered. These new paintings, many larger in scale than her previous […]
Heather Bause Rubinstein: America and me
Contributed by Heather Bause Rubinstein / I left New York in January of 2020 and sublet my studio with plans to return in April. I repeat this pattern of coming and going every spring term to teach in Houston alongside my spouse, art critic and poet Raphael Rubinstein. As before, […]