Contributed by Lucas Moran / In times of great political upheaval and unrest, art has held us and guided us towards compassion. Picasso’s Guernica set the most titanic example of this in 1937. As we slide closer to authoritarianism and watch the world grow less familiar, artists continue the noble task of showing us how to live through it. Sasha Gordon set a tone in her recent show at Zwirner, depicting herself sitting on a lawn clipping her nails while the world – seemingly all we know – erupted in a mushroom cloud behind her. Less sardonic but in a similar warp are Alexis Rockman’s melting icecaps and Richard Mosse’s documentation of Amazonian deforestation. “Towards the Sun,” Heather Drayzen’s compelling solo show at My Pet Ram, feels just as urgent. The question she asks, though, isn’t What’s happening to us? but rather, What still matters?
Tag: Claude Monet
Divergent simplicities: Diana Horowitz and Janice Redman
Contributed by Margaret McCann / In two shows at Bookstein Projects, excess and essence complement one other from opposite ends of simplicity. Janice Redman’s “Rough Alchemy” in the side gallery presents mostly small, hand wrought sculptures that project vulnerability, earnestly offering themselves in all their imperfections to our subjective examination. In the main gallery, Diana Horowitz’s “Light is a Place” highlights objectivity in landscape paintings that broadcast optical truth from across the room despite their tiny size. In portraying distance, they keep their own, reticently holding the walls.
Elizabeth Flood’s numb sublime
Contributed by Margaret McCann / Elizabeth Flood’s landscapes in “Lookout” at Storage Gallery included oil paintings that emphasize realism and expressionistic ink drawings. The latter express vigorous engagement with the outdoors. Gettysburg (Pickett’s Charge, October 9) channels the drama of that day. Stirring energy like that of George Nick’s alla prima work drives the eye deep into a field under a sensational sky. Conversely, mental distance accompanies Flood’s large polyptychs, whose combinations resemble photographic contact sheets, art website layouts, or bulletin board accruals. At their best, artifice is imbued with the existential doubt of Edwin Dickinson or Giacometti. Repetition and variance become metaphors for modern contingency and ambivalence. Multiple views rouse a mix of ennui, curiosity, taste, and choice, like that fueling our daily shuffle through cyberspace.
Martin Barré’s endless paintings
Contributed by David Rhodes / Matthew Marks’s current exhibition of Martin Barré’s paintings coincides with New York exhibitions of two other French painters: Alix Le Méléder at Zürcher Gallery and Simon Hantaï at Timothy Taylor Gallery. Together these shows furnish a good moment to consider the range and achievement of French postwar abstraction.
Water Lilies Live!
Here’s Charlie Finch (sitting on a lily pad?) at the Monet preview last week (Courtesy NY Sun Out and About blog) For the first time […]
Blockbuster artists van Gogh, Renoir, Monet on view in Philadelphia, NYC and Columbus
“Painted With Words: Vincent van Gogh�s Letters to �mile Bernard,” Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY. through Jan. 6. To complement the letters, more […]
Claude Monet’s unknown drawings and sketches at the Clark Art Institute
Ken Johnson in the Boston Globe: “For Monet, the drawing problem was twofold. Practically, his drawing skills were not up to academic standards. And he […]





















