Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Monday, May 29, 2023
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / It�s been a fine year for movies, their demise due to streaming having been greatly exaggerated notwithstanding awkward episodes like the theatrical release of Netflix-backed The Irishman. Here is my inexorably subjective and eminently debatable list of the Top Ten dramatic films of 2019. The Irishman. […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / If bad times increase the demand for nostalgia, the current bull market is going to persist for at least another year. But Donald Trump, the ultimate stimulus for that demand, is himself a product of a certain toxic brand of nostalgia � one for a […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Rivaled only by Los Angeles among cities celebrated in American cinema, New York deserves its own pointedly knowing and satisfyingly chunky essay on films set there. Now the city has one, in the form of Mark Asch�s New York Movies, the latest volume in Little […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Once Upon a Time � in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino�s re-imagining of the Sharon Tate story, is among his best films. It is on a par with Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds, emotionally moving as well as intellectually hefty, and everything a black comedy should be: […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Argentina�s decade-long �dirty war� (1974�83) during which a right-wing military junta �disappeared� about 30,000 left-wing dissidents � that is, executed them without acknowledgement of their deaths � ended over 35 years ago. Yet Argentina�s outstanding contemporary filmmakers continue to revisit the dirty war. In 2009, […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank is now 94, which means he has been in the midst what he calls a natural disaster old age for at least fifteen years. Yet when he was 80, as Gerald Fox trailed him for Foxs 2005 documentary Leaving […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / In the autobiographical film The Souvenir, writer-director Joanna Hogg�s fourth and latest feature and a gemlike crystallization of her seamless method, she uses Jean-Honor� Franogard�s eighteenth-century canvas of the same title to set the terms of the budding relationship between Julie, the film�s ingenuous protagonist, […]
Contributed by Julia Couzens / Carol Saft�s plainspoken exhibition, “Fallen Men,“ in the project space at Lesley Heller, is a suite of small-scaled, wall-based bronze figures engaged in gestures of vulnerability and support. They call to mind the bronze sculpture of Bauhaus artist Gerhard Marcks and share his ethic of directness and material […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck�s film Never Look Away concerns a German painter named Kurt Barnert (the charismatic Tom Schilling), but it is an unabashed interpretation of Gerhard Richter�s life. Its style is seductively elegant and its script at once discursive and oblique � qualities that […]
Contributed by Kristen Clevenson / The Price of Everything (2018), a documentary film directed by Nathaniel Kahn, seeks to assess the impact, influence, and inescapable role of money in the art world. In November, I attended a screening followed by a panel discussion featuring Pulitzer prize-winning art critic Jerry Saltz, Hunter College professor […]
Jim Condron has put together a lovable show of crazy sculptures he made using things sourced from other artists and writers. One piece includes a pair of pink crocs — Grace Hartigan’s last painting shoes — and I was reminded of a Rachel Harrison piece I saw this winter @glenstonemuseum . Kind of heartbreaking that Hartigan’s shoes don’t have more paint on them. Swipe for images
Jim Condron: Collected Things
Sculptures from the Collected Items of Artists, Writers and Thinkers
On view through June 17 @artcake_nyc (but closed for Memorial Day Weekend)
Image info:
Grace Hartigan’s Things, 2023
Crocs shoes, paint stick, pillow, steel
antique chair, steel
35 x 45 x35 inches
In the Glenstone collection:
Rachel Harrison, Sculpture with Boots, 2017
wood, polystyrene, chicken wire, cardboard, burlap, cement, acrylic, steel, and pigmented inkjet print
93 x 60 x 46 inches (236 x 152 x 116 cm)
© Rachel Harrison
Rachel Harrison, Sculpture with Boots (detail)
@jimcondron #gracehartigan #leekrasner @pollockkrasnerfoundation #rachelharrison #paintersshoes
(I gave Jim a few coffee pots from my favorite hometown thrift shop —the only store I’ve ever loved. Go see what he did with them ☕️)
On the UES yesterday I stopped in to see Andrea Marie Breiling’s solo
“Swallowtail” at @alminerech. In the press release the artist says that the paintings are like the swallowtail butterflies in that the closer you get to the work, the more the surface begins to reveal its details, but honestly the details don’t really seem important, overwhelmed as they are by the brash color, the mesmerizing circular action of the mark making, and the mural-sized scale. Natural wonder doesn’t stand a chance next to Breiling’s industrial strength vision, but maybe that’s the point. Love the illusion of depth and the sense of light. On view through June 10.
@alminerech @andrea_marie_breiling #futurism #contemporarypainting #LAPainting #LAArtist
Latest post, link in profile / Ethel Schwabacher: Canon-adjacent? / Contributed by David Carrier / Revisionist arguments about who should be counted among the artistic elite, whether they be old masters or modernists, provide essential stimulus in the art world. They proceed in an established manner. Some reasonably influential figure contends that a significant artist has been unjustly excluded from a particular art canon. Commentaries are published and shows organized making the case for supplementing it. The recent amendments to the predominantly white male Abstract Expressionist elite have proven especially tricky, as issues of gender and race enter the picture. Does Alma Thomas belong? Norman Lewis? What about Ethel Schwabacher? With “Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s)”, Berry and Campbell argue energetically, though not entirely convincingly, that she deserves a place. Link in profile
#davidcarrier #ethelschwabacher @berrycampbell #womenpainters #1950spainting #abstractexpressionism @carrier3909 #twocoatsofpaint
Spread across two floors at Magenta Plains, Jennifer Bolande’s solo, “Persistence of Vision” is as compelling as it is enigmatic. Downstairs, Bolande captures images of fragmented scenes and objects (perhaps from dusty road trips in an old muscle car?), a series of moments that manifest deeper meaning. The work upstairs focuses on the handmade. Rachel Kushner, are you out there? Through June 17.
@magentaplains #jenniferbolande #rachelkushner #lesgalleries #magentaplains #persistenceofvision #contemporaryphotography #plastersculpture
This afternoon I spent some time @platformprojectspace talking with artist (and curator for this show) @franklinevansart and gallery director @elizabethhazan during the last day for “Philosophicalinvestigations” a lovable group show that included faded images of exhibitions past and work by artists who are showing for the first time in the space. It has been a glorious celebration of Platform’s first five years 🎉😀🏆 Congratulations Elizabeth and Franklin. Great show.
#philosophicalinvestigations #franklinevans #elizabethhazan #platformprojectspace
Latest post, link in profile / Rita Ackermann’s alternative dimension / Contributed by Jeffrey Grunthaner / Currently on view at MASI Lugano in Lugano, Switzerland, Rita Ackermann’s solo show, “Hidden,” offers a rare melding of museum-oriented historicism with gallery-style directness. Occupying two cavernous rooms in the museum’s bottom floor, the exhibition comprises four bodies of work, ranging from early sketchbook collages prefiguring Ackermann’s iconic “nymph” paintings of the 1990s to more visceral canvases that explore erasure and disappearance. It culminates in three monumental paintings from Ackermann’s most recent series, War Drawings, which recall murals while also resembling magnified pages of an exploded notebook. Link in profile
@ritaackermann @masilugano @shadowblockedthoo #figurativepainting #ritaackermann #jeffreygrunthaler
Shout out to Salon Zürcher, a satellite fair of Frieze New York, for their 28th Edition of “The Women of Spirit” series, on view through May 21. Artists in this iteration include Bettina Blohm, Petey Brown, Sue Collier, Fukuko Harris, Nancy Manter, Victoria Palermo, Sacha Floch Poliakoff, Jo Ann Rothschild, Sonita Singwi, Jenny Tango, April Vollmer
Images are tagged. Sorry I didn’t take more!
@bettinablohm @__petey.brown__ @Sue_Collier @hukuharri @nmanter2 @victoriapalermostudio @sachaflochpoliakoff @jo_ann_rothschild @sonitasingwi #JennyTango @aprilvollmer_artist
#zurchergallery #womenofspirit #friezenewyork @zurcher_gallery @friezenewyork #twocoatsofpaint #womenartists
Psychedelia reigns @frosch.and.co with JOE WARDWELL’s solo “Present Company Excepted.” These wild layered paintings are harder to read in person than they are in JPEGs. The extra-bold texts all focus on American political divisions and pandemic/post-pandemic anxieties. Through May 28
@joe_wardwell @brandeis_finearts @frosch.and.co #joewardell #froschandco #chinatowngalleriesnyc @uw_paintingdrawing
Jonathan Ryan’s surreal, beautifully-executed landscape paintings remind me of “City,” Michael Heizer’s sprawling land art project built on a desolate outpost in Nevada that looks like a bomb site. Or post-extinction landscapes. Or a miniature golf course on another planet. On view @hesse_flatow through Saturday.
#jonathanryan #hesseflatow #landscapepainting #michaelheizer #miniaturegolfpaintings
