Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / It would be easy to cast the tireless, unconstrained Raymond Pettibon as the louche trickster demigod of wise-ass artist-snipers. But […]
Tag: Jonathan Stevenson
A better bonfire at the Whitney: Painting from the 1980s
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / “Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s,” the Whitney’s trenchant exhibition of American work, immediately recalls the Reagan era, when bluffness […]
Virtuosity: David Humphrey at Fredericks & Freiser
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / David Humphrey’s visual and intellectual virtuosity — augmented by the smooth surface finality of meticulously applied acrylic paint — is such that he seems to accomplish everything he wants in a given painting. Each one in his current exhibition “I’m Glad We Had This Conversation,” at Fredericks & Freiser, stands as a cohesive essay — establishing a theme, teasing it out, and offering a witty take. If that sounds too neat and squared away for a mode of expression that is supposed to register some mystery and wonder, it is’t. There is constructive enigma in Humphrey’s purposeful, highly-wrought approach.
Art and Film: Elizabeth Murray and the splendor of the ordinary
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Elizabeth Murray, who died too young at 66 in 2007, stretched and contorted household scenes and objects into kinetic abstract […]
Art and Film: Pablo Neruda and the triumph of art
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / With Donald Trump�s victory in the presidential election, the principled advancement of civilization as the goal of politics seemed to […]
Art and Film: Damien Chazelle comes of age in La La Land
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson /�Whiplash, Damien Chazelle�s remarkably assured and incendiary second feature from 2014, made the case that artistic accomplishment was predominantly a cloistered […]
Godward and upward at SLAG
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Ben Godward is at home with bright colors and exotic shapes. The New York sculptor has for some time been […]
Artists under duress: Max Beckmann
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Esteemed in Germany during the Weimar Republic but branded a “degenerate artist” by the anti-modern Adolf Hitler, the great expressionist […]
Art and Film: Kelly Reichardt�s stoic women
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Kelly Reichardt�s unostentatiously virtuosic Certain Women, based on Maile Meloy�s short stories, depicts hardscrabble Montana in angular austerity, with the […]
Art and film: Bruce Conner, escape artist
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Evident in the transfixing Bruce Conner retrospective �Bruce Conner: It�s All True� at MoMA is a probing eye that seeks […]
Art and Film: Ira Sachs on art and growing up
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Ira Sachs makes sensitive movies about contemporary urban life that are distinguished by their grand refusal to present stock characters […]
Last chance: Joanne Greenbaum’s glorious starts and fits
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The sheer ebullience and playfulness of Joanne Greenbaum’s big untitled abstract paintings, on display only through July 1 at Rachel […]
Nicole Eisenman and the triumph of painting
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 […]
Art and Film: Robert Cenedella�s legitimacy
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 […]
Art and Film: Eva Hesse�s enduring disruption
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Eva Hesse, as portrayed in Marcie Begleiter�s superlatively penetrating Eva Hesse, sadly but exquisitely zoned in on mortality as the […]
