Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Friday, September 29, 2023
Franklin Evans, “lookbackstage,” 2009 painted tape, thread, wood and text 125 x 137 x 66″ “Franklin Evans: 2008/2009 < 2009/2010,” Sue Scott Gallery, Lower East Side. Through Oct. 24. Roberta Smith: Having been mostly confined to elaborate abstract watercolors in his last show, Franklin Evans�s art is now all over […]
Joanne Greenbaum,”Untitled 2009,” oil and acrylic on canvas, 80 x 78 inches. Courtesy D’Amelio Terras “Joanne Greenbaum: Hollywood Squares,” D�Amelio Terras, Chelsea. Through Oct. 31. Roberta Smith: Joanne Greenbaum�s new paintings are nicely abrasive, inharmonious in color and, generally speaking, a little nuts. They make the eyes spin….The best works […]
Hurvin Anderson “Peter’s Sitters 3,” 2009, oil on canvas, 187 x 147 cm “Hurvin Anderson: Peter�s Series 2007-2009,” Studio Museum in Harlem. Through Oct. 25. Roberta Smith: The deft oil paintings of Hurvin Anderson, born in England in 1965, fall within a familiar genre of architectural interiors that play it […]
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 since the MoMA expansion, Claude Monet’s water lily paintings will be on view. I remember the huge exhibition (80 pieces) at the Boston Museum of […]
Michael Mazur, “Rain I,” 2008, oil on canvas, 42″ x 48″ Michael Mazur, a relentlessly inventive printmaker, painter and sculptor whose work encompassed social documentation, narrative and landscape while moving back and forth between figuration and abstraction, died on Aug. 18 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 73 and lived in […]
In the NY Times, Patricia Cohen reports on the Art in Embassies program. The Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, a nonprofit group chaired by Robert Storr, works with the State Department to create and donate custom-made artwork for American outposts abroad. They’ve commissioned about a dozen large-scale installations […]
Lisa Beck, “Untitled,” 2009; acrylic paint on canvas; 24″ x 18.”Photo courtesy of Feature, Inc. “Lisa Beck,” Feature Inc., New York, NY. Through June 28. Roberta Smith: Lisa Beck�s new black-and-white paintings are among the best she has ever made. With their clusters of visionary orbs, shimmering reflections and radiating […]
“Verne Dawson,” Gavin Brown�s Enterprise, New York, NY. Through June 20. Ken Johnson reports: A popular strain of contemporary painting combines goofy, juvenile imagery � pirates, exotic animals, fairy-tale characters � with lush, sophisticated painting. Judith Linhares and Dana Schutz are good examples. Verne Dawson is another. In addition to […]
In Samantha Peale’s debut novel, The American Painter Emma Dial: A Novel, the narrator is the studio assistant for fictitious NYC painter Michael Freiburg. NY Times reviewer Deborah Solomon reports that the novel has a based-on-experience directness that tends to stray from sharp-eyed observation into the mush of unfiltered whining. […]
In the NY Times Ken Johnson suggests a time-tested recipe for success.”Fail at what you want to do, then do what you really can do. It worked for Luis Mel�ndez. He desperately sought appointment as a salaried court artist like his contemporary Francisco Goya, but his petitions to the king […]
Two Coats Obituaries
Obituaries & Remebrances at Two Coats of Paint / The Blind Swimmer: Gordon Grant Fraser (December 2, 1975 – November 1, 2020) / Two Coats of Paint has recently learned of the death of Gordon Fraser, a talented artist and art blogger who penned the now defunct The Blind Swimmer, of a heart attack after undergoing a series of treatments for colon cancer. Gordon was an early and interesting contributor to the art blogging community, and…Link in profile
Image: Gordon Fraser, Half Moon Bay, 2020, pages from his chemo sketchbook
@blndswmr #gordonfraser #saumanchoyfraser @prattalumni #artistobituaries #artblogger #theblindswimmer
Latest post, link in profile / Steve Greene’s crafty agitation / Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / In an adventurous departure from drawing and collage, Steve Greene now offers intriguingly acerbic abstract paintings in his solo show “News From Nowhere,” on view at Frosch & Co. They are rich with sharply drawn shapes and robustly differentiated visual content, yet they require little deliberation to be appreciated. They penetrate immediately. This quality stems from the thematic cohesiveness produced by trenchant cultural and art-historical tropes distributed among the paintings. Judging by the fluidity of his marks and line, Greene generates these allusions intuitively, with minimal contrivance. Link in profile
#stevegreene #froschandco #jonathanstevenson #contemporarypainting #abstractpainting #newsfromnowhere
Sirius Namazi “Pending” @magasin3, curated by Tessa Praun / Namazi, born in Kerman, Iran, in 1970 and based in Stockholm, teases out ideas about memory, loss of information and exclusion. Meticulously produced exhibition, featuring enormous projected video on a stretched canvas, a series of machine-made embroideries based on details from the sculptures, 3-printing from handmade ceramic sculptures, and more. Not for the casually inclined.
#SiriusNamazi #magasin3 #stockholmartist #konsthall #tessapraun @tessapraun #output
@_lisa_tan knows how to fill a space. The waiting room entrances with framed prints of Klee, Matisse, etc, the room framing, the large letters, a video viewing room with chairs for an audience @acceleratorsu in Stockholm.
Two Coats of Paint is celebrating National Daughter’s Day by honoring Lena, who some of you may recall was the mastermind behind our Social Media Services Project a few years ago. She has since opened her own business @honeyhomeofbeauty in #OldMysticCT. Love you @lena.alohalani ❤️🏆❤️ Daughter, visionary, and muse.
Image: @meadowflowerphotography #honeyhomeofbeauty @mystic_disc #mysticct
Latest post, link in profile / Elisa D’Arrigo: Between the beautiful and the grotesque / Contributed by Kay Whitney / There is a fundamental paradox at work in Elisa D’Arrigo’s ceramic objects – while they are unmistakably beautiful, they break every standard for what is considered “beautiful.” They are small, shambolic, eccentric objects lacking symmetry; they are not overtly colorful and don’t attempt to please. They are humble, not loudly announcing nor applauding their own appearance; understated and private, the viewer must come to them. Rather than exhibiting the mechanical surfaces of a wheel-thrown or machine-made object, her forms bear the imprint of her hands and in that way reveal the processes of their making. If there is any other artist with whom her work could be compared only George Ohr, the “mad potter of Biloxi,” comes to mind. His small “puzzle mugs” demonstrate the same sensibility — simultaneously humorous and serious, their extraordinary eccentric surfaces and coloration are reminiscent of D’Arrigo’s, exposing a shared aesthetic. Link in profile
@elisadarrigo1 @elizabethharrisgallery @k.whtny #ceramics #chelseagalleries
Image: Elisa D’Arrigo, Making a Move 6, 2023 7 x 6.5 x 4 inches, courtesy of the artist & Elizabeth Harris Gallery
“Something darkly set itself at our senses’ five thresholds without stepping over them,” a cinematic two-person show @bonnierskonsthall with Tulsa Lovell and Sara-Vide Ericson, is a haunting mediation on the past, the future, and the inexorable force of nature. In terms of craft and content, unlike anything I’ve seen in NYC. Or is it? Images are tagged.
@tildalovell @saravidee #swedishartists #konsthall #theatricalinstallation #manvsnature #bonnierskonsthall
Snapshot: Overlooking the Central Baltic Sea from @fotografiska.stockholm. We saw the @shirin__neshat and @therealpeterlindbergh shows — strange combo, but both moving in their own way. The place is dark and loud — more like a nightclub than a gallery. The bar on the top floor is beautiful.
Latest post, link in profile / Inside: Arthouse art house / Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The set-up of Vasilis Katsoupis’ slickly but somewhat facilely resonant feature debut Inside is deceptively simple. A high-end art thief is helicoptered onto the roof of a luxury Manhattan high-rise and, with the aid of a techie accomplice, hacks into the security system of an absurdly opulent penthouse, owned by a high-end art collector who is evidently away for a season or two. The thief is targeting several of Egon Schiele’s signature vampy drawings and a singularly valuable self-portrait. Link in profile
@insidethefilm #insidethefilm #jonathanstevenson #twocoatsofpaint #filmreview #wilemdafoe #VasilisKatsoupis
