Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Monday, May 29, 2023
In the June 23, 1956, issue of The New Yorker (available to subscribers), John Updike pens a droll report on the 49th Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit. “We put on our tennis shoes, removed our tie, rumpled our hair, and went down to look at it the other day, which […]
Recently, while preparing my upcoming Washington Square project, I’ve been wondering why MFA-trained artists direct their work so specifically to the art cognoscenti rather than a wider, less art-savvy audience, so I was pleased to see Peter Schjeldahl thinking along the same lines in his recent review of the Met’s […]
In the New Yorker Adam Gopnik’s piece about John Updike reminds me how much painting and writing have in common. “John Updike was a fine colleague, a beaming platform presence, a valued contributor, a welcome visitor to the office, a genial supporter of younger writers�just a freelance writer living in […]
This week, The New Yorker’s short story, “The Limner” by Julian Barnes, is about an itinerant painter. Here’s an excerpt. “Mr. Tuttle had been argumentative from the beginning: about the fee�twelve dollars�the size of the canvas, and the prospect to be shown through the window. Fortunately, there had been swift […]
Roberta Smith on Marlene Dumas: “The consistency of this show suggests an artist who settled too early into a style that needs further development. Stasis is disguised by shifting among various charged subjects that communicate gravity in shorthand. Ms. Dumas�s painting is only superficially painterly. The photographic infrastructure is usually […]
In The New Yorker, Malcom Gladwell contributes an article about late bloomers in which he looks at David Galenson‘s research comparing the careers of Picasso and C�zanne. “The examples that Galenson could not get out of his head were Picasso and C�zanne. He was an art lover, and he knew […]
The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl on the Mir� show at MoMA: “‘I want to assassinate painting,’ Joan Mir� is reported to have said, in 1927. Four years later, the Catalan modern master elaborated, in an interview: ‘I intend to destroy, destroy everything that exists in painting. I have utter contempt […]
The big Giorgio Morandi survey that opens this week at the Metropolitan Museum features over 100 paintings, drawings, watercolors and etchings. In the New Yorker Peter Schjeldahl writes that painting for Morandi was manual labor, first and last. “For a time, he ground his own pigments. He stretched his own […]
�Giorgio Morandi: 1890�1964,� Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY. Sept. 16�Dec. 14.“When the master of quiet still lifes died, in 1964, he was unfashionable in New York and London yet revered in Italy. Today, Morandi�s pastel paintings of bottles give the illusion of time stilled. The visual equivalent of slow food.” […]
Anthony Lane’s seriously funny New Yorker review of “Mamma Mia!” is a must-read for anyone who likes criticism.”Like many people, I was under the impression that the new Meryl Streep film was called ‘Mamma Mia.’ The correct title is, in fact, ‘Mamma Mia!,’ and, in one keystroke, the exclamation mark […]
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
