Turner has arrived in New York. In The New Yorker, back in September, when the exhibition was opening at the National Gallery, Simon Schama wrote an engaging article about Turner’s critical reception during his own time. “Poor old Turner: one minute the critics were singing his praises, the next they […]
Tag: The New Yorker
Clement Greenberg vs. Harold Rosenberg
In The New Yorker Peter Schjeldahl reports that The Jewish Museum�s chief curator, Norman L. Kleeblatt, has focussed �Action/Abstraction� on the writers, interspersing paintings and sculpture with abundant texts, photographs, and memorabilia. “Film clips display the men�s differently impressive rhetorical panache: Greenberg is incisive and imperious, Rosenberg droll and oracular. […]
Schjeldahl on Demuth: Slanting rays of abstracted light
Peter Schjeldahl reports: “Most esteemed for his floral and figurative, often homoerotic watercolors, Demuth in his painful last years, confined to his home town in Pennsylvania, undertook a modest national epic, exalting industrial structures in flat oil colors and incised pencil lines, with slanting rays of abstracted light. In spirit, […]
“All power to the hardboiled intellect”
Peter Schjeldahl writes about the Color Chart show at MoMA: “Predominant are attitudes of ironic detachment that derive from Marcel Duchamp, whose rebuslike canvas of 1918, �Tu m�,� with its represented commercial color samples, begins the show. Is it outlandish�a reductio ad absurdum of the Duchampian, even�to regard color, the […]
“Bitter slog” for painting in the Whitney Biennial
“Devotees of painting will be on a near-starvation diet, with the work of only Joe Bradley, Mary Heilmann, Karen Kilimnik, Olivier Mosset and (maybe) Cheyney Thompson to sustain them. Hard-line believers in art as visual pleasure will have, poor things, a bitter slog. But if the show is heedless of […]
Schjeldahl on Lucas Cranach the Elder
“Lucas Cranach the Elder,” St�del Museum, Frankfurt, Germany. Through Feb. 17. Slide show. As an antidote to all the reports on contemporary art and the art market in Miami, check out Peter Schjeldahl’s essay in The New Yorker on the Cranach retrospective in Frankfurt. Cranach’s work, which was painted back […]
Schjeldahl visits Frida
“Frida Kahlo,” curated by Hayden Herrera and Elizabeth Carpenter. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. Through Jan. 20. Scheduled tour: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, February 20 – May 18; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, June 14 – September 28, 2008. In The New Yorker, Peter […]
IMHO: Arts and Minds
In the October issue of The American Prospect, you can find my essay on the new State Department/ American Association of Museums collaboration. “The United States government wants to enlist members of the art community to help win ‘hearts and minds.’ This fall, the American Association of Museums will award […]
Rembrandt and pals stir unlikely controversy in Gotham
�The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,� organized by Walter Liedtke, Curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of European Paintings. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Through Jan. 6, 2008. In a wacky installation that reminds me of the time my ex-husband rearranged my […]
J.M.W. Turner’s poetic visualization of British history
“J.M.W. Turner,”National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Oct. 1-Jan. 6, 2008. See images of Turner paintings from the National Gallery’s collection. In the upcomng New Yorker, Simon Schama tells Turner’s story. “When the Houses of Parliament caught fire, on the night of October 16, 1834, Turner, along with a throng […]
