Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / While an artist friend and I were having dinner together after seeing the Whitney Biennial, she suddenly said” “Art is a cult.” For a second, I thought she was joking – I mean, art is truth and goodness, cults are lies and wickedness. Then I realized how much sense it made.
To everyone who has struggled through another academic year, final crits are over, so the time has come to get out and see some shows. We don�t usually put museum exhibitions on our list, but don�t miss the 2019 Whitney Biennial, which opens this week. I went to the press preview, and I have to agree […]
The 2019 edition of the Whitney Biennial,�on view�May 17 through September 22, was curated by Whitney Museum�Associate Curator Jane Panetta and Assistant Curator Rujeko Hockley. Each�has experience curating painting into group exhibitions, which means we should see some relevant, maybe thought-provoking,�work on canvas (or related material).�Hockley came to the Whitney […]
I’m looking forward to the opening of the Whitney Biennial this week because the selection includes a surprising number of painters, including a special nod from Michelle Grabner toward contemporary abstract painting by women. Perhaps reflecting the wide range of approaches artists engage today, the Whitney rejected a […]
If you’re interested in the Murakami spectacle, check out the roundup of reviews TCOP ran when the show exploded in LA : The Takashi Murakami brand at Geffen Contemporary. Meanwhile, back in the present, in this week’s Village Voice, R.C Baker goes Murakami. “Having sold miniature versions of his sculptures […]
My contribution to the April issue of The Brooklyn Rail considers the notion of readymade color, the implications of the current Whitney Biennial, and the fleeting nature of symbolic and political meaning. “At the Museum of Modern Art, the current exhibition ‘Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today’ examines two […]
Two Coats of Paint won’t get to the fairs until tomorrow, and I suspect we’ll love the sheer volume of paintings (a good antidote to the Biennial’s lack thereof), but Paddy Johnson at Art Fag City declares the Armory a snooze. “With even more boring art than usual hanging on […]
At Catherine’s Art Tours blog, art historian and critic Catherine Spaeth assesses the importance of painting in Whitney Biennials past and present. “One of the things that strikes me about this show is the stated embrace of failure. In her own voice, Ellen Harvey says through the headset that her […]
Jerry Saltz writes that the Whitney Biennial curators obviously have eyes for installation, sculpture, and video only. “There are 81 artists in this show, only seven of them painters by my count. Four of them�Olivier Mosset, Robert Bechtle, Mary Heilmann, and Karen Kilimnik�have been lauded for years. The youngest painter, […]
“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 […]
