Rosy Fingered Dawn at Louise Point, 1963 Pirate, 1981 With so many thoughtful and well written reviews already available of the MOMA’s blockbuster retrospective of De Kooning, it is easy to give myself permission to take a more personal jaunt through the seven decades’ worth of work on display. John Elderfield‘s curatorial mastery is in […]
painting
Up Close and Personal
Looking down from the top balcony onto the Sum of Days installation by Carlito Carvalhosa in the MOMA. It is just too big and sensual to not pay attention and be delighted at some level. I just returned from five days in New York and Philadelphia. This was a working and a viewing trip. Since […]
Effort-Filled Effortlessness
Petit Interieur a la table de Marbre Ronde Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe has been doing a series all summer called Frame by Frame where he focuses his attention on one particular work of art. These pieces are brief but insightful, a serialized reminder that Boston is full of masterpieces hanging in permanent collections. […]
- Aesthetics
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What the Soft Animal Loves
Atesse, from a recent series of paintings One aspect of having online access into every nook and cranny of the world (as well as the latest thoughts of millions of bloggers) is being able to see into the extraordinary range of human passions. I’m not referring to the largest engine of human cyber passion, pornography, […]
Moorings in the Infinite Void
An excellent article about the Anselm Kiefer show (which I referenced in an earlier post) by poet and art critic Sue Hubbard is up on 3 Quarks Daily. It is sized for reading in one sitting, something I highly recommend to anyone interested in Kiefer, painting and/or contemporary art issues. Here’s a passage about the […]
Art and Longing
Anselm Kiefer’s ‘I Hold All the Indias in My Hand’ (Photo: Charles Duprat) Anselm Kiefer is mounting a show at the White Cube gallery in London titled Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (The Waves of Sea and Love). With a nod to a 19th century Austrian writer, the theme of the show references the […]
A New York Minute
George Wingate, friend and artist, soaks in the Pat Steirs at Cheim & Read After several recent trips to Chelsea’s ghetto of galleries that have felt empty and unsatisfying, my visit this past weekend offered up some moments worth remembering. People were everywhere, enjoying a Saturday without rain, snow or blistering cold. The High Line […]
- Aesthetics
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Slow Looking, Boredom and Contemporary Art
Frank Auerbach, Reclining Head of Gerda Boehm, private collection Over the fall months James Elkins, the prodigiously prolific writer about art, art history, criticism and art appreciation, wrote a series of pieces for the Huffington Post. (I wrote about his series here.) One of those articles as a title—Are Artists Bored By Their Work?—that is […]
Painting Well
“Rag and bone shop” table surface in my studio The New York Times Book Review last week had a simple headline: “Why Criticism Matters”. The editors set the stage by describing our current age as one where opinions are “offered instantly, effusively and in increasingly strident tones”—by anyone, anytime. So in that context it is […]
Our Eyes and Ourselves
New work, “Snap 1” and “Snap 2” (diptych), in my studio before being shipped out this week Three critics at the New York Times were given the assignment of naming their favorite paintings in New York Museums. The lists can be found on the New York Times site, but as critic Roberta Smith freely confesses, […]