The Brooklyn Rail

In Conversation

Graham Nickson with Jack Flam and Phong H. Bui

On the occasion of Graham Nickson’s solo exhibition In Black and White at Betty Cuningham Gallery, art historian Jack Flam and Rail Publisher and Artistic Director Phong H. Bui engaged in two extended conversations with the artist about his long career as a painter and an educator. In addition to a distinguished career as an artist, Graham has been the legendary and deeply committed faculty member and Dean of the New York Studio School for thirty-four years. The following is an edited version for your reading pleasure.

Remembering Nancy Holt

More than with most artists, Nancy’s persona was very much like her art, and her art so very much like her: precise, calm, accepting, radiant, luminous.

Ad Reinhardt’s Black Paintings, the Void, and Chinese Painting

Ad Reinhardt’s writings are rife with contradictions and paradoxes. So much so, that he has been described as a master of “the aesthetics of negation,”

Dedalus Foundation Education Programs

Like all artist-endowed foundations, the Dedalus Foundation, which Robert Motherwell established in 1981, is committed to preserving its founder’s artistic legacy. But Motherwell wanted his foundation to have a broader remit, that of fostering public understanding and appreciation of the principles of modern art and modernism. And for Motherwell, modernism was not limited simply to a certain range of artistic styles; it was part of an attitude toward life, a way of probing the nature of reality, and of creating what he called “shaped meaning, without which no life is worth living.”