Margaret Graham

n the conclusion of his 1983 review of a Lee Krasner retrospective held at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Robert Hughes wrote: “This is an intensely moving exhibition, and it will suggest to all but the most doctrinaire how many revisions of postwar American art history are still waiting to be made.”
Installation view: Women of Abstract Expressionism, Denver Art Museum, June 12 – September 25, 2016. Courtesy Denver Art Museum.
When speaking of his canonical painting Carnival of Harlequin (1924 – 25), Joan Miró once explained its anthropomorphized objects and hybrid creatures by saying: “I tried to deepen the magical side of things.”
Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled (P-52), 2009. Oil on paper. 22 x 30 inches. ©2016 Thomas Nozkowski. Courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate & Tom Barratt / Pace Gallery.
When looking at the plentiful selection of David Hockney’s early drawings now on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery, it is not the words of the artist but those of John Berger that first come to mind.
Installation view: "David Hockney, Early Drawings," Paul Kasmin Gallery, Nov. 2 – Dec. 1, 2015. Courtesy Paul Kasmin.
Despite its name, Empty House Casa Vazia is anything but vacant: it blooms like a veritable Garden of Neoconcrete Delights, affording the eye plentiful stimuli ranging from sleek to arch. The eighteen Brazilian artists who have hewn these peculiar treasures span generations, yet their works share certain mannerisms and makeup, as well as a common conceptual tongue.
Some of the most striking colors to be found in the natural world exist solely as counterparts to death and decay. Here and there, the lately living or slowly fading are ushered beyond the pale by richly-hued molds and parasites that unfurl in balloons and waves of radiant rot.
Tal R, “Altstadt Girl,” 2014. Oil on canvas, 303/4 x 48". Courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York.
It is a rare and refreshing thing for inclusiveness to give an art fair its edge; somewhere between quality and quantity, variety and uniformity, a careful balance must be struck.
Performance piece, Friday March 7, 2014, curated by Analog/ Analogue. Photo by author.
Bill Jensen can be a difficult artist to love. Anxious and phenomenal, the work of this Brooklyn-based painter often goes down as smoothly as a gulp of Campari. But in Floating World, his current solo show at Yoshii Gallery, Jensen has dared to ease his hand and decompress his compositions.
"Yugen #7 ('13)," 2013. Ink and tempera on paper, diptych, 211/2×171/4 ̋ (overall). Courtesy of Yoshii Gallery, New York and Cheim & Read, New York.
Intimate or no, the relationship that artist, architect, and philosopher G.T. Pellizzi shares with his tiger—that is, the art world—is not dissimilar from the one conveyed in Stendhal’s aphorism: Pellizzi, ever eager to engage in a play date, never steps on the scene without wisely packing plenty of heat.
G.T. PELLIZZI The Red and the Black
Makoto Fujimura’s recent paintings exist on the cusp of paradox.
Makoto Fujimura, "Golden Sea," 2011. Mineral Pigments and Gold on Kumohada, 80 x 64". Courtesy of Dillon Gallery.
I had imagined that by now the world would have seen the best of black-and-white, that antithesis of all antitheses.
Sanford Wurmfeld, "II-16 + B (Light)," 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72".
George Gittoes was recently able to set aside some time for an extended conversation with Railpublisher Phong Bui and his students in the MFA Art Criticism and Writing program at the School of Visual Arts, via Skype from Pakistan.
"George Gittoes in Afghanistan," 2011. Photographer unknown, Courtesy of George Gittoes. Color digital photograph. Dimensions variable.
On the occasion of his recent solo exhibition To New York With Love at James Fuentes Gallery, Jonas Mekas, the indefatigable advocate of American independent cinema, graciously took the time out of his busy schedule to meet with the graduate students of the Art Criticism and Writing program at the School of Visual Arts for an in-depth conversation.
Portrait of the artist. Pencil on paper by Phong Bui.

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