Galleries/Gallery Beat
Broad-Brimmed Art: Bob Thompson revived
Painter Bob Thompson (1937–1966) straddled several artistic worlds. From Old-Master Europe, to hipster 1950s Provincetown, to the Beat poetry and bebop jazz scene of New York City, he was there, absorbing all that he could of these seemingly disparate universes. His artistic mentors and friends ranged from Red Grooms and Lester Johnson to LeRoi Jones...
Think Pink
A Ferocious Graffiti Evolution Who said women couldn’t create rambunctious graffiti art? Certainly not anyone who has seen Lady Pink’s exotic, brilliantly colored outpourings on view in “Evolution” at Woodward Gallery. Active since she was a 15-year-old student at New York’s High School of Art and Design, Ecuadorian-born Sandra Fabara, aka Lady Pink, first gained...
Elements of Art
Cézanne’s Wine Bottles Part 3 In the third version of Cézanne’s “The Card Players” series, the one now on view at the Musée d’Orsay, human figures enter the world that formerly belonged solely to the inanimate objects of drinking and eating. But in this version of genre painting, Cézanne once again gives primacy to the...
Enraptured by Nature: William Christine: New Paintings
William Christine’s paintings may not flirt with the cutting edge, but his landscapes at Prince Street Gallery impress for their sturdy pursuit of nature’s exuberance. Despite their brisk, brushy attack, simplified forms and vivid hues, his two dozen oil paintings and watercolors suggest an expressionism freed from any sort of indulgence, as if the artist...
Getting Medieval
Panel paintings at Feigen Late medieval imagination was joined to sacred purpose in every aspect of daily life. At the close of the Middle Ages, devotion itself was an art, one that lent gravity to all the other arts and shaped the tenor of living. Art was intended to ornament fleeting existence with symbols and...
Ripeness and Vision
Evans in check, Matta forever Maybe it’s the season and the dropping temperatures. Maybe it’s Sideshow Gallery and the haimish atmosphere it cultivates. But mostly it’s the paintings of Tom Evans. How else to explain the wave of heat radiating from far-off Williamsburg? Far-off? Williamsburg is a quick jaunt on the L train. No, we’re...
Secrets and Art: Neo Rauch’s Narrative Enigmas
I have long been fascinated by the work of the German artist Neo Rauch. From his strange, strained color palette to the scenes of modern dislocation that spill forth from his mind, he is consistently one of the most interesting contemporary painters in Europe or the U.S. His current show at David Zwirner Gallery shows...
Elements of Art
Cézanne’s wine bottles (Part 2 of 3) Almost 100 years ago, Paul Cézanne painted “Blue Pot and Bottle of Wine,” now on view in the collection at The Pierpont Morgan Library. Though oil on canvas, it has the hurried tentativeness of a sketch. The longer you stare at it, taking note of its incompleteness, it...
Rauschenberg’s Delights
An artist shows off his collection One of the most fun things an art lover can experience is a glimpse into the private collection of a beloved artist. The current exhibition at Gagosian uptown featuring Robert Rauschenberg’s private collection leaves one giddy with delight and reeling from the sheer volume and quality of collected work....
Alienated Yet Alluring
Lauder selects and collects Euro classics Frequenters of the Neue Galerie know what to expect from this jewel-like museum on 86th Street: fine and decorative art from Germany and Austria and a highly elegant café to boot. At the moment, however, visitors will find a somewhat different installation celebrating the museum’s 10th anniversary. Until April...
Rediscovering Alexander Calder
Stabiles versus mobiles Try to picture yourself in a Paris apartment in the early 1930s. Alexander Calder is giving a performance of his newly created circus made of twisted wire and cloth scraps. In the audience are Miró, Léger, Mondrian, Arp, Brancusi, the Delaunays, Duchamp, Kiesler and Man Ray; in short, the European avant-garde. Man...
Clergue Captures Cocteau
Lavish photo testaments to an era Jean Cocteau only directed six films, spending far more energy on his poetry, painting, sculpture and novels. But from The Blood of a Poet (1930) to the great Beauty and the Beast (1946) and his final Testament of Orpheus (1959), he brought poetry, ideas and fantasy into his film...
Describing Profundity in Art
Bigbee astounds, Ashbery floats What I know about poetry I know from my poet friends, and what they say about the poet John Ashbery is never less than fond and often more than querulous. Ashbery, a self-described “harebrained, homegrown surrealist whose poetry defies even the rules and logic of surrealism,” seems to share this equivocal...
Approaching Barnett Newman: Radical master goes wild
The exceptional installation at Craig F. Starr Gallery and its Upper East Side atmosphere might not immediately signal Barnett Newman’s lifelong commitment to anarchist politics (a philosophy he shared with artists as varied as Signac, Courbet, Pissaro and Bellows), but it shines forth in the radical approach of his work. This group of six early...
In Stitches: Lubelski weaves and shocks
Having seen Nava Lubelski’s last show several years ago at LMAK Projects, I was interested to see what the intrepid stitching artist was up to this time around. Her current exhibition, descriptively titled Roomful, is, in fact, a roomful of her work! Using both hand and machine sewing techniques, Lubelski roams the artistic map—one piece...
Between Lines and Drips: Pollock family secrets in letters
For the sidebar, please click here. With his much publicized personal life and groundbreaking technique, Jackson Pollock could be dubbed the Vincent van Gogh of 20th century art. Charismatic and tormented, he seized the public’s imagination as the embodiment of the tortured artist. But while his reputation might have been well earned, he also had...
Visions of Force and Watercolor
Revelations by Matthiasdottir and Rickert Suppose there was a kind of universal life force innate to all of painting—a force unique to the medium that continuously animated and characterized its subjects and was, moreover, accessible to artist and layman alike. Actually, something like this exists, and it has quite a pedigree. This force is the...
Traveling Light
Curious Matter, an eccentric and rarified little gallery, is home to some of the most intellectually rigorous shows in the area.
Texture as Sculpture
Artschwager weaves media with feeling When artists enjoy long lives, their fans reap tremendous advantages. This thought came to mind when looking over Richard Artschwager’s new works at David Nolan Gallery. Born in 1923, he has never fit into any category for very long, passing through styles that superficially resembled pop, minimal and conceptual, all...
Everything’s Gone Green: Ruth Miller leaps forward
It’s no surprise that over the decades, the painterly landscapes and still lifes of Ruth Miller (b. 1930) have gained many admirers. Her vivid hues and richly scumbled surfaces have an immediate appeal, but more impressive still is the radiant restraint of a wise but ardent notion of painting: forms have a significance, colors contain...
Energy in Blossoms: Benson’s colors and China’s blossoms
Trudy Benson’s painting is full of physical energy. The paint is applied so thickly that it turns into an object in its own right; the stripes and circles on the canvas look like moveable parts. Fittingly, most of the pieces in her show at Mike Weiss Gallery, Actual/Virtual, evoke outer space with their names—“Cosmic Comics,”...
