Visual Arts
Comparing Rick Berry’s expressionist paintings with Damon Lehrer’s exquisitely rendered, classical and contemplative work made me wonder about the expressionist style in general. By this I mean that artistic terrain where the passions, vehemence, or ferocity of the artist so colors the work as to form a powerful but distorting lens through which we see the work.
The astonishing exhibition “Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge” has the strange beauty and density of a scientific diagram or star chart. You can’t examine it deeply all at once. It is best to take a certain reading, see what questions arise, and go off to your lair to think.
Each of the paintings in Anne Leone’s Cenote Series shows the water’s surface, always from below. The world of air is invisible to us, off limits, mysterious. This membrane between worlds appears closed, but is easily pierced by the swimmers, resealing itself each time they rise and plunge.
Robert LaHotan was a fine abstractionist before he fully turned his energies to landscapes and interiors in his mature works. This exhibition, which spans 25 years, shows him alternating between abstract and figurative styles with many paintings landing somewhere between the two.
On bad days, I tell people that as far as I’m concerned, New York museums can all go to hell until one of them gives more substantial attention to Fairfield Porter as well as to give a solo show to Jane Freilicher.
Chain Letter is an ambitious maelstrom of eclectic works, but a caution to visitors: Go with an insider, a participating artist, or someone who’s close to the show.
Nothing would please me more than to believe the announcement made last week by the Van Gogh Museum, saying that one of the paintings in the museum that has always been called a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh is in fact a portrait of his brother Theo
Camille Pissarro lived to be 73. As he aged, he looked more and more like the prototype of a Sephardic Jew. Anti-Semitic rioting accompanied the Dreyfus Affair; the painter found it prudent to stay inside his hotel room in Paris.
Hard economic times hit artists in many different ways. One of the least remarked upon is when there is no longer enough cash for the studio. A local artist, who would prefer to remain anonymous, contemplates the end of having a space where creativity and independence can thrive.
How many painters were taught by Rembrandt? How big was his school? Well, that is a matter for debate — to echo Donald Rumsfeld, there are the known unknowns. Then there are the unknown unknowns
Visual Art Commentary: Silence Is Complicity — Why Museums Must Use Their Voice to Defend Democracy