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 Quoth the Sculpture, 'Woof'
Anne Arnold at Alexandre Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 22, 2012
Anne Arnold, a sculptor associated with the historic Tanager Gallery collective that included Alex Katz and Lois Dodd, is receiving her first solo exhibition in 24 years at Alexandre Gallery. "In a period when Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop…
 The Apotheosis of the Ben-Day Dot
Roy Lichtenstein at the Art Institute of Chicago
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 18, 2012
This week saw the opening of what the Art Institute of Chicago bills as the largest exhibition ever mounted of the works of Roy Lichtenstein. "Bringing together never-before-seen drawings, paintings, and sculpture, this exhibition presents the deepest…
 Energies Illustrated
Barbara Takenaga at Gregory Lind Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 15, 2012
Your reporter has admired the paintings of Barbara Takenaga since seeing them for the first time at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA in 2007. The artist, who divides her time between New York City and Williamstown, MA, works up fields of dots into…
 My Own Private Umbria
William Bailey Forges Ahead
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 11, 2012
Time is running out for you to see the current exhibition of William Bailey's work at Betty Cuningham Gallery, which shows the artist exploring new possibilities in his elegant figuration. "In the current exhibition," says the gallery, "are two open…
 An Unexpectedly Sharp Bladen
Ronald Bladen at Loretta Howard Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 4, 2012
An exhibition of paintings by Ronald Bladen opened April 19 at Loretta Howard Gallery with a curious backstory. "A cache of some thirty-five canvases and panels was discovered behind a wall in his studio that Bladen built in 1978 to seal them from…
 The Golden Hour
New Paintings by David Ligare
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 1, 2012
"It has been said that the Roman poet Virgil invented the evening because he used it to such lasting effect in his pastoral poems," says David Ligare on the occasion of his first solo exhibition at Hirschl & Adler Modern. "This threshold between day…
 Being Odd, Getting Even
Odd Nerdrum at Forum Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 6, 2012
Joseph Beuys never saw this coming. “To be a teacher is my greatest work of art,” he said in 1969. “The rest is the waste product, a demonstration. If you want to express yourself you must present something tangible. But after a while this has only…
 Castle Valley Hues
Adele Alsop at David Hall Fine Art
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 3, 2012
The usual program at David Hall Fine Art in Wellesley, Massachusetts is abstraction, but the proprietor makes an exception for an able landscape painter whose exhibition opened over the weekend. Adele Alsop was a student of Neil Welliver, Alex Katz…
 The Reappearing Nude
A de Lempicka at Sotheby's, and a New Novel About the Artist
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 30, 2012
This week Sotheby’s announced that it will auction a recently rediscovered painting by Tamara de Lempicka, an artist who worked up a mild form of Cubism into a major Art Deco shtick. That’s not to say that her paintings aren’t effective in their way…
 On Never Meeting the Master
Hilton Kramer, 1928-2012
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 27, 2012
Hilton Kramer and I never met, but I contribute regularly to the magazine he co-founded, The New Criterion, and I was saddened to learn that he died this morning. Every issue proclaims on its cover, “The New Criterion: A monthly review edited by…
 A Revel in Rome, Relived in Rotterdam
Maarten van Heemskerck at the Museum Boijmans
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 16, 2012
Maarten van Heemskerck is no longer considered a major painter, but his exhibition at the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam displays the mechanisms by which an assuredly major painter, Michelangelo, made his presence felt across Europe. Van Heemskerck…
 Elegant Cages of Stone
Elizabeth Turk at Hirschl & Adler Modern
By Franklin Einspruch
March 6, 2012
The technical marvels that are the works of Elizabeth Turk are on display at Hirschl & Adler Modern through the end of the month. "Elizabeth pushes beyond her own physical boundaries to explore the inherent beauty of marble’s intrinsic shape to create…
 Renoir and the Force of Delicacy
A Triumphant Exhibition at the Frick Collection
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 1, 2012
Pierre-Auguste Renoir's nine-canvas exhibition at the Frick Collection is a redemption. Never have I seen a gathering of Renoirs present itself with such force. This is significant, because force wasn't Renoir's strong suit. Of all the painters of the…
 Around the Chapel of Light
New Bronzes by Sir Anthony Caro Appear Uptown
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 28, 2012
A series of ten bronzes by the great sculptor Anthony Caro goes on display this Thursday at Mitchell-Inness & Nash Uptown. "This series of ten works, made in 2011, relates to the artist’s recent landmark project for the Chapel of Light in the Eglise…
 Rubens at the Ringling
A Rain of Gold Falls on Sarasota
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 21, 2012
A partnership between the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp has resulted in a newly opened exhibition of Peter Paul Rubens. "The exhibition features more than 100 magnificent paintings by and prints…
 The Resonance of Objects
Tom Gregg at George Billis LA
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 16, 2012
Tomorrow evening in Los Angeles, an exhibition of new paintings by Tom Gregg will open at George Billis Gallery's West Coast location. "This most recent body of work is inspired by Tom Gregg's fascination with objects and the powerful resonance that…
 Sleepless in Polynesia
Seattle Hosts Gauguin
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 14, 2012
An exhibition of Paul Gauguin organized by Art Center Basel has opened at its one stop in the United States, the Seattle Art Museum. "Highlighting the complex relationship between Gauguin's work and the art and culture of Polynesia," according to the…
 Things Left
Erin Raedeke at First Street Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 11, 2012
Figurative painter Erin Raedeke is having her first solo exhibition in New York City this month, and the works on display are impressive. "Erin Raedeke explores complex relationships by observing the detritus of everyday life," according to First…
 Renoir, Full-On at the Frick
"Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting"
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 8, 2012
An exhibition opened yesterday at The Frick Collection that studies Pierre-Auguste Renoir's uses of the full-length portrait format - all nine of them. "This is the first comprehensive study of the artist's engagement with the full-length format,"…
 Johann Zoffany RA: Society Observed
The Yale Center for British Art Re-Examines a British Master
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 3, 2012
The Yale Center for British Art has set out to rehabilitate the reputation of Johann Zoffany, a German expatriate who became a member of the Royal Academy by appointment of King George III. One might argue that he isn’t better-known for fair reasons…
 Immersion in Painting
Bill Scott at Hollis Taggart Galleries
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
January 31, 2012
Bill Scott’s paintings have an atmosphere of ease, but consideration and reconsideration of beautiful form churn within them. Two or Three Nudes in a Landscape (2010) summarizes Scott’s endeavor, its delightful title alluding to an image that somehow…
 The Enchanted Landscape
Claude Lorrain in Frankfurt
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
January 27, 2012
Start making your travel arrangements. One week from today will see the opening of a monographic exhibition of Claude Lorrain at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. “'Claude Lorrain: The Enchanted Landscape' presents about one hundred and thirty works…
 Fifty Vellums
Tad Wiley at George Lawson Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
January 25, 2012
"The vellum support has been a perfect choice," explains Tad Wiley regarding his current exhibition, "in that its smooth surface allows the paint to sit right up on top. However the surface is not without 'tooth', which traps the more thinned out…
 Tactility as Mysticism
Robert Sagerman at Margaret Thatcher Projects
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
January 13, 2012
According to Margaret Thatcher Projects, “From the beginning of his attraction to abstract painting, an interest in its sensed metaphysical content guided and influenced Robert Sagerman,” who holds a PhD in Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York…
 Joan Mitchell Becomes the Sunflower
By Last Chance to see "Last Paintings"
January 4, 2012
"Joan Mitchell: The Last Paintings" closes today at Cheim and Read. The exhibition focuses on paintings she made from 1985 until her death in 1992. "Though Mitchell abstracted nature, gleaning only its essence, her advocacy for the natural world as a…
 The Indefatigable Abstractionist
Pat Passlof at Elizabeth Harris
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
December 20, 2011
A serious segment of the art world looked forward to the exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery of paintings by Pat Passlof that opened November 19. The New York Times had just profiled her in October, detailing her efforts to maintain herself and her…
 An Old Expressionist
George McNeil at Ameringer McEnery Yohe
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
December 13, 2011
"George McNeil (1908-1995) had a career that spanned the entire postwar American art era," according to Ameringer McEnery Yohe, which is exhibiting a selection of the artist's work dating from 1957 to 1969. "McNeil attended Pratt Institute and the Art…
 An Art of Balance
"Matisse and the Model" Ends Tomorrow at Eykyn Maclean
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
December 9, 2011
Today and tomorrow will be your last chances to see "Matisse and the Model" at Eykyn Maclean. "As Matisse noted in 1939," says the gallery, "he relied on his models to help him find expression for his shifting creative vision, and he looked upon them…
 Liquid on Stone
Wendy Artin's Parthenon Friezes
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
November 16, 2011
Wendy Artin's life-size watercolor interpretations of the Elgin Marbles are such extraordinary technical feats that my initial reaction to them, as a lesser practitioner of the medium, was gut-sinking envy. Typically, for this degree of realism, one…
 A Lemon and an Orange Side by Side
Georges Braque at Acquavella Galleries
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
November 4, 2011
"Best known as the co-founder of Cubism with Pablo Picasso and as the inventor of the papier collé technique, Georges Braque’s legacy is better understood in the context of his lasting influence on artists for the past century," says William…
 Fête Champêtre
Audrey Ushenko Throws a Party at Denise Bibro Fine Art
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
October 13, 2011
This evening there will be an opening reception at Denise Bibro Fine Art for an exhibition of new works by Audrey Ushenko, a widely exhibited member of the National Academy of Art in New York City. "As the title suggests, Ushenko’s uniquely rendered…
 A Heart's Hot Shell
Aaron Holz at RARE Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
October 4, 2011
RARE Gallery is displaying the transluscent, evocative paintings of Aaron Holz through Thursday of this week in an exhibition entitled "A Heart's Hot Shell." According to the gallery, "The title of the exhibition is taken from Chapter 41 of Herman…
 Paths of the Sun
Graham Nickson at Knoedler & Company
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
September 22, 2011
The current exhibition of Graham Nickson at Knoedler & Company brings together three bodies of the artist's work, according to the gallery. "The first, a group of early oils composed with frames hand-painted by the artist, most created in the environs…
 An Art Fair for the Artists
Vaulting the Gatekeepers on Governors Island
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
September 17, 2011
The colossal success of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2002 caused a proliferation of art fairs over the years, and together they have permanently altered the way art is bought and sold. Many of these fairs struggle not to become duplicates of one another…
 Lights in the Expanse of the Heavens
Maja Lisa Engelhardt at Elizabeth Harris Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
September 13, 2011
Danish artist Maja Lisa Engelhardt is showing her interpretive landscapes, all entitled The Fourth Day, in an exhibition that opened last Thursday at Elizabeth Harris Gallery. "In view of my painterly way of expressing myself, The Fourth Day is a rare…
 A Decade-Long Day
Honoring Wounded Soldiers in a Bushwick Exhibition
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
September 8, 2011
"9/11 did not end on 9/11. For American soldiers, 9/11 has been a decade-long day," says James Panero, noted art critic, Managing Editor of The New Criterion, and curator of "The Joe Bonham Project," currently on display at Storefront. "As of this…
 Interesting for No Good Reason
Lois Dodd in Maine
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
September 2, 2011
The name of Lois Dodd has come up a few times in recent conversations with artists I respect. I finally got to see some of her work in person at a solo exhibition at Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, Maine. I was expecting the sort of painter’s-painter…
 Paintings That Shouldn’t Work
Elisabeth Condon at Lesley Heller Workspace
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
August 4, 2011
Imagine if you could speak several languages, switching from one to another to suit your thoughts, inside of a single sentence. You might begin in English for the sake of clarity, then change to Chinese for an apt metaphor, then over to French for…
 Jane Fine in MELT at the Tang
By ERIC GELBER, Special to the Sun
July 27, 2011
Jane Fine’s Battlefield IV, (2004) is one of several striking works currently on view in MELT, at Skidmore’s Tang Art Museum, in Saratoga Springs, New York (Bernard Cohen, Salvador Dali, Mary Frank, Rico Lebrun, Charles Long, Alexander Ross, Dieter…
 Krazy as Muse
Walter Darby Bannard and the Comics of George Herriman
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
July 19, 2011
Conventional wisdom about Abstract Expressionism holds that it is concerned with pure essence of painting, excluding all content, referring only to its heroic self. As a practitioner, it’s a different story. One doesn’t worry about purity. One casts…
 An Easel Among The Flesh Pots
Joan Marie Kelly depicts the real lives of women on the streets and brothels of Asia's cities
By DAVID COHEN.
July 14, 2011
Joan Marie Kelly, an American painter who lives and teaches in Singapore, opens a show of paintings Thursday night at New York’s Blue Mountain Gallery that defy expectations. She works strictly from the motif in a realist idiom, but she is drawn to…
Separating the Goats from the Sheep
Sculptural Installation in Fort Greene Park Inaugurates New Commissioning Prize for Emerging Artists
By David Cohen
June 24, 2011
Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park has a group of new sculptures at its north-east entrance plaza. The two goats and a deer, works by young Scottish artist Ruth McKerrell (born 1983), inaugurate a significant annual prize for New York, the Clare Weiss…
 Driven to Abstraction
Contemporary Abstract Painting at Von Lintel
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
June 9, 2011
A reception opens at 6 PM this evening at Von Lintel Gallery for "a group show of eight contemporary abstract artists who represent a diverse range of entry points into abstraction," according to the gallery. The artists included are Andrea Belag…
 Late Spring
Leon Kossoff at Mitchell-Innes & Nash
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
June 6, 2011
Leon Kossoff’s paintings at Mitchell-Innes & Nash show the octogenarian British painter continuing to work in portraiture and landscape, with a brush loaded with oils as if they were tar, favoring a palette based on a sooty, British gray. In that…
 Caro's Authority
Anthony Caro on the Roof of the Met
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
June 3, 2011
A couple of weeks ago your author noted that appreciation of the painter Jules Olitski has largely been conducted as a proxy war against the critic Clement Greenberg. You may have witnessed related hostilities in late April, when Ken Johnson wrote…
 Color and Consequence
Wolf Kahn at Ameringer McEnery Yohe
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
June 1, 2011
Wolf Kahn, the celebrated landscape painter, has an exhibition of new work opening tomorrow evening at Ameringer McEnery Yohe. "The new paintings gathered in this exhibition continue to address elemental questions of space, shape and color with rigor…
 Compelled by Pictorial Truth
David Hornung at John Davis Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 27, 2011
Yesterday, four solo exhibitions began at John Davis Gallery in Hudson. Notable among them is a display of new work by David Hornung, who writes, "These recent pictures, all made with gouache on handmade paper, were completed in the winter and spring…
 Maine as Muse
Art Inspired by Maine at Lohin Geduld Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 25, 2011
"The craggy coastline and pristine woodlands of Maine have drawn artists to the northeast corner of the country for centuries," says Lohin Geduld gallery, whose exhibition, "Maine as Muse," starts today and opens tomorrow evening, 5-7 PM. "A rich…
 A Few Gestures Are All That Is Needed
Virva Hinnemo and George Negroponte at Kouros Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 23, 2011
"Two artists in the same house make for a lot of regression," writes George Negroponte, whose solo exhibition upstairs at Kouros Gallery accompanies that of his wife, Virva Hinnemo, downstairs. "To some it may look predictably poetic, like two fried…
 Leah Durner's Naked Color
Artist to Speak with Noted Critic David Cohen
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 20, 2011
Tomorrow, 571 Projects will host a conversation between critic David Cohen and artist Leah Durner, whose abstract paintings are the subject of "Naked Color" at the gallery. Cohen, who produces Artcritical, has written of Durner, "[she] is an action…
 Abstraction and the City, New York and Beyond
Two Exhibitions of Conrad Marca-Relli
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 18, 2011
Simultaneous exhibitions of Conrad Marca-Relli are taking place at the moment at Knoedler & Company and the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton. The Boston-born artist, who died in 2000 in Parma, Italy, is associated with both New…
 Embracing Jules Olitski
Pivotal Paintings Appear at Ann Freedman's New Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 13, 2011
The inaugural exhibition of FreemdanArt begins today with a series of large-scale paintings by Jules Olitski that until recently have been kept out of view. In 2009, Ann Freedman, then still president and director at Knoedler Gallery, approached the…
 Iva Gueorguieva's Kinetic Landscape
"A Stitch In Graft" at Ameringer McEnery Yohe
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 11, 2011
“Paintings can unfold endlessly, both spatially and temporally, without constraints," says Iva Gueorguieva, whose works are currently on display at Ameringer McEnery Yohe. "They don’t have to stop or ever resolve." According to the gallery…
 Perception of Ecstacy
Norman Bluhm at Loretta Howard Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 9, 2011
"There is a supple gracefulness to Bluhm’s paintings that feels as choreographed and inevitable as Fred Astaire’s defiance of gravity," writes John Yau in the catalog for the exhibition of Norman Bluhm at Loretta Howard Gallery. "His hybrid forms…
 Mad Love for Marie-Thérèse
Picasso's Muse at Gagosian Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 4, 2011
"In 1927, on a street in Paris, Picasso encountered the unassuming girl, just shy of eighteen years old, who would become his lover and one of modern art’s most famous muses," according to Gagosian Gallery, which has mounted an exhibition that focuses…
 Paint as Flesh
Exhibition Pairs Soutine and Bacon
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
May 2, 2011
An exhibition starting today at Helly Nahmad Gallery shows Chaim Soutine and Francis Bacon alongside one another, demonstrating the influence that the former had on the latter. "There are distinct links between the two painters: direct painting and…
 Out of the Reach of Premeditation
Jane Freilicher at Tibor de Nagy
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 25, 2011
Jane Freilicher commands unalloyed reverence from fellow painters. I learned from a gallery director at Tibor de Nagy, for instance, that Thomas Nozkowski, whose work featured in their recently concluded “Object/Image” show, expressed elation at being…
 Sam Borenstein and the Colors of Montreal
Vibrant Paintings at the Yeshiva University Museum
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 22, 2011
“While Sam Borenstein is well-known in Montreal and across Canada, his artwork may come as a great revelation to many New Yorkers,” says Dr. Jacob Wisse, director of the Yeshiva University Museum. “In addition to its aesthetic merit, the exhibition…
 A Visionary of the Near-at-Hand
Matthew Daub at ACA Galleries
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 19, 2011
While many contemporary artists consider the urban landscape, few are doing so with the craftsmanship and nuanced emotion of Matthew Daub. Joyce Carol Oates, in an introduction to the catalog of his current exhibition at ACA Galleries, writes, "His…
 Meridians Ago
Jasmina Danowski at Spanierman Modern
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 15, 2011
Yesterday evening saw the opening of an exhibition of new abstract florals, or floral abstractions, by Jasmina Danowski at Spanierman Modern. According to the gallery, "Danowski's paintings carry reminiscences of nature and still life, but their force…
 Climb the Black Mountain
Elisabeth Condon at Lesley Heller
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 12, 2011
"Exploded pours of paint determine the initial compositions in my paintings," according to Elisabeth Condon, whose exhibition at Lesley Heller Workspace opens this evening, 6-8 PM. "To their improvisational shapes and translucent colors I add images…
 Everything at a Distance Turns into Poetry
Rooms with a View at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 11, 2011
"During the Romantic era, the open window appeared either as the sole subject or the main feature in many pictures of interiors that were filled with a poetic play of light and perceptible silence," according to a statement from the Metropolitan…
 Reconfigured Images
Jack Pierson and Elliott Puckette at Danziger Projects
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 8, 2011
An exhibition currently on display at Danziger Projects shows work by two contrasting collagists, each with their own pictorial charms. "Based
on
the
artists’
interest
in
the
practice
of
…
 70 Years of Abstract Painting at Jason McCoy Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 5, 2011
This evening, 6-8 PM, an opening reception will take place for a promising exhibition that covers a generous, ambitious span of abstract painting. It includes prototypical examples like Josef Albers and Jackson Pollock, the West Coast giant John…
 Thinness and Thickness
Susanna Heller at John Davis Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
April 4, 2011
Susanna Heller, a New York City native and Brooklyn resident, is exhibiting a recent series of fraught, encrusted, largely small-scale paintings that smolder with intensity and troubled reflection. "A painting, like a walk, connects the physical…
 An Excavation of Quiet Ambience
Jimbo Blachly's "Lanquidity" at Winkleman Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 25, 2011
Jimbo Blachly has returned to painting after a 30-year hiatus, working in a manner informed by his employment in a conservation studio that brings him into close contact with twentieth century paintings. "Intimate, fragmentary, allusive, Blachly’s…
 Landed All With Sweet Flowers
Antonio Murado's Ophelia at Von Lintel
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 23, 2011
"[Antonio] Murado is an extraordinarily versatile painter with a voracious and omnivorous appetite for source material," according to Von Lintel Gallery, where his paintings inspired by Shakespeare's Ophelia go on display in an exhibition opening…
 Color Moves
Sonia Delaunay at Cooper-Hewitt
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 21, 2011
Sonia Delaunay was an active force in bringing the discoveries of Cubism and abstraction into the applied arts. “By showing her work at Cooper-Hewitt, the constant interplay between art and design will be strong and clear and by virtue of Delaunay’s…
 Stepping Up with Thornton Willis
"In the Grid" at Elizabeth Harris Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 18, 2011
A senior figure in American abstraction, Thornton Willis is nearing his 75th birthday and painting at a high a level as ever. Working forward from a 2009 exhibition which saw him using a post-and-lintel formation to build his pictures, he has moved on…
 Getaways and Vacationlands
Christina Shurts at RARE Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 16, 2011
Christina Shurts, who is already widely exhibited in California, will make her New York debut tomorrow at RARE Gallery. " The imagery in Shurts' paintings is derived from memories, relics of her childhood, personal photographs, decor magazines, and…
 The Subtle Light of Ellen Phelan
"Landscapes and Still Lifes: A Selection" at Gasser & Grunert
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 11, 2011
Ellen Phelan is showing a suite of oil paintings at Gasser & Grunert that one might be tempted to call neo-Tonalist. Her soft, enveloping renderings of the Adirondack forests "capture a remarkable range of darkness and soft light, emotional high notes…
 A Brush With Asia
Helen Frankenthaler at Knoedler & Company
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 6, 2011
There are mere days left to investigate an intriguing exhibition at Knoedler & Company of works by Helen Frankenthaler that were inspired by Asian art. "Always one to set the bar high for herself, the artist is calling attention to her frank desire to…
 You Will Meet A Tall, Handsome Stranger… On The Bowery
Newly attributed portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi goes on view at Sperone Westwater
By DAVID COHEN
January 8, 2011
Think Bowery and it is either the New Museum or the Bowery Mission that likely springs to mind. But right now it is also the place to view something whose rarity and finesse belies both associations: a newly discovered portrait by the most famous…
 A Remarkable Posthumous Debut
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky at Galerie St. Etienne
By DAVID COHEN
December 27, 2010
The final, short gallery-going week of the year is also New York’s last chance to catch a remarkable posthumous debut. Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, an artist who spent a long lifetime operating under the radar, is the subject of a comprehensive…
A Beauty By Beckmann Stands Out Amidst The Throng
On View At The Piers As Part Of The Armory Show
By DAVID COHEN, Publisher/Editor of artcritical.com
February 22, 2011
On view through Sunday. New York also hosts the ADAA's Art Show, Volta, Pulse, Scope, Red Dot, The Independent and more. The city is awash with art.
 Synchronicity at Columbia
A show of quirky abstraction closes Friday while a source of inspiration for some of its artists, Richard Tuttle, lectures tonight
By DAVID COHEN
October 28, 2010
Up at Columbia’s LeRoy Neiman Gallery MFA student Nora Griffin – well-known already downtown and before her enrollment as a writer on the Brooklyn Rail and an exhibiting artist – has organized and is taking part in a show of quirky, whimsical, often…
 Street Smarts
New York debut of Rose Wylie, newly celebrated Brit
By DAVID COHEN
October 18, 2010
Most viewers of Rose Wylie’s show at Thomas Erben Gallery, titled “WHAT with WHAT”, would want to conclude that the rambunctious, street-smart brutalism on display there is the work of an inner city kid who has been introduced with reluctance to the…
 Writhing Forms
Annabeth Rosen's ceramics in a late and startling debut at Chelsea's Meulensteen
By DAVID COHEN
October 13, 2010
Annabeth Rosen is not just holder of the Robert Arneson Endowed Chair at the University of California Davis in name but truly in spirit as well, extending the legacy of the legendary Arneson in a quest for fully sculptural expression through ceramic…
 Beach Beauty
Connie Fox's latest show, titled Sammy's Beach, opens in the Hamptons this weekend
By DAVID COHEN
July 9, 2010
Connie Fox, for thirty years and counting a year-round veteran of the legendary East Hampton art community, has been the subject of over sixty shows across a distinguished career, but is still what you'd have to call a painter's painter. Her quirky…
 Mug Shot
Simon Gaon's Small Portraits on show at AFP Galleries, New York
By DAVID COHEN
July 2, 2010
Simon Gaon is a straight-up expressionist. He conveys rich, strong feelings about his surroundings, insisting on directness both of application and observation. New York born and trained, his style and sensibility are nonetheless directly European…
 A Letter From The Louvre: The Art Makes Up For A Lot
By BRENDAN BERNHARD
June 22, 2010
It was the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset who in 1930 described in calm, lapidary prose the sheer press of modern life: “Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafes full of customers…
 Billboard Syncopations
James Hyde at Pierogi 2000 Boiler Room
By DAVID COHEN
June 22, 2010
The Stuart Davis Group are high jinks riffs on that jazzy pioneer's painterly syncopations.
 Tunnel of Discovery
Christopher Cook's mysteries in liquid graphite up through Saturday at Mary Ryan Gallery
By DAVID COHEN
June 17, 2010
British artist Christopher Cook's third solo show with Mary Ryan Gallery is titled "Concrete Firmament". His motif of freeway tunnels and his medium of liquid graphite on aluminum are exquisitely matched. The images are slippery, elusive, almost sly…
 Engineering Optimism
By DAVID COHEN
June 14, 2010
By the time Stalin coined the phrase “engineer of the soul” to describe the ideal Soviet artist his regime had already crushed the visionary Russian art movement to which the term would actually have been applicable: Constructivism. The suppressed impulse of Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International enjoyed an unlikely afterlife, however, in the career of a Shanghai-born, California-raised Italian-American abstractionist.
 TWISTER
By DAVID COHEN
June 10, 2010
It is little surprise that the debut art exhibition of septuagenarian poet John Giorno should be “in your face.” An inveterate experimenter with new formats for poetry performance, Giorno pioneered what he called “Electronic Sensory Poetry Environments" in response to the work of Robert Rauschenberg, and then honed his performance technique from visits to rock venues in the company of William S. Burroughs.
 Tunnel Vision
By DAVID COHEN
May 24, 2010
As the judiciously selected and stunningly installed exhibition at Tate Britain demonstrates, the 1930s were Henry Moore’s most fecund and innovative period of sculptural experimentation, confirming him as a leader of the modern movement in Britain. The outbreak of the Second World War, however, saw abrupt changes in output and outlook alike.
 Wintour’s Eyes
By DAVID COHEN
May 16, 2010
According to Alex Katz, speaking publicly at London’s National Portrait Gallery on Friday with Nation art critic Barry Schwabsky and the Gallery’s director, Sandy Nairne, Americans size up someone immediately by their clothes and their haircut. (For Brits, by contrast, it is accent that determines class, and for the French, sentence structure.) He insists his portraits, like all his work, contains all the information in its surface, and that he has no interest in psychology.
 Chaste Yet Ravishing
By DAVID COHEN
May 10, 2010
Some think of Tel Aviv in relation to Israel as being like New York in America, the deliciously decadent heart of an otherwise puritanical land. Philip Pearlstein’s lithograph of a model seated amidst weathervanes is the suitably chaste yet ravishing Gala Print for the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s big New York fundraiser taking place Thursday at the Metropolitan Club.
Start Your Engines
By DAVID COHEN
April 30, 2010
The streaming, fluttering cardinal red forms of Russell Roberts’ Talking Engines of Our Day #5, 2005, are at once redolent of flags and limbs. They are strident against a dense moiré of textured ground yet also vulnerable, both in their tapering irregularity and their propensity to allow the ambiguous space behind to peep through their thin, veiling strokes.
 "Nudes and Revolutions" Through a Glass Darkly
Sebastiaan Bremer at Edwynn Houk Gallery
By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
March 14, 2011
Sebastiaan Bremer draws in inks and dyes upon photographic mashups of his own creation. The results are hallucinatory, vaguely Victorian, erotic, and caliginous. "Utilizing the artist’s signature style of obsessively applied dots of paint onto a…
 Crockery Heaven
The Exuberant Sculptures of Joan Bankemper at Nancy Hoffman Gallery
By DAVID COHEN
January 25, 2011
If the souls of crockery and tchochkes are destined for divine judgement then a well-behaved tea platter, ornament or china centerpiece equivalent of dying and going to heaven would be to end up in a sculpture by Joan Bankemper. "Sojourn" currently on…
Orgy in the Raw
Le Tableau, Curated by Joe Fyfe, at Cheim & Read Gallery, New York
By DAVID COHEN
June 28, 2010
Joe Fyfe, a painter known for his stark, almost belligerently informal abstraction, is also a critic and curator. In “Le Tableau,” a geographically and historically wide-angled summer group exhibition at Chelsea’s Cheim & Read Gallery that he has…
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