The American painter Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992), whose very large late paintings are the subject of an enchanting exhibition at Knoedler & Company, was often described in his lifetime as the youngest of the Abstract Expressionist painters of the New York School. He was indeed younger than Pollock, de Kooning and a few other artists in Read More
It was the 19th-century British critic William Hazlitt who shrewdly observed that writers “who lack delicacy hold us in their power”; the same might be said of certain painters. One of them is the American artist Jules Olitski (b. 1922), whose paintings are currently the subject of an exhibition at Knoedler & Company. “Boisterous, daring Read More
Just under half a century has passed since the young Mark di Suvero (born 1933) made his debut with an exhibition of sculpture that met with instant astonishment and acclaim. Sheer scale would have been enough to cause astonishment-the tallest sculpture was over eight feet high-but size was by no means the principal appeal of Read More
This is mud season in Maine, where not only ice and snow but earth itself seems to melt beneath one’s feet into an alien, unstable support that is neither land nor sea but something akin to the planet’s primeval ooze. It’s a season that only painters of a certain sensibility-Albert Pinkham Ryder, perhaps, or Ralph Read More
The role played by friendship in the life of art is a seldom-discussed subject. This is probably why so few exhibitions have been devoted to exploring the aesthetic consequences of such friendships. In chronicling the course of modern painting, for example, we have generally preferred to codify its history in terms of movements and “schools,” Read More
It was difficult to know what could be expected this year from The Art Show at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue. The Art Show is the annual mega-exhibition organized by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) to celebrate the role played by the galleries in the art life of the nation. It Read More
American painters with an affinity for the aesthetics of abstraction have often grappled with the problem of influence-the influence, that is, of the European masters of abstract art. Total resistance to that influence was not, after all, an aesthetic option for painters of this persuasion.Thebasic modalities of abstract art were set early on in the Read More
The English-born painter John Walker, whose work is
currently the subject of a compelling exhibition at Knoedler & Company, now
teaches at Boston University and has lately been painting in Maine. He is,
among much else, an Expressionist with an appetite for big, elegiac subjects.
He is also an Abstractionist with a yearning for the Read More
New Yorkers driving out to East Hampton, L.I., for Thanksgiving may notice that the blue-and-yellow sign for Maya’s restaurant has been taken down from its perch near Ronald Perelman’s house on Route 27 in Wainscott. Whether the local branch of Randy and Maya Gurley’s famous St. Bart’s restaurant will also disappear from the Hamptons landscape Read More
It was William Rubin, then chairman of the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, who, on the occasion of Frank Stella’s second exhibition at the museum, invoked the names of Dante, Shakespeare and Picasso as artists with whom it was thought appropriate to compare the work of Mr. Stella. But Read More
