In the past 30 years Thomas Nozkowski’s allusive yet enigmatically abstract paintings have gradually acquired a cultlike devotion. This patient, quietly determined artist is the anti-hype—his paintings are slow.
Lately, however, Mr. Nozkowski has been getting a lot of attention. His paintings were featured at the Venice Biennale last summer; a mini-retrospective at Long Read More
Here’s an ironclad guarantee: Visitors to Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul, an overview of paintings, drawings and prints by the Norwegian artist at the Museum of Modern Art, will snap to attention upon entering the second gallery of the exhibition.
The canvases that greet the viewer there— Despair (1892), Angst Read More
Perhaps it’s the long-dormant Rolling Stones fan buried within the recesses of my psyche, but the title of Betty Cuningham’s summer-group exhibition rankles: Paint It With Black? Come on—who isn’t familiar with “Paint It Black,” as raucous an avowal of nihilism as ever blared its way through an AM radio? If curator Phong Bui, publisher Read More
Exploiting Irresolution, Sussman
Paints Coherent Abstractions
All sorts of clichés popped into my head while looking at the abstract paintings of Robert Sussman, on display at the CUE Art Foundation. Here’s a sampling: “Birds of a feather … “; “Great minds think alike”; “It takes one to know one”-you get the drift. The bromides Read More
All sorts of clichés popped into my head while looking at the abstract paintings of Robert Sussman, on display at the CUE Art Foundation. Here’s a sampling: “Birds of a feather … “; “Great minds think alike”; “It takes one to know one”-you get the drift. The bromides were prompted by the knowledge that Thomas Read More
In its own quietly determined way, the New York Studio School has become one of the city’s most significant venues for contemporary art. When I say “contemporary art,” I don’t mean the kind of soulless folderol in the go-go galleries of West 24th Street. I mean art that thrives on its own autonomous merits, that Read More
The Rich Rewards of Engagement
With Dense, Demanding Work
In its own quietly determined way, the New York Studio School has become one of the city’s most significant venues for contemporary art. When I say “contemporary art,” I don’t mean the kind of soulless folderol in the
go-go galleries of West 24th Street.
Over the past 25 years, Thomas Nozkowski has established a sturdy career as an abstract painter. Sturdy, one might note, and unsensational. While his paintings are exhibited regularly, written about in art journals, and included in the collections of major museums, it can’t be said that Mr. Nozkowski is a “name” artist–and for good reason. Read More
