What Meets the Eye – Talking Pictures

Finding Fairfield Porter at the Met

September 19, 2017

The painter who looks for a subject, or doubts his role, has fallen behind in the race. —Fairfield Porter Because I was doubting my role and looking for a subject in the last days of summer—I visited the Met. And by subject I mean literal [...]

“Renoir, my Father” by Jean Renoir

September 4, 2017

I never used to like Renoir. I suppose I agreed with Degas (who I now find is an anti-Semite—and Renoir too, oh well, a little more about that later)—who called his style “as puffy as cotton wool.” This memoir by his son Jean, the [...]

In Which I Visit Two of the “Gardens on Orchard”

July 23, 2017

The reason I’m such an optimist about this whole climate change business is that at a particularly low point, I took “Botany for Horticulturalists” at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (and the rest of the horticultural certificate [...]

Eric Fischl and the Big Uneasy

June 30, 2017

I was going to write about Fischl’s economical brushwork but Dennis Kardon did such a super job on that in “HyperA”, and James Cahill in “Art In America” put the hilarious cherry on top by calling it “near enough.” All I’m [...]

The Intricate Modernism of Anne Harvey

June 14, 2017

It’s startling, disconcerting even, to come across a painter I don’t know who fits into a historical period—Modern Art ( as TJ Clark defines it)—but in her own way. (A similar thing happened several years ago, when I [...]

Mercedes Matter, Early and Late

May 26, 2017

Untitled (Tabletop Still Life), ca. 1998, 38”x 46” Some of Mercedes Matter’s early works have a singsong, seesaw effect—Hans [...]

Sahand Tabatabai “Through the Light of the Stars” at SRO Gallery

April 23, 2017

Big Bear and the Dragon 2016, oil on linen, 30”x 24” A friend who had read a couple of my reviews (at least one) said I [...]

The Painting

April 6, 2017

The Painting Open Casket, Dana Schutz at the Whitney Biennial The thing is, it’s a wonderful painting. As many have noted, there is nothing else like it (or nearly as good in my opinion) in Dana Schutz’s oeuvre to date, so how she got [...]

Biennial Artists Grateful to Tiffany and Co

March 20, 2017

Cha.. …t, …dous ,…day [...]

Katharina Grosse: Bad Painting Without Irony

February 13, 2017

Sincerity has returned to Chelsea in a big way, most notably in the work of Katharina Grosse. For one thing, Grosse confesses that by using a spray gun she can express her thoughts very quickly. But has there been any call for that? More hurriedly [...]