Tag Archives: art

The ‘Jolly Bunch of Pen-Pushers’

Posted on June 29, 2024 by JMN

For me the skills of cartoon and caricature are from on high, which is why I relished this article about Philip Guston. It told me much I didn’t know. He was the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Montreal who … Continue reading →

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‘Six Persimmons’: Asymmetry and Ambiguity

Posted on May 15, 2024 by JMN

In a show called The Heart of Zen, “Six Persimmons” was displayed for three short weeks in late 2023 at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. It was “painted with ink on paper in the 13th century, probably by … Continue reading →

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Training Color to Speak for Itself

Posted on April 27, 2024 by JMN

Inspired by the theorist Michel Eugène Chevreul — whose 1839 treatise on color harmony is on display in this show — Sonia [Delaunay] and her fellow pioneers in abstraction had to train the individual elements of color, such as contrast … Continue reading →

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‘There’s Nothing There Except the Pictures’

Posted on April 25, 2024 by JMN

The artist Jim Nutt has been making a version of this imagined portrait for the last 40 years, a mode that has dominated his practice… His women never age, never seem to dislodge from a midcentury stylistic amber: all wearing … Continue reading →

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Art Critic Roberta Smith Retires. Damn!

Posted on April 17, 2024 by JMN

Over her 38-year career at The Times, Ms. Smith cultivated a reputation for intimate observations conveyed in accessible prose. I became a critic in the same way a lot of people become critics: by immersing themselves in a subject and … Continue reading →

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‘Beauty Kicks In’

Posted on March 27, 2024 by JMN

I would dislike him if I could build a case from the visible evidence equal in strength to my itch to dislike him. But beauty kicks in. (Peter Schjeldahl on sculptor Richard Serra) (c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights … Continue reading →

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‘Artistic Project Born from Disastrous War and Political Disenchantment’

Posted on March 5, 2024 by JMN

“I have been drawing,” Beckmann wrote to his wife one evening, after a day caring for men who’d survived the trenches. “That protects one from death and danger.” Though he never served at the front, Beckmann had a nervous breakdown … Continue reading →

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George Tscherny (1924-2023): Ad Artist

Posted on March 1, 2024 by JMN

He recognized from an early age the way that high art and commercial art overlapped, blended together and even nestled inside each other. I called myself a space salesman when I worked in newspaper advertising. When I was made ad … Continue reading →

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‘Heartfelt, Slapdash, But Unredeemed by Art’

Posted on February 18, 2024 by JMN

Art is something scrappy and strange; it may hiss rather than purr. How it redeems, presumably, is at the heart of the critic’s project, but also the lay consumer’s. That’s me. In doodling my readings of <clears throat> lineated discourse, … Continue reading →

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His First Word Was ‘Pencil’

Posted on February 16, 2024 by JMN

“What I’ve come to realize after 30 years of research is that the pictorial output of Picasso basically consists of drawings rendered in paint. His entire oeuvre is conceived, anticipated and elaborated through drawing.” (Anne Baldassari) Give my my pencil, … Continue reading →

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