Tag Archives: criticism

‘They Can Feel Almost Like Exquisite Texts to Be Read’

Posted on March 18, 2023 by JMN

… Each [painting] presents so much information that you have to move in close for further contemplation and deciphering, trying to figure out how the paintings were made and which of their weird little details are accidental, which deliberate. They … Continue reading →

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‘It’s More Than It Initially Appears’

Posted on November 11, 2022 by JMN

The comment attributed to a museum director about Jennifer Guidi’s painting reminded me of Mark Twain’s remark that Wagner’s music is “better than it sounds.” “I’m thinking of color as a way to connect — a way to engage — … Continue reading →

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The ‘Burden of Exegesis’

Posted on October 15, 2022 by JMN

There is almost nothing to see, and yet everything is there. (Laura Cumming) Cumming gives a lyrical account of her responses to Cezanne. (I learn from her that the artist dropped the acute accent from his name in his signature.) … Continue reading →

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Fabulousness and Traps

Posted on October 21, 2021 by JMN

Here’s a vibrant pulverization of Smith-song around the paintings of Beauford Delaney (1901-1979): Robust impasto surfaces… startling colors… visionary buzz… new kind of painterly fabulousness… sturdy realism overloaded with color… something of an Egyptian immobility… crisis-crossing strokes [sic: Is “criss-crossing” … Continue reading →

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‘Jasper Johns: Divide and Conquer’ — Review by Holland Cotter

Posted on September 25, 2021 by JMN

Flags, maps and numbers were among the artist’s earliest repeating motifs. In “Map” (1961), the artist blurs the boundaries of states and strikes a line through the name South Carolina. Credit…Jasper Johns/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Charlie … Continue reading →

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‘Marquetry Remains Her Focus’

Posted on September 18, 2021 by JMN

In the past, Alison Elizabeth Taylor’s extraordinary wood-marquetry paintings have seemed interesting primarily for their bravura craft. Working from photographs, mostly her own, and using laser cutting (mainly), Taylor fashioned small pieces of various wood veneers into puzzle-like pieces fit … Continue reading →

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Jane Kaufman

Posted on July 16, 2021 by JMN

The savory quotation that leaps from this obituary of artist Jane Kaufman (1938 – 2021) is from Holland Cotter’s review of a 2008 retrospective at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, N.Y. “It’s funky, funny, fussy, perverse, obsessive, riotous, accumulative, … Continue reading →

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‘Art Has Many Mansions’

Posted on July 12, 2021 by JMN

The NYTimes, as well, has sumptuous reportage on this exhibit of Medici-sponsored artworks. The portraits have a preternatural technical brilliance that’s otherworldly. “Laura Battiferri,” fingering her legible volume of Petrarch, is a creature contrived from mannerist lunacy. An interesting wrinkle … Continue reading →

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UK Sculptor: Hard Row to Hoe

Posted on July 3, 2021 by JMN

It will be [a shrine], but not for art lovers. Or for anyone who is easily embarrassed. Perhaps not even for Diana’s sincerest believers, for the statue group’s emotive symbolism is undermined by its aesthetic awfulness. In style it breathes … Continue reading →

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Shows and Prose

Posted on May 28, 2021 by JMN

Along comes more NYTimes torqued and taut art talk of the sort that sweeps me up. … Several gorgeous self-portraits made toward the end of his life. Their precision is astonishing… It’s clear that what most interested Ellis about ink … Continue reading →

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