… Josh Smith… degrades and celebrates his medium through the relentless yet fervent repetition of a selected motif. [He] tends to work fast and a trifle sloppily, until a certain image becomes second nature, a template. This automatism opens the … Continue reading
KAWS is “former graffiti tagger” Brian Donnelly. “The market is wacky…,” said Douglas Walla, a private dealer based in New York, commenting on the current vogue for KAWS. “The whole thing is lubricated by social media. Artists have been able … Continue reading
Any drawings that are “like letters of a foreign language” would get my attention. This is so with the drawings of Susan Hefuna. … Susan Hefuna makes ink drawings inspired by the intricate wooden screens of her Cairo childhood… done … Continue reading
Work by Klee always gives me a boost. I also enjoy the critic’s sprightly accounting of it, which I excerpt here. … David Zwirner [Gallery] has nabbed a heavyweight: Paul Klee, the splendidly cagey Swiss-German modernist and Bauhaus professor. … … Continue reading
This gallery contains 1 photo.
The humans are cartoonish, with unsettling ocular highlights. The man’s buckle and spurs gleam unexpectedly. The beakish woman (clad in denim?) grasps a shepherd’s crook. A bucket dangling from block and tackle drips water drawn from an artesian well. It … Continue reading
I ponder what exactly the relationship between professional critic and working artist is. I, of course, am neither — a nosy bystander at best. I’m aware glancingly of debates in the professional art community about who says and does what. … Continue reading
Harold’s welded tonnage of heroic longhorn steer stands about eight feet tall at the poll (the space between his ears). It’s from an early period — the 80’s. Harold donated the steer to his alma mater, Sul Ross State University … Continue reading
This painting has some slight appeal for me. Maybe it’s better called a sketch, and its appeal is in its very sketchiness. It’s flat; there’s no hint of color perspective. The figures are suggested crudely. The paint is slathered on … Continue reading
When I re-launched this blog a year ago, my father had died. I imagined one use for the blog as being an archive for images of some of his art works. That particular thrust of the blog faltered. Lately, with … Continue reading
Hard to Live With
Claude Monet’s series paintings are among the few true trophies that can generate real excitement at auctions… “They’re so evocative, so romantic and so easy to live with,” Offer Waterman, a London-based dealer, said. “That was the best of the … Continue reading →