Tag Archives: painting

‘You Can Make Something and You See It. But Then You Have to Spend Your Life to Get the World to See It’ (June Leaf)

Posted on July 2, 2024 by JMN

Painter and sculptor June Leaf died on July 1, 2024, aged 94. “She is that rare thing in painting today: a poet with a taste and a talent for complex images.” (Hilton Kramer, 1968) In Paris, Ms. Leaf told Hyperallergic, … Continue reading →

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‘The Bright Light Done Come, and There Was No More Whippin’s’

Posted on June 19, 2024 by JMN

June 19, 1865, inaugurated Juneteenth. My title is from the words of a former slave in Texas about its effect on her and her family. (Quoted on “The History and Meaning of Juneteenth,” from “The Daily,” New York Times Audio) … Continue reading →

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Protect the Rim, Kill the Note

Posted on June 15, 2024 by JMN

I got a charge out of Ernie Barnes’s painting titled “Protect the Rim.” The surreally long figures, the lofty rustic hoop, and even the knocked-together frame all have a quirky charm. In a parallel world, my grandmother’s capacious lungs powered … Continue reading →

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‘I Don’t Agree With What I Said’

Posted on June 2, 2024 by JMN

In a delicious Onion skit a befuddled member of a clueless television news panel ends up saying, “Yeah, I don’t agree with what I said!” It’s a wicked sendup of vacuous cable news, but also sparks a thought: What if … Continue reading →

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‘The Brushstrokes Don’t Make Shapes’

Posted on May 25, 2024 by JMN

Chuck Close’s approach to painting is intriguing. It’s as if he invented pixellation avant la lettre. “This new body of work is more abstract, and quieter than any previous ones,” Close told the artist Cindy Sherman in a 2018 interview. … Continue reading →

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Red Alert: Portrait Riot!

Posted on May 16, 2024 by JMN

I warm to Jonathan Yeo’s smoldering rendition of Charles the Third for the fastuous havoc it wreaks on canvas, not to mention expenditure of fiery pigment. It will inflame disdain in all the right quarters, though reportedly not in his … 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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‘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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Arab Figure Painting

Posted on April 22, 2024 by JMN

Last December The Times published an article about an exhibition at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, titled “Partisans of the Nude: An Arab Art Genre in an Era of Contest, 1920-1960.” The show spotlights 85 rarely seen works in the … Continue reading →

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Ixnay on the Ocracy, Theo! LOL

Posted on April 19, 2024 by JMN

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Things need to work themselves out.A round of unkinking is due.Mistakes were made. Put a few fires out. Make nice again.Fast backward to the good times.Park the ordnance. Cool your jets. The killing, the killing, give it a rest! LOLBled … Continue reading →

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