Tag Archives: painting

The Zen of Falling Short

Posted on April 9, 2024 by JMN

The thin, gray quality of the old man’s face suggest [sic] that even a Zen master’s identity is evanescent, while the dark intensity of his eyes captures the timeless persistence of his understanding. A series of feathery, beautiful strokes come … Continue reading →

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Savage Women

Posted on March 10, 2024 by JMN

The plasticity of the modeled flesh; the acuity of the subject’s skeptical gaze distorted by skillfully hinted pince-nez spectacles; the wristwatch: the rich blacks of garb against a brushy olive background: these excite notice in the expressive portrait of Berthe … 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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‘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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Frans Hals ‘Bet Everything on Portraiture’

Posted on February 11, 2024 by JMN

Hals bet everything on portraiture… It was a profession, not a calling. His job was to disappear into the paint. (Zachary Fine) For me Vermeer is glassy and distant where Hals is rudely… reachable. The tossed-off affect of his paintings’ … Continue reading →

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‘A Spume of Green or a Blood-Red Fog’

Posted on February 6, 2024 by JMN

[Rothko] modeled a commitment to abstraction that charged at the hardest questions of life and art through refusal of the easy path… [He] never thought of [his paintings] as peaceable. “Behind the color lies the cataclysm,” he said in 1959 … Continue reading →

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Brice Marden Believed Looking at Paintings Could Be Transporting

Posted on January 28, 2024 by JMN

Again and again, he showed that art from any time or culture was contemporary and alive, if it offered artists something they could use. (Roberta Smith) Brice Marden died in August 2023, aged 84. The illustration that concludes Roberta Smith’s … Continue reading →

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Notes on Process

Posted on January 25, 2024 by JMN

When I indite a scrap of doggerelI launch five iambs on a fancy verb. So. Post launch, it’s a fight to go all pinche. Listen to the warm; daub raunch on the prissy; cut the crap into the shape of … Continue reading →

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Old Plantocracy and Retrofuturism

Posted on January 23, 2024 by JMN

In this telling, art is a global and porous affair. And far-flung provinces serve as entrepôts to and from the vanguard — not just detours to be “represented” like Nashville hot chicken in the flavor portfolio of Pringles. (Walker Mimms) … Continue reading →

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