Tag Archives: painting

The Case for Rhythm and Emptiness

Posted on November 1, 2022 by JMN

Brazilian artist Maxwell Alexandre speaks of how exposure to Kerry James Marshall’s painting made him aware of “an absence of representation. You would ask a Black kid to draw a person and he would draw a white person… Just by … 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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Why Do I Warm to These Two Paintings?

Posted on October 9, 2022 by JMN

Rosalyn Drexler’s elegant painting, “Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health,” is stuck with a lumbering title but sings, nevertheless. I would give it a chill name such as “Composition in Vermilion on Black,” or one with saucy innuendo … Continue reading →

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What He Simply Tries to Do

Posted on September 22, 2022 by JMN

“In his view, painting and drawing are exactly the same difficulty and take roughly as long as each other.” (William Feaver, art critic and one of Auerbach’s regular sitters) Asked whether he has learned something new about his face, [Auerbach] … Continue reading →

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Robert Colescott: ‘Oh Wow… Oh [Expletive]!’

Posted on July 12, 2022 by JMN

My weakness for parody has emerged at easel in attempts to paint pictures that convey a profound disquiet over gun culture. I read (present tense) the paintings of Robert Colescott (1925 – 2009) with profound amazement, and Roberta Smith’s comments, … Continue reading →

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‘It’s This Old, Fatal Love for the Landscape’

Posted on June 25, 2022 by JMN

The quotation in my title is from nature writer Robert Macfarlane. His book The Old Ways featured British war artist Eric Ravilious, killed in a plane crash in 1942. In the book, Macfarlane “points to the way the artist would … Continue reading →

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Women Irritated the Painter. Oh Dear

Posted on June 2, 2022 by JMN

John Elderfield, who curated the last big de Kooning survey for the Museum of Modern Art, said that originally the Woman series upset different people in different ways… Some were dismayed by the vulgar treatment of the female form… Elderfield’s … Continue reading →

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They Put the ‘Art’ in Partnering

Posted on May 15, 2022 by JMN

Sally Michel (1902-2003) was 17 years his junior when she married Milton Avery (1885-1965) in 1926. A painter herself, she provided income as a freelance illustrator for 30 years while he painted full time. He never had a studio, and … Continue reading →

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In Praise of Walls

Posted on May 8, 2022 by JMN

I’ve admired artist Outside Authority’s (www.outsideauthor.wordpress.com) lyrical renderings of UK churches and churchyards for some time. It’s stimulating to see a similar devotion to these spaces reflected in this Guardian article. “Eight hundred years ago, pagan sites – springs, wells … Continue reading →

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Backlight and Hazy Music

Posted on May 7, 2022 by JMN

I’m a fan of Schiele as well as of interiors. What’s interesting to me in this precocious painting is the backlighting of the subject and the skillful rendering of hazy, natural light suffusing the room. The uniform NW-to-SE directionality of … Continue reading →

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