Museum of Modern Art, New York, Permanent Collection
Month: December 2023
Gary Hume
Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, New York November 10 to December 22, 2023
These new works are signature Gary Hume: slick, flat, and glossy. He explores his languid forms with household alkyd paint, leaning, in this case, toward abstraction. The shapes are seemingly unchallenging and easy to digest — is this the visual equivalent of Nickelback? — although the color palette has some interesting dissonance. The motif of swans heads is scattered through the paintings, but they are abstracted and non-specific in their storytelling.
The housepaint used is interesting as some of the early work that established his reputation is starting to effloresce, as house paint alkyd contains different sets of acids than fine arts paints. The substrate is aluminum, which Hume has found balances the need for a visually perfectly flat surface with lightness, strength, and stability.
The questions on this work revolve around the level of seriousness. Is this work glib? Is it overly stylized? Does it have a narrative tension? Not sure that this is much more than law firm conference room art.
Hume (England, 1962) works in both London and the Catskills, New York, although recently put the Catskills studio up on the market.
John Hoyland: “Thresholds, Paintings 1965-1970”
Hales Gallery, New York, 1 December 2023 – 20 January 2024
A post-war abstract painter, Hoyland explored from London a parallel course to his contemporary New York painters in the abstract expressionist movement. This show at Hales Gallery highlights his investigation in acrylics, with layering, staining and other inventive mark-making.
From the Hales exhibition:
-Hales exhibition catalogue
Hoyland (b.1934 Sheffield, UK – d.2011 London, UK) was one of the most inventive and dynamic abstract painters of the post-war period. Over the span of more than a half-century his art and attitudes constantly evolved. A distinctive artistic personality emerged, concerned with color, painterly drama, with both excess and control, with grandeur and above all, with the vehement communication of feeling.