Contemporary Art, Painting

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:
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.  

-Hales exhibition catalogue
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Modern Art, Painting

Picasso: 14 Sketchbooks, 1900-1959

Pace Gallery, New York, November 10 – December 23, 2023

A fascinating show of Picasso’s sketchbooks ranging through his career at Pace.

From the Gallery’s site:

Organized in collaboration with the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Madrid (FABA)—with whom our gallery has maintained a longstanding relationship—this exhibition of Picasso’s sketchbooks will offer a unique and intimate view of the ways in which the artist worked, tracing the evolution of his observations and ideas into plans for his compositions across painting and sculpture.


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Contemporary Art, Painting

Georg Baselitz: “The Painter in his Bed”

Gagosian, New York, November 9–December 22, 2023

Georg Baselitz, a stag from "The Painter in his Bed"
Georg Baselitz, a bed with stockings from "The Painter in his Bed"
Georg Baselitz, a stag from "The Painter in his Bed"
Georg Baselitz, stags from "The Painter in his Bed"
Georg Baselitz, a stag from "The Painter in his Bed"
Georg Baselitz, a stag from "The Painter in his Bed"
Gagosian Gallery opening for Baselitz

Georg Baselitz (born Hans-Georg Kern, 1938) is a German painter and sculptor, commonly known for painting his subjects upside down. He took this approach as a pivot in his career in 1969, with a show of inverted portraits that soon became his signature gesture.

This exhibit is series of neo-expressionist paintings, paired subjects of figures in a bed and inverted deer stags.

The compelling works featured in The Painter in His Bed focus on two motifs: figures in bed and the stag. Defining human and animal anatomy with raw expression, Baselitz negotiates apperception of these subjects through his distinctive painterly approach. Vigorously applying layers of paint, he affixes stretched nylon stockings and sheets of gauze across the upper parts of the paintings or makes monoprinted impressions of their shapes. With these additions, Baselitz extends the innovation of Springtime, his 2021 exhibition in the same space in New York. Dedicated to the spirited provocations of Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, and other Dadaists, the works in Springtime draw upon these artists’ irreverent introduction of everyday materials into the realm of art. Whereas many of the Springtime paintings are exuberantly colored, the new works are dominated by elemental contrasts of black and white.

Gagosian Gallery
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Modern Art, Painting

Robert Ryman: 1961-1964

David Zwirner, New York, November 9, 2023—February 3, 2024

Robert Ryman (May 30, 1930 – February 8, 2019) was an American conceptual artist closely identified with the high modernist Minimalist mode of painting in the 1960’s. Interestingly he did not attend an art school or program of art studies at a university. Instead, his visual interests began when he worked as a security guard at MoMA, befriending fellow employees Sol Lewitt and Dan Flavin.

From the David Zwirner exhibition text:

Ryman gained initial recognition for the work he made in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a result, his paintings created prior to this period remain less well known to this day. Yet it was during the early 1960s that Ryman began to firmly establish the broad parameters of his radical and inventive practice. His paintings from these years reflect how, even at this early point, Ryman was already looking to interrogate and reinterpret the fundamental precepts of painting by experimenting with different supports and materials; deconstructing the relationship between frame and wall; and more broadly, investigating the visual, material, and experiential qualities that define the conditions in which a work of art is encountered. It was also at this time that the artist settled on the square as the primary format for his art and began experimenting with scale, a consequence, in part, of his move around 1961 to a studio space that afforded him the ability to work in larger formats.

David Zwirner Gallery
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Contemporary Art, Painting, Sculpture

Diana Al-Hadid: “Women, Bronze, and Dangerous Things

Kasmin Gallery, New York, November 2 – December 22, 2023

A sculpture by Diana Al-Hadid

Al-Hadid is a Brooklyn based artist. Born in Aleppo, Syria, Diana Al-Hadid emigrated to the United States when she was five years old, growing up in Ohio. There she received a BA at Kent State and then went on to earn an MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The exhibition work spans a number of media, including rigid board, styrene, bronze, and wax. Commenting on the mythological content of the subject matter, the gallery writes:

“Across Al-Hadid’s use of motifs in this exhibition—which includes figures from Greek mythology alongside protagonists in Islamic and Christian narratives—the artist’s contemporary interpretations intuitively navigate different attempts of reading the future through our past. Constructions in nature such as mountains and caves reappear as emblematic elements of landscape tied to the social, psychological, and religious narratives that have been absorbed into dominant culture over the centuries. Indifferent to where these narratives find their origin in theology, Al-Hadid’s method of retrieving stories both communicate with history and imagine them anew. At once prophetic and autobiographical, Al-Hadid’s sensitive installation across two sites of the gallery’s architecture articulates a realm that manifests, both physically and metaphorically, above ground and below.”

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Contemporary Art, Painting, Sculpture

Anish Kapoor

Lisson Gallery, New York, New York, November 2 – December 16, 2023

Okay let’s get to the paintings first, because… they are so, so BAD. Poorly drawn, acid combinations of colors that frankly would probably not be exhibited without considering the artist’s established reputation as a sculptor. Many painters and sculptors that cross over into the other’s discipline fail to make powerful works in the alternative medium and that’s okay, they can be interesting failures. And every once in a while, an artist can pull it off (Sara Sze comes to mind since she was recently exhibited in this very room).

On a brighter note the sculptures are intriguing as objects. This is the first exhibit of Anish Kapoor’s trademark gimmick, the Vanta Black pigment that approximates absolute black. The spatial effect of light dying into a form is quite interesting. One work is a rough pile of the stuff heaped on the floor, and the mounds of form and contour can only be seen as silhouette. As you walk around the piece you see that it must have misshapen lumps here and there but they can only see them as a perimeter outline – the light does not reflect back to allow you to perceive any other spatial depth looking into the form itself.

The effect works almost as well in the other pieces, which are simpler form and have different formal interests in absorbing the ambient light. They are interesting, but seemingly one liners and these pieces might not be anywhere near the heights of great art. I can’t imagine, for instance, the idea of their having an influence on another generation of artists. They feel like a dead end.

Such is the power of these miserable paintings that they affect my evaluation of the more familiar sculptures presented here – maybe this is unfair but it’s hard to swim hanging on to an anchor. I try to only review exhibits that I like, and so why include this one? As I said the Vanta Black creates an interesting object, and it’s worth considering. There is perhaps a difference between an interesting object and a worthy work of art, and if it weren’t for the paintings I would consider that.

Anish Kapoor was born in 1954 in Mumbai, India, and works in London and Venice. He currently is exhibiting the show “Untrue Unreal” in the Palazzo Strozzi, in Florence.

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Architecture

Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism

Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 2023 to January 20, 2024

This particular project within the show Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism, is a model of the “Green Machine” by Glenn Small, created in 1980.

Although this show covers a variety of approaches to American environmentalism through diverse artists, including Buckminster Fuller, Emilio Ambasz, and Charles and Ray Eames, this piece stood out for me as particularly fun.

Small was a pioneer of architectural ecology, emphasizing recycled materials and buildings with a light footprint on the environment.

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Contemporary Art, Painting

Ed Ruscha: “Now Then”

Museum of Modern Art, New York, Oct 1 2023 to January 13 2024

A mammoth multimedia retrospective of fellow Oklahoman Ed Ruscha’s artistic output, this exhibition spans six decades across his career. The show emphasizes the unique combination of abstraction and pop imagery in his art. Ruscha is known for his bold text across images, and features these images around aspects of the American West.

Ruscha’s career has also proved influential, as his unique combination of text and images continues to resonate with other artists.

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Contemporary Art, Painting

Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist’s Studio

Abstract sketch by Bridget Riley

Morgan Library, New York, June 23 through October 8, 2023.

I have never really considered that preparatory drawings might be an important part of Bridget Riley’s workflow, but this exhibit at the Morgan proves it. The works are all donated for the show by the artist herself, from her personal collection.

Riley is one of the most accomplished abstract artists of the period, and live in a middle range between Op Art and Minimalism. Seeing the discipline of these small sketches as generators of the larger finished ideas is a revelation.

The exhibition introduction notes that this is the first show of Riley’s drawings in fifty years.

Drawing is having an eye at the end of a pencil

-Riley

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Sculpture

Early Hand Tools and Farm Implements

Columbia County Historical Society, Kinderhook, New York

This exhibit of early hand tools and farm tools at the Columbia County Historical Society in Kinderhook argues for the expressive beauty of these objects. They are obviously handmade and made singly — the asymmetries are fascinating and add life to the pieces.

They share an additional point in common – they are objects to amplify the force of a farmer’s abilities, extending his or her reach, power, ability to grasp or cut. As such, they feel uncanny, almost as if imbued with their own force. I wonder what happens in the museum at night when it is empty and the lights are out.

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Contemporary Art, Sculpture

Ann Hamilton: As After Is Before

T Space, Rhinebeck, New York, July 16 to October 1 2023

I met Ann Hamilton in 1998 when she installed her piece “Myein” at the Venice Biennale (I was working to install the Philip Johnson exhibition at the Ca’ Zenobio). Was delighted to see her again here at her work exhibited at Steven Holl’s T Space room.

This piece is an installation of wool coats and sheep fleece, as aromatic as it was beautiful

Inscribed on a stone near the coats are her words:

as outside is to inside
as animal is to human
as stone is to words
as sound is to song
as image is to object
as made is to grown

-Hamilton
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Contemporary Art, Sculpture

Tanel Veenre: BeforeAfter

Ornamentum, Hudson New York. June 24 – July 16, 2023

Tanel Veenre is an Estonian artist focusing on jewelry and wearables that he crafts from wooden organ pipe components, reconfigured into sculptural form. According to wikipedia he is a “jewelry artist,” an awkward phrase trying to describe the in-betweenness of his work. This show at Ornamentum in Hudson mixes elements of craft, jewelry, art, and even a bit of musicianship — apparently the pipes all still produce tone if you blow through them.

He comes from a family of artists and musicians, and if I have the story correctly these pieces are reconfigurations of a wooden organ that his father gave him as a gift.

I am pleased with Veenre’s choices to forgo emphasizing or fetishizing the joinery of the pieces, which is a notorious tempation when working with wood. Instead, the pipe components are reworked with collisional butt-joints and moments of hinging. The effect gives a feel of accidental form and beauty.

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