Monet and Abstraction - A Show Essential to Know About

One of the greatest exhibition catalogues ever. My regret is not having seen the exhibition personally. Click on link to find out more.

Let Us Face the Future. British art 1945-1968 - Fundació Joan Miró

Let Us Face the Future. British art 1945-1968 - Fundació Joan Miró

New York Touchdown

I took a Chelsea sojourn between 29th and 23rd streets today:

29th St.
Steve di Beneditto at Nolan, two in particular, the Quarry and a smaller painting on the same west wall; beautiful pencil drawings in the back;

26th St.
Vivid, Female Currents in Painting - too many wonderful painters to name, curated by Janet Phelps (click on link to visit Shroeder, Romero and Shredder) and Pavers, those who pave the way...among the group of Pavers and Vivids: Judy Linhares, Carrie Moyer, Rosanna Bruno, Susanna Coffey; a particularly sharp Wendy White, more, more! You've got to go.

Lee Krasner at Miller, 26th - an ultimate Paver - oh, this show is good - the umber paintings are perfect, and there is a plummy, patterned pathway in alizarin crimson or similar, that is just delicious. Rhythm and pattern start here;

Philip Pearlstein at Betty Cunningham - saw this quickly but the beauty was on the back west wall, no head - just body and toy;

25th St.
Stephen Mueller @ Lennon, Weinberg- sucks sky-space into cups of colorful fades;

Hans Hartung  @ Cheim and Reid - like Krasner, a just-right historical show at this moment in abstract painting; makes me think about the typically western desire to 'construct' a painting offset by traditional eastern mastery of idioms that gives "bone" to immediacy.

Thomas Noskowski at Pace - of all the shows, this thrilled me to the marrow with its unbelievable freedom. Drawings, paired with paintings - informing each other - reveals the shifts in decisions and visual logic so natural to working in the studio - inspiring. (Image above, snapped from the Pace website - go see this show!)

23rd St.
Ellen Lanyon @ Pavel Zoubok - elegant, illustrative, fun-to-paint still life narratives accompanied by a tableau of the actual objects and lively collaborative book with poet / curator Lynne Cook

Julie Schenkelberg@ Asya Geisberg - not enough time to see but through the window - looks promising, a wild ramble through domestic rubble.

22nd St.
Keltie Ferris at Horton - touches of Mark Bradford and Chris Martin conflate in urban cityscapes, while having nothing to do with this painter at all! Expansive, spray-painted musings on painting and being.

Larissa Bates at Monya Rowe - she has done her homework on Indian and Chinese idioms, and her works in gouache show the gyrating structures in those works - and a delicate touch with the oils as well.

Look forward, after Barcelona and Cadaques, to view the rest of Chelsea more in depth. But am gratified and visually nurtured viewing the simultaneous history and presence of abstraction, today.

November 11, 2010

October 2010