The forms in Emily Cheng’s paintings are suggestive of the most primary elements: the landscape, the body, and religious iconography.
Author Archives: Jennifer Samet
Jennifer Samet, Ph.D. is a New York-based art historian, curator, and writer. She completed her dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center on Painterly Representation in New York: 1945-1975. She has lectured at universities across the country on the subject of “The Role of Empathy in Art.” She curated major historical exhibitions on Jane Street Group, the history of the New York Studio School, and “Reconfiguring the New York School.” She is particularly interested in the voice of the artist, and has published numerous interviews with painters. (@jensamet)
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Beer with a Painter: Paul Wackers
The cozy studio environment and the casual, gonzo aesthetic of the ceramic objects, not to mention Wackers’s personality, may bely how technically precise and complexly orchestrated his paintings are.
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Mercedes Matter’s Awful, Wonderful Itch
Matter was a believer in the possibility of channeling a total, magical presence – even if it meant destroying a work or never completing it.
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Beer with a Painter: Peter Acheson
Acheson does not care about trading niceties or being ingratiating. He would rather propose and debate philosophical ideas.
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Beer with a Painter: Albert Oehlen
The long-reigning bad boy of German painting has consistently poked and prodded at whatever preciousness we associate with the medium.
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Painting on Message at the 2017 Whitney Biennial
This year, the Whitney Biennial includes plenty of painting. And — for the most part — the painting is on message. It’s eccentric figuration with political content.
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Beer with a Painter: Jennifer Coates
Coates’s recent work depicts food: spaghetti and meatballs, sprinkle cookies, and s’mores. Her work is about matter and viscosity, but it is also rooted in grid-like structures, repetitive mark-making, and very sophisticated paint handling.
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Beer with a Painter: Craig Stockwell
Painters who lived and exhibited in New England, like Jake Berthot and Porforio DiDonna, are highly represented. They, like Stockwell, have straddled the line between tough material abstraction, nature, and the figure.
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Beer with a Painter: Tal R
Tal R talks about “watching” paintings — not just looking at them. It might be a language tic, but it also feels specific.
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Beer with a Painter: Alex Katz
“It’s been my most productive summer ever,” Alex Katz declares. “The real work is here, though,” he tells me, unrolling pounce paper to show me his preparatory drawings. “I want to go even bigger,” he says.
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Nazis, New York, and Max Beckmann
What New York gave Beckmann was not superficial subject matter, but inspiration in the form of energy.
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Beer with a Painter: Billy Al Bengston
“Practically everything I do takes ten years for people to get,” Billy Al Bengston says — perhaps a reason why several of his 1950s and ‘60s exhibitions have recently been re-staged.