Jennifer Samet

Interview

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.

Art

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.

Interview

Beer with a Painter: Peter Acheson

Acheson does not care about trading niceties or being ingratiating. He would rather propose and debate philosophical ideas.

Interview

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.

Art

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.

Interview

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.

Interview

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.

Interview

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.

Interview

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.

Art

Nazis, New York, and Max Beckmann

What New York gave Beckmann was not superficial subject matter, but inspiration in the form of energy.

Interview

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.

Art

“Vulnerability Could Be the New Stoic”: Paintings by Allison Schulnik

In Allison Schulnik’s hands, paint becomes matter and subject becomes object. Her paintings are about a continual state of flux: morphing, dripping, and melting.