Currently on view in the exhibition Jasper Johns: Sculptures and Related Paintings 1957–1970 at Craig F. Starr is “Book” (1957), a work I suspect many people either don’t know about or are not likely to have seen, even in reproduction.
John Yau
John Yau has published books of poetry, fiction, and criticism. His latest poetry publications include a book of poems, Further Adventures in Monochrome (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), and the chapbook, Egyptian Sonnets (Rain Taxi, 2012). His most recent monographs are Catherine Murphy (Rizzoli, 2016), the first book on the artist, and Richard Artschwager: Into the Desert (Black Dog Publishing, 2015). He has also written monographs on A. R. Penck, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol. In 1999, he started Black Square Editions, a small press devoted to poetry, fiction, translation, and criticism. He was the Arts Editor for the Brooklyn Rail (2007–2011) before he began writing regularly for Hyperallergic. He is a Professor of Critical Studies at Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University).
Posted inArt
Gladys Nilsson’s Portraits of Everywoman
There is something wonderfully incongruous and deeply disquieting about Gladys Nilsson’s art, which is primarily done in the medium of watercolor.
Posted inArt
Some Thoughts About Richard Serra and Martin Puryear (Part 2: Puryear)
Like Serra, Puryear went to Yale’s famed M.F.A. program (1969-71), but he attended five years after Serra had graduated. In fact, Serra and Robert Morris were visiting artists while he was a student there.
Posted inArt
Some Thoughts About Richard Serra and Martin Puryear (Part 1: Serra)
It is easy to forget that Richard Serra (b.1939) and Martin Puryear (b.1941) were born only two years apart. The different relationships that they developed toward craft and materials makes it all too easy to overlook that they are nearly contemporaries.
Posted inPoetry
Why I Am a Member of the Lee Harwood Fan Club
Mark Ford’s blurb on the back of Lee Harwood’s most recent book of poetry, The Orchid Boat (London, Enitharmon, 2014), inspired me to look up the original review from which it was quoted.
Posted inArt
Catherine Murphy Looks Ahead
Catherine Murphy calls herself “an observational painter,” but that modest self-characterization tells only part of what she has been up to for the past twenty years.
Posted inPoetry
The Beauty of Christopher Middleton’s Prose
A few years ago, in an essay called “Why I am a Member of the Christopher Middleton Fan Club,” I stated the need for “a selected prose that brings together all the different kinds of writing he has done.” Loose Cannons: Selected Prose, which includes an insightful foreword by one of Middleton’s most vocal and articulate champions, August Kleinzahler, is pretty close to the book I had in mind.
Posted inArt
Against Despotic Forms of Perfection: Jane Corrigan’s New Paintings
The focus of Jane Corrigan’s first solo show at Kerry Schuss is young female athletes who, by virtue of their age – they are adolescents – are likely to be undergoing biological changes as well.
Posted inArt
What the Heck Is Going On in Angela Dufresne’s New Paintings?
In the foreground of the painting, “Dwarf, Goat, Woman, Man and Head” (2014), a young woman in a striped red and blue bikini is standing in a forest, where it has recently snowed, multitasking. She cradles a decapitated head in the crook of her left arm, while, with her right hand, she is about to push down on the head of a naked dwarf with an erection standing beside her.
Posted inArt
Harriet Korman’s Chromatic and Linear Improvisations
The key to Harriet Korman’s work is drawing. However, until this exhibition, Harriet Korman: Line or Edge, Line or Color, New Paintings and Drawings, at Lennon, Weinberg she has tended to show only a few drawings at a time.
Posted inArt
James Bishop’s Incommodious Beauty
I have been waiting to see a large selection of James Bishop’s paintings since the mid-1970s, ever since reading John Ashbery’s appraisal in a secondhand copy of Art News Annual 1966.
Posted inArt
John Yau and Justine Kurland Discuss the Relationship of Photography, Poetry, and Narrative
The following email exchange with the photographer Justine Kurland focuses on her exhibition, Sincere Auto Care, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, which is accompanied by a self-published book with the same title.
