All of Rackstraw Downes’s work derives from the simple, everyday act of observing your surroundings.
Betty Cunningham Gallery
Posted inArt
Painter Rackstraw Downes’s Methodical Vision to Extract Poetry from the Mundane
As many artists develop visual ideas through fits of revision and reworking, the consistency in the evolution of paintings in Rackstraw Downes’s current exhibition is remarkable.
Posted inArt
Summer Comes to a Close in Paintings of a Modern Arcadia
The intrepid painter Graham Nickson has explored a time-honored theme, the ideal world of Arcadia, making images that are, at once, entirely about the present and suggestive of traditional concepts of a pastoral, terrestrial paradise.
Posted inArt
The Emotional Pull of Metal, Paper, and Light
The sculptor’s drawings and maquettes reflect his efforts to abstract the formal qualities of light, space, and time.
Posted inArt
The Heavy Light of Christopher Wilmarth’s Drawings and Sculptures
For Wilmarth, light and life were inextricably linked — a connection that shone in his art of steel, glass, and paper.
Posted inArt
Is The Art Show a Senior Citizen’s Swinger’s Club Past its Prime?
The Art Show has been hosted by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) for the last 23 years, reigning supreme as the longest running national art fair. The ADAA consists of 175 galleries but only seventy exhibitors enrolled this year, excluding stunners like Andrea Rosen, Betty Cunningham, PPOW and Gavin Brown. A large majority of the participants are located uptown between 50th Street and 90th Street. The generalized content (“cutting-edge, 21st century works” and “museum quality pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries”) and my fears of dated academia prepped me for the deflated viewing that was The Art Show. The ADAA’s Executive Director spoke to the “calm and intimate atmosphere” of The Art Show. Although the Park Avenue Armory’s soaring “balloon shed” construction is partially responsible, the cavalcade of elderly patrons weren’t exactly rambunctious. The air-kisses exchanged between crotchety senior citizens summoned a swinger’s club way past its prime.
