Art
On August 6, The Painting Center closed its summer show devoted to gray, Grey Matter. I guess it shouldn't be any surprise that the show wasn't widely reviewed as a summer blockbuster. It didn't have nearly enough color for that.
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Cave paintings are so in right now! From Werner Herzog's documentary to the recent discovery of new cave paintings in Spain, primitive art is totally in fashion. These newly uncovered 25,000 year-old paintings are thin line drawings of horses and human hands, rendered in a deep red.
Art
Over the 24 hours of May 1, 2011, artist Julie Torres transformed our Williamsburg office into a project called “Open 24 Hours,” with a plan to paint 100 distinct paintings in that limited period of time. Julie's first 12 hours was all painting, finishing one 9 by 12 inch work on paper, putting it u
Art
Walking through the Museum of Modern Art's modern galleries the other day, I happened upon a small painting that's about as powerful a work as any I've ever seen in the museum, and maybe my favorite object in the collection. Surprisingly, this mini work is actually a Picasso, and even at 6 1/4 by 4
Art
Serendipity often plays a role in gallery going. Occasionally you come across two shows at unrelated galleries that suggest a connection that couldn't possibly have been planned. You could argue such occurences have the makings of a zeitgeist, but sometimes they are simply coincidences that reveal c
Art
Despite Wednesday night’s snow storm, tough cookies crowded the Austrian Cultural Forum to near capacity for Alpine Desire’s opening reception. The wine was gone by 7pm but people stayed. Examining mountain imagery in contemporary art, as well as a few earlier modernist and romanticist paintings, th
Art
I'm kicking myself for not getting to painter Margrit Lewczuk's vibrant show in the heart of Williamsburg sooner. I stepped into the fantastic show on its second to last day. Located on a stretch of Metropolitan that is quickly being transformed by new developments, the show is in a low-rise warehou
Art
When Anselm Kiefer took the stage at 92nd Street Y last night, it wasn't as the artistic-political bad boy the artist became famous as in the 60s and 70s, nor was it the epic mythologist of the 80s and 90s. Now, Kiefer cuts a figure of mischievous respect, a patrician of the contemporary art world w
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Seems like a simple idea, but writer, blogger, academic and artist Sharon Butler has put it into action. She tells us about her latest online project, “Suddenly it struck me: We need a TV channel about painting — so I decided to create one for Two Coats of Paint [http://vimeo.com/channels/twocoats#1
Art
Jesse Chapman’s painting of the struggle to stick a contact into an eye, "The Lens" (2009), strikes me as an apt allegory for recent painting. It is one of the gems from Exit Art’s shinning survey of contemporary painting, NEW MIRRORS: Painting in a Transparent World, that is set to close this weeke