The first painting I saw in 2016 was “Cockman Always Rises Orange” (2015): we can’t say we weren’t warned.
Rachel Beach
Posted inArt
The Work of Hands: Rachel Beach’s ‘Touchstone’
By foregrounding the schism between form and content, Rachel Beach is demonstrating the agitated unity of her handmade domain.
Posted inArt
Going Meta: Art after the Death of Art
Terminology is slippery, and using it as the premise for an exhibition can be slipperier still. But the concept underlying Metamodern, a group show at Denny Gallery on the Lower East Side, actually holds the potential to enrich an already strong array of works with a few additional, if speculative, layers of meaning.
Posted inNews
New York’s Art World Assessing Impact of Hurricane Sandy [UPDATE 5]
Last night’s major storm, which is currently being called post-tropical cyclone Sandy, delivered a wallop to New York, flooding neighborhoods across the region and shutting off power to large swathes of the metro area, including most of lower Manhattan and huge sections of New Jersey. The storm has caused extensive tree damage to the Tri-state area but it’s worth noting that many art neighborhoods have also been impacted by flooding.
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How to Be a Lady Painter
I think it’s funny that Patricia Albers’s recent and authoritative biography on Joan Mitchell was given the subtitle “Lady Painter.” It’s my only guess that Mitchell’s lifestyle and her painting were so out of character for the time that the term becomes ironic. The artist was known for her camaraderie with Cedar Tavern macho dudes like de Kooning and Pollock, her hangout sessions with beatnik poets, her ability to party, and her tendency to drink and sleep around with bravado. At the time these activities and attitudes were thought to be reserved for men. Mitchell gradually carved out a space for her paintings to be given the same treatment.
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Yo, Brooklyn Night Bazaar Starts Thurs Dec 15
We’re very excited to be part of the Brooklyn Night Bazaar that starts tomorrow night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and continues until Saturday (5pm to midnight). The large-scale night market in a 40,000 sq ft warehouse on Kent Avenue, between N5th and N6th Streets, will include over a hundred art, food, craft, merchandise and artisanal vendors of all kinds. The venue will also host concerts in a very trippy interior designed by hot Euro-designers JDS/Julien de Smeldt Architects. And Hyperallergic will be there!
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Sculpture Today: A Discussion with Joy Curtis & Rachel Beach
On Wednesday, I wrote about two painting shows (Kristine Moran & Gianna Commito) that I felt shared an aesthetic connection. Today, I wanted to draw your attention to two sculpture shows on Ludlow Street by two artists who I’ve been following for years, Joy Curtis and Rachel Beach. Both artists make sculpture and their shows made me wonder what it must be like to be a sculptor today. I decided to interview them together via email in order to understand their work through their words. The following conversation took place this week.
Posted inArt
Sculpture on the Edge, Socrates Park
Even on a cloudy day, it’s beautiful to get an opportunity to look across the East River at Manhattan from Astoria, especially when the view remains unobstructed by buildings, warehouses, elevated tracks, and all that other urban detritus. Socrates Sculpture Park provides an extraordinary view that, in itself, is worth the trip, but also acts as a tremendous background to the art on display in the waterfront park.
While I walked through the park, taking pictures and studying the pieces, plenty of people used the space outside of looking at art. Some visitors used the park to play with their dogs, others to do aerobics, groups of kids came after school to avoid going home, and not one, but two people used the space to have long cell phone conversations redefining collapsing relationships.
