It isn’t often one comes across fresco paintings in art galleries, the last time I remember seeing a sizable number was the “Rooms” section of the Francesco Clemente retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1999.
Richard Tuttle
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Points of Contact: Small Works, Giant Steps
The Age of Small Things, a group show organized by the painter Chuck Webster, fills the ground floor of the Lower East Side’s Dodge Gallery, where the singular touch of the artist-curator has recast a parade of diminutive objects into an unpredictable unfolding of processes and ideas.
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Less Is More at the Armory Show Modern
Let’s face it: navigating Armory Week and all its various satellites is a bitch. With so much art to see and endless booths to maneuver, it’s all very daunting. But we love it. Well, at least I love it.
Spontaneity and taxis are the two things I rely on the most. Spontaneity, because one should always open to possibilities, no matter what the schedule might dictate. Taxis, because who in their right mind wants to walk the five long-ass blocks to Pier 92, where the Armory Show’s Modern section was housed, from the subway (with a headwind off the Hudson River that somehow affects travel in both directions)?
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A West Coast Press Turns 50
SAN FRANCISCO — The main focus of the de Young Museum, located in Golden Gate Park and given a big redesign by architects Herzog and De Meuron in 2005, is American art past and present, encompassing ancient art of all the Americas as well as art of the United States from the colonial era up to today. There are several temporary exhibitions running at the moment that are worth going to see if you’re visiting the Bay Area. One of them, the William S. Paley collection, is sort of self-evidently marvelous, with its classic examples of Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, Degas, and other titans of the School of Paris. The other, Crown Point Press at 50, shows work that is less well known but deserves to be equally celebrated.
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Three Takes on Minimalism from Robert Irwin, Mark Flood, and Richard Tuttle
On view in Chelsea right now are three gallery shows that offer drastically different takes contemporary takes on minimalism. Two are from classic minimalist artists: Robert Irwin and Richard Tuttle have pioneered the movement since its first flowering in the 1970s. The third artist is kind of a gutter punk, but the crusty, abject work of Mark Flood might be the most engaging riff on minimalism’s fading grandeur.
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20th C Moderne at the Armory
If the contemporary side of the Armory is flashier with its glamor and energy, this is the tried and true historical wing that presents a more reserved modernist face but not one without a lot of seduction. Here are some of my picks for what to see if you visit.
