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☆ Richard Serra, Who Recast Sculpture on a Massive Scale, Dies at 85
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-26 | by ( Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The cause was pneumonia, John Silberman, his lawyer, said. Mr. Serra’s most celebrated works had some of the scale of ancient temples or sacred sites and the inscrutability of landmarks like Stonehenge. But if these massive forms had a mystical effect, it came not from religious belief but from the distortions of space created by their leaning, curving or circling walls and the frankness of their materials. This was something new in sculpture; a flowing, circling geometry that had to be moved through and around to be fully experienced. Mr. Serra said his work required a lot of “walking and looking,” or “peripatetic perception.” It was, he said, “viewer centered”: Its meanings were to be arrived at by individual exploration and reflection.

Persons: Richard Serra, John Silberman, Serra’s, Serra Locations: Orient, Long

☆ Eileen Agar: Her Jewel-Like Paintings Stretched Surrealism
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-05 | by ( Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Titled “Eileen Agar: Flowering of a Wing: Works, 1936 -1989,” this knockout is at Andrew Kreps Gallery (through Saturday). Its title, taken from one of the canvases here, signals Agar’s lifelong devotion to nature and to ambiguous meanings. Agar may be best known for her collages and their fusion of Surrealist imagination and Cubist structure and geometry. But this show homes in on the paintings, which have a contemporary air and are plenty interesting enough. Most of the paintings here involve several shades of blue, as if haunted by Matisse’s “The Blue Window” (1913) in the Museum of Modern Art.

Persons: Hilma af, Rosie Lee Tompkins, Mary Delany, Eileen Agar, Andrew Kreps, Agar, —, Matisse, Matisse’s “ Organizations: Museum of Modern Art Locations: Hilma af Klint, Sweden, United States

☆ On the Lower East Side, a Secret Space, a Mini-Biennial
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-18 | by ( Roberta Smith | More About Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A few years ago, the phrase “Dimes Square” began to flit around the art world. It had a youthful irreverence and seemed to be among those “if you know, you know” spots that only a few could point to on a map. But just before Christmas, I learned of a pop-up group show in a building known as 1 Ludlow on Dimes Square. A small starter gallery, it consists in its entirety of Tony Cox, an artist/dealer (and former pro skateboarder), and his small Canal Street loft nearby that since 2018 has served not only as his home-studio but also as his exhibition space. Cox was given the use of 1 Ludlow, a small building at the intersection of Dime Square’s main vectors — Ludlow Street, Canal Street and Division Street — in the loosely defined boundary of the Lower East Side and Chinatown.

Persons: ”, Ludlow, Tony Cox, Cox Locations: Lower, Side, Chinatown

☆ Matisse and Derain: The Audacious ‘Wild Beasts’ of Fauvism in a Radiant Show
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-09 | by ( Roberta Smith | More About Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If you ever took an art history survey in college, you may recall the blur of Fauvism. Fauvism, which lasted from about 1904 to 1908, is the first and probably the shortest of Modernism’s art movements. It is also one of the messiest, populated by a shifting cast of painters and locales. It lacks a manifesto or statement of goals, or even much stylistic coherence, and its tortuous buildup may have been longer than the trend itself. But in at least two ways the achievement of “les Fauves,” or “the wild beasts,” a term coined by the French critic Louis Vauxcelles — is foundational to modernist painting.

Persons: Picasso’s, Louis Vauxcelles —, Seurat, Cézanne, van Gogh Locations: French

☆ Flight of the Drones Lights Up Central Park
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-23 | by ( Roberta Smith | More About Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

It began with a sudden, breathtaking emergence over the trees to the south — a thousand points of blue light that expanded and dispersed into the sky. They organized into a kind of butterfly formation and set off in a northerly direction — and then the flotilla vanished, as if at the flip of a switch. Several beats later, it reappeared, to loud oohs and aahs from the crowd, as a stunning grid of white, pink and ruby luminosity. It took five years to cut through New York City red tape before the Dutch collective Drift could release its synchronized flock of 1,008 small, light-emitting drones above Central Park. But on Saturday night, there they were, making their debut over The Lake, in designated airspace, for nearly seven minutes: a murmuration rising, swooping, blinking and changing color to the delight of thousands of spectators who gathered for performances at 7, 8, and 9 p.m.

Organizations: New York City Locations: New York, Dutch

☆ Henry Taylor’s ‘B Side’ Is Full of Grade-A Paintings
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( Roberta Smith | More About Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As long as there are artists like Henry Taylor around, painting is in little danger of dying. That is because Taylor, like most great painters, has reinvented the medium for his own purposes, reshaped it to his own particular needs. Those needs seem complex, encompassing and exceptionally empathetic. They are those of an ambitious artist attempting to give as full an account as he can of Black life in America, starting with his own, and spiraling out to family, friends and fellow artists (some of whom are white) as well as Black figures from politics and culture, and urgent issues like incarceration and racial violence. In “Henry Taylor: B Side,” a thrilling survey at the Whitney Museum, you will see paintings of the artist watching his toddler daughter feed herself; Barack and Michelle Obama sitting cozy on a couch; Philando Castile dying in his car after being shot by a Minneapolis policeman; a self-portrait based on a 16th-century portrait of King Henry V in profile wearing royal regalia; and the great Chuck Berry performing for a group of slightly dazed-looking white teenagers.

Persons: Henry Taylor, Taylor, “ Henry Taylor, Michelle Obama, Castile, King Henry V, Chuck Berry Organizations: Whitney Museum Locations: America, Minneapolis

☆ Nairy Baghramian: Rubble Rouser Outside the Met
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-14 | by ( Roberta Smith | More About Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

That is, the four domed niches embedded in the neo-Classical facade of the Met’s main entrance on Fifth Avenue. Each niche frames a plinth and is in turn framed by a pair of robust columns two stories high. The three artists chosen thus far — Wangechi Mutu, Carol Bove and Hew Locke — have done well enough, but it may be best to lower expectations. The Met’s facade is an oppressive windmill to tilt at. All use the past to enliven the sculptural present, erase boundaries between styles and cultures and employ new materials and techniques.

Persons: Mutu, Carol Bove, Hew Locke —, Huma Bhabha, Leilah Organizations: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Center Locations: New York, Iranian, Berlin, Europe, Dallas

☆ Shows That Give Off Pleasure, and a Bit of Body Heat
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-02 | by ( Roberta Smith | More About Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Some of that reshaping should also be evident in “Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North,” at the American Folk Art Museum (Nov. 15-March 24, 2024). This landmark effort will explore Black visual culture in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states from 1780 to 1850 in a presentation of around 125 portrait and landscape paintings, photographs, prints, needlework and stoneware jars, along with a 300-page catalog. Two of the New York’s most cherished alternative spaces, both founded in 1972, are staging solo surveys of pioneering artists of different generations and distinctly dissimilar sensibilities. Tiravanija (born in 1961) threw down the gauntlet in the 1990s with SoHo gallery exhibitions in which he made and served pad Thai (1990, at Paula Allen) and Thai vegetable curry (1992, at 303 Gallery). Much followed in several different mediums, from T-shirts proclaiming “Fear Eats the Soul,” after Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 film, to chrome sculptures of furniture, with the best operating at the intersection of collective pleasure and political consciousness.

Persons: “ Rirkrit, Paula Allen, ”, Werner Fassbinder’s Organizations: American Folk Art Museum Locations: American, ”, New England, SoHo

☆ In the Art of Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Vietnam’s Nightmares Live On
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-10 | by ( Roberta Smith | More About Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

One of the wisest, most beautiful and unsettling exhibitions in New York this summer is “Tuan Andrew Nguyen: Radiant Remembrance” at the New Museum, a show about coming to terms with the intergenerational trauma of war. Nguyen works in video and also makes art objects pertaining to them. Nguyen was born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1976, and came to the United States with his family three years later. The artist’s first major exhibition in an American museum, “Radiant Remembrance,” has been organized by Vivian Crockett, a curator at the museum, and Ian Wallace, a curatorial assistant. Its video installations focus on people who live in the shadow of the two long wars for Vietnamese independence.

Persons: “ Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Nguyen, ”, Vivian Crockett, Ian Wallace Organizations: New Museum Locations: New York, Saigon, Vietnam, United States, Oklahoma , Texas, Southern California, Ho Chi Minh City

☆ They Hold Weeds, and an Artist’s Sublime Vision
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-06 | by ( Roberta Smith | More About Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The David Kordansky Gallery has mounted a wonderful wormhole of an exhibition, “Doyle Lane: Weed Pots.” Its point of access is the small unassuming “weed pot,” a frequent accent in modern California interiors starting in the late 1950s. From this seemingly modest beginning, Lane (1923-2002), who was African American, created a dazzling universe of color, shape, texture and proportion. He also made ceramic tile, pendant jewelry, paintings and murals, but the “weed pot" is his signature. Kordansky’s generous display of 100 pots is Lane’s first solo show in New York. Lane didn’t invent the “weed pot,” but as this exhibition proves, he perfected it.

Persons: David Kordansky, “ Doyle, Lane Organizations: African Locations: California, African American, New York, El Sereno, East Los Angeles, Peru, China

☆ The Great Bob Thompson, in Two Parts
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-15 | by ( Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But Thompson never doubted his talent and had a voracious appetite for culture in many forms: He consorted with New York’s Beat poets and its free jazz musicians as well as a broad range of artists. His career lasted barely eight years, but he left behind several hundred paintings, drawings and oil studies — a fabulous horde whose magnitude is still not well known. Some works are fairly true to the originals in their composition; elsewhere Thompson took liberties of all kinds. Frequent additions include large silhouettes of monstrous birds that protect, threaten or attack — either physically or spiritually. Sometimes the human figures grasp the birds by their feet, holding them aloft, like trophies or weapons.

Persons: Bob Thompson, Thompson, Giotto, Manet Organizations: York’s Locations: Louisville, Ky, Rome

Almost any of the 16 Giorgio de Chirico paintings in “Horses: The Death of a Rider” could sustain an exhibition by itself. A couple from the late 1920s are less polished, and you could reasonably call “Two Horses on a Seashore,” 1970, a little glib. As the exhibition title suggests, every canvas also holds one or more horses, often backed by one of the mysterious landscapes he’s known for. The majestic white steed in the title piece, “Death of a Rider,” rears up on a twilit beach, letting its rider tumble off like Icarus behind it. In the distance stands a city on a hill; nearby, two voyagers or gods watch from a rowboat.

Persons: Giorgio de Chirico, de Chirico, It’s, Chirico, ”, HEINRICH

☆ Iiu Susiraja: She Has Issues? No, You Have Issues
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-31 | by ( Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The strange, discomfiting photographs and videos of the Finnish artist Iiu Susiraja push so many buttons that her provocative exhibition at MoMA PS1 should have been staged in an elevator — to paraphrase the theater critic Peter Marks. Ambiguously titled “Iiu Susiraja: A Style Called a Dead Fish,” the show features 49 photographs and 13 short videos dating from 2008 to 2022. Like most artists whose work matters, Susiraja has no shame. Born in 1975 in Turku, Finland, where she still lives, Susiraja (pronounced ee-you susi-rah-yah) started out as a textile designer. Easy resolution of their meanings is impossible, which creates a rich internal narrative in the viewer, often starting with one’s feelings about one’s own body.

Persons: Iiu, Peter Marks, Susiraja Organizations: MoMA Locations: Turku, Finland

☆ At Christie’s ‘21st Century’ Auction, the Sound of Records Breaking for Women
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Seven artists achieved new sales benchmarks at Christie’s Contemporary Art sale in New York on Monday night, including Simone Leigh, a star of the 2022 Venice Biennale, and Robin F. Williams, a figurative painter still in her 30s. Lively bidding from inside the sale room at Christie’s helped the auction house sell nearly $99 million worth of paintings and sculptures, with buyer’s fees. Interest in female figurative painters who are not necessarily household names is rising for artists like Danielle McKinney, Rebecca Ackroyd and Williams. in 2017, Roberta Smith wrote that she was “extravagantly in-your-face regarding execution, style, image and social thrust. Lower estimates helped propel prices.

☆ For Bispo do Rosario, Art Could Only Be a Divine Calling
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Arthur Bispo do Rosario, a former Marine Corps signalman, boxer, tram cleaner and domestic worker in Rio de Janeiro, had no interest in defining his extensive activities as art. In 1964, he landed back at Juliano Moreira where he remained until his death in 1989 at age 80, working compulsively to prepare for Judgment Day. Bispo and his work gradually became known in Brazil, earning attention from art critics, curators and documentary filmmakers in the 1980s. Wider fame began when he was one of two artists whose work represented Brazil at the 1995 Venice Biennale (the other was Nuno Ramos). Bispo’s efforts were then seen in important surveys like the 2013 Venice Biennale, and a 2003 retrospective in Paris.

☆ Georgia O’Keeffe, ‘Modernized’ by MoMA
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the spring of 1946 the Museum of Modern Art mounted its first solo exhibition of a female artist: a retrospective devoted to the work of the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe’s success owed much to Stieglitz’s promotion, especially his eroticized reading of her paintings of landscapes and semiabstract flowers as expressions of female sexuality. By 1929, O’Keeffe was quite well-off, thanks to Stieglitz’s efforts. Yet for nearly 80 years after O’Keeffe’s MoMA retrospective, the museum didn’t pay her much attention. Since 1946 its O’Keeffe holdings has risen lackadaisically to 13 works, including five from the artist’s foundation and bequest in the mid-90s.

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