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Portraits - John Adams
John Adams, a contentious, yet outstanding member of our founding fathers was painted by John Trumbull. Trumbull also painted George Washington but that painting captures less of the person and more of...
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Portraits - Napoleon
Jaques-Louis David had only a couple of hours to capture a likeness of Napoleon, he was notoriously fidgety. This unfinished study was used for several paintings of enshrining the story of Napoleon...
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Portraits - Barack Obama
Chuck Close produced two portraits of President Barack Obama one with a "ready smile" and the other a "serious demeanor". These were produced from 2012 photographs to raise campaign funds.Chuck...
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Portraits - Louis XIV
King Louis XIV of France was documented by painters from his childhood. Unlike Napoleon whose portraits documents his actions Louis XIV's portraits use classical mythology to enshrine and celebrate...
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Max Beckmann's Departure
Forced to resign his teaching post after the Nazis came to power Beckmann moved to Berlin. Eventually landing in the United States Beckmann called the center panel “The Homecoming” “and said of it,...
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Liberty Leading the People
Commemorating the French Revolution which overthrew King Charles X Eugene Delacroix’s painting remains a potent reminder of the peoples power. Notice in the detail Liberty’s Phrygian cap. A similar hat...
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Alice Neel: Portraits
Seventy paintings are included in the Alice Neel retrospective, curated by Jeremy Lewison. The exhibition has traveled to Helsinki, The Hague, and the Vincent van Gogh Museum in Arles and will move to...
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Henry Taylor
I'm crushed to have missed the Henry Taylor show at Blum and Poe LA. He created several installation spaces for his paintings but I really just want to the see the paintings. They don't need the drama,...
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The Picabia show knocked my socks off
It turns out that until last week I knew little about Frances Picabia. The survey show at MOMA is an outstanding presentation of an extremely diverse body of work. Maybe twenty years ago we wouldn't...
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Picabia Part 2
Post 2 from the MOMA show Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction.Picabia, Untitled, Projects for the cover of Litterature, 1922-24Picabia, Untitled, Projects for the cover of...
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Picabia Part 3
Last post from the MOMA show Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction.Francis Picabia, Alleo, 1930Picabia, Espagnole et Agneau de l'Apocalypsedetail, Espagnole et Agneau de...
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Adrian Ghenie at Pace
Adrian Ghenie has new paintings at Pace. It's hard not to get absorbed in the smear of paint that he pushes across the surface and uses to invent form. The small collages as well as the infusion of...
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KAYA (Kerstin Brätsch / Debo Eilers)
The next couple of posts are from the Whitney Biennial. I was there with students for the opening night which wasn't as busy as I would have expected. That didn't dampen our enthusiasm because the...
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Tala Madani, Whitney Biennial
LA based artist Tala Madani's paintings are grotesquely funny. Her pudgy men gleefully act like middle school boys farting in technicolor and shining glowing lights out of their asses. The paintings...
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Henry Taylor, Whitney Biennal
Henry Taylor's paintings show Philando Castile's fatal shooting by a police officer last year. We see Philando in the car, dead or dying, frozen in the history of painting like David's Marat. The "4th"...
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Carrie Moyer at the Whitney Biennial
Here are some more works from the Whitney Biennial. Carrie Moyer's paintings didn't really fit the greater political mood of the show but they were certainly nice to see.Carrie Moyerdetail, Carrie...
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MFA shows - Laura Denzer at University of Florida
Laura Denzer, an MFA candidate at University of Florida, presented her thesis exhibition Body Language last week. Her work engages the history of representation of the female figure in western...
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Hope Gangloff's new work
Banal and relaxed figures drape themselves across Hope Gangloff's new paintings at Susan Inglet Gallery. Body hair and grass compete for attention, lines supplant shape and fluid transparent color...
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Kandinsky at the Guggenheim
Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim presented works from the permanent collection that aren't always on view. Some of the paintings, these Kandinsky's, in particular made me wonder why they were...
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