Archives: Contemporary
Anna Shukeylo on Barbara Laube: For Love of Painting and Rebirth
A rich raspberry and cream sorbet-colored brushstroke envelops the two-inch surface.
Lara Allen on Anselm Kiefer’s ‘Die Ordnung der Engel’
It once hung in the Chicago Art Institute but now is a blurry electrical field full of crackles and pops behind my eyes.
MaryKate Maher on Marlene Dumas and Maja Ruznic
It’s red like memory is red or how, when you close your eyes because the sun is too bright, your eyelids create that deep red shadow.
Virginia Wagner on Guadalupe Maravilla: Hearing from the Inside Out
Some invite you to climb onto their backs like beasts in ancient stories. Some invite you to kneel at their altar of corals and hanging wax hides.
Barry Nemett on a Random Trinity
A trio of disparate inspirations that helped me wait out the quarantine as I sheltered in place.
Elizabeth Johnson on Celia Reisman
Her aloof houses are challenging, seem to have their backs turned to me, the viewer, and transform me into an interloper.
Lincoln Perry on Frank Auerbach and Marino Marini
This wasn’t a decapitated head, but a self-sufficient object, as autonomous as a meteor.
Kyle Staver on Janice Nowinski
The staccato of the surface gives me the mph of the wind on the beach that day.
Kyle Hackett on Du Bois’ Double Consciousness and the Freedom in Portraiture
I have spent about a decade studying W.E.B Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness: the sense of looking at one’s self through the lens of others.
Barbara Friedman on Merging and the “Extreme Middle”
He makes the “I” out to be “a resting zone … a meeting place.”
Sean McDonough on Steve DiBenedetto
The piece is an exquisite consciousness enhancer.
Raoul Middleman on Lockdown with Velazquez and Art as Play
Raoul Middleman, Recent sketch The Pandemic has shut down museums and for the time being we've lost that kind of first hand visceral experience we get looking at art. I already miss the oomph and goop of oil paint escaping from the pores of the canvas: brushed,...