Archives: Modern
Eric Fischl on Max Beckmann’s Departure
The woman and man are eternally bound in a psychopathologically perverse interpretation of yin and yang.
Rachel Youens on Horace Pippin
I was struck by Pippin’s preference for angular, even knife-like, shapes and harsh environmental contrasts
Brian Alfred on Jo Baer
Its minimal linear elements raced around the side of the canvas and played with my expectations of where paint would normally be.
Raoul Middleman on Paul Cezanne
There is almost a metaphysical postponement of finish throughout these portraits, a hesitation as if waiting for an informant of the future to complete them.
Carol Diamond on Al Held
Each hue resonates as cool or warm, deep or shallow, allowing the eye and the sensibility to soak in energy, light and form as pure color sensation.
David Humphrey on William John Whittemore
I like thinking, though, that the painting makes a complete body out of dispersed heterogeneous parts, a complicated body constrained and subdivided by guardrails, pedestals, canvas edges, bowler hats and neckties.
Johanna Robinson on Maria Lassnig
… she only painted the parts of her body that she could physically feel in the moment…
Julie Heffernan on Pierre Bonnard: Part II
Bonnard is no easy reach. The challenge he sets for all narrative painters is formidable: how to use both understatement and wild speculation to tell a bold story well…
Julie Heffernan on Pierre Bonnard: Part I
Bonnard’s was a revolution in subject matter, turning a dining room table into a phantasmagoric carnival and a woman at her toilette into a primal spectacle…
John Goodrich on Henri Matisse
While I admire Picasso’s drawing, prints and sculpture, Matisse still represents for me the fullest mixture, in the modern age, of discrimination and passion.
Barry Nemett: Beholding Bonnard on a Vaulted Altar
Over and over again, the sky changed: until it was brand new. Or I was.
Gary Stephan on Paul Cezanne
Picasso said of Cezanne: “He is the father of us all.” In this essay I want to take the “us” expansively.