Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Mary Heilmann at Whitechapel Gallery, London








Up stairs, the exhibition explodes in color and sings-- in the skylit space. Everyone stood around at the opening rather ecstatic.

There is an eccentric that allows the simple to exist and completes it into another unknown future. Maybe why it is so influential at this moment.

Stanley Whitney was up at Lisson Gallery.

see here









Mary Heilmann at Whitechapel Gallery, London

Earlier paintings in the retrospective.

The first floor was maybe more innovative, then extending to a second floor where they seem to explode into an exuberance of all the forms could be.

It seems there is an underneath which is hidden-- I saw a lot of formal hints in recent visit to ethnic Branley Quai Museum in Paris.

Maybe its just paying attention to intuition.

It was beyond my already hopeful idea of the show.

She is influencing the world, of abstraction and making a relation to the figurative content as well drawing it all together.













Katz at Serpentine Gallery, London






I was not blown away by this. I was expecting to be. I read Alex saying it was his best. I felt this way also at Bilbao show last year which I was able to see.

I'm not sure what is missing as I see them as the best in contemporary figuration by far. Maybe I've seen most of these now many times. He could be approaching an over exposure. But I hope he keeps on.

He's repeating a lot and his newer unstructured brush stroke is allowing surface to become impressionistic.

They always had such a strong surface.

It was beautiful though and a good juxtaposition to Mary Heilmann at Whitechapel Gallery and Stanley Whitney also up in June 2016.

He has brought figurative painting to a stylish abstraction that allows it to coexist in our contemporary world and yet relating to the unfolding of art history as well.








Sunday, November 8, 2015

Picasso Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC







I felt I saw something of Picasso I never saw before. 


One could see Picasso living with these works and in many cases I think his paintings directly deriving from the sculpture and in turn fueling new work. The way one walks around-- and the profound difference between sculpture and painting-- this idea is present as one is reminded of painting after painting.


There is a tradition in Tintoretto and Benton of working from the reality of Sculpture to make paintings. There seems a hint of this.


Everything in Picasso is related to the outer representation of figure. We have dropped that relation.

For us the canvas square or the cube is a figure's form. I guess we are headed back around in this relation to form.

  

Picasso has a raw power from the older relation-- Matisse's cut outs become that more formal figure.







The change from modeling to plane-- as mediums change that the work is so attached to.

















Again thinking of the Stella show and the lineage I feel so important is realizing these as Art.

Really Great show in the line of the Picasso and Matisse shows before.

Interesting also to think of Matisse's paper cut outs, last years show at the MOMA.

This brings to mind the juxtaposition of the de Kooning retrospective to the Stella, the E Murray to the Marden.

This is what the Modern is so good at.