MAY 2008        last updated May 7                             subscribe      review panel     archives


REVIEW PANEL - THIS FRIDAY, May 9: R.C. Baker, Carly Berwick, and Peter Plagens join David Cohen to review the Whitney Biennial,

the online magazine of art and ideas 

Publisher & Editor David Cohen
Associate Publisher Laurie Frick Associate Editor Eric Gelber
Contributing Editors Reuben Baron, Joan Boykoff Baron, Joe Fyfe, Deborah Garwood, John Goodrich
Contributing Writer (auction reports) Brian Appel Contributing Writer (Internet art) Amber Ladd
Editorial Assistants Gabbe Grodin, Daina Higgins

see articles for image credits; some cover images are details

	Jake Berthot, Lois Dodd
posted 5/2//2008 DAVID COHEN compares Jake Berthot at Betty Cuningham and Lois Dodd at Alexandre

 

posted 5/7//2008 CATHY NAN QUINLAN on Shape Shifters at Sideshow
	Information in the computer age is often described as accruing in bits and several painters in the show seem to use separate brushstrokes as metaphors for bytes

posted 5/3//2008 DREW LOWENSTEIN on Norman Bluhm at James Graham & Sons
	Squirmy, steadfast, and biologic in their surging rhythmic climax,  Bluhm's forms bulge and push up against the edges of his support, creating an explosive pressure. His use of bilateral symmetry heightens this effect.

posted 4/16//2008 DAVID COHEN on Thomas Nozkowski at PaceWildenstein
	Even an astute connoisseur would be hard pressed to locate specific Nozkowskian tropes. There are some recurring motifs, but internal scale, texture, and mood present themselves in different coordinates. This is the more remarkable because Mr. Nozkowski’s modus operandi is so prescribed in terms of scale, medium, taste, and authentic touch.

posted 4/11//2008 DAVID COHEN on James Siena at PaceWildenstein
	The experience in this richly diverse exhibition is not of transition so much as consolidation: the new works, whether big loopy abstractions in fat confident brushstrokes or weirdo figuration, seem legitimate outgrowths of the precious, tight, miniaturist Siena of old.

posted 4/11//2008 BECKY BROWN on Franz West at Gagosian
	Paßstück are like toys, and the people handling them like overgrown children.  West replaces violence on bodies with bodies at play, but playing is unnatural and uncomfortable for modern adults: this is an art gallery, not a sandbox, and Paßstück can be awkward, even hostile, to the human form.

posted 4/9//2008 KAREN BOOKATZ on "Recycled" exhibitions of Andy Warhol and Dan Flavin
	To revisit older exhibitions and try and gage their aftershocks years later is a worthy exercise, speaking to social/political change as well as the progression of artistic styles.

posted 3/30//2008 David Cohen on Alexander Ross at Mariane Boesky and at David Nolan
	His imagery is concerned with strange growth patterns, with odd cellular structures metastasizing, imparting an ominous sense of alien substances spreading like the plague. Above all, though, it is his aesthetic impact that feels diseaselike. His giddy surfaces are icky, sickly, and yet addictive.

posted 4/9//2008 STEPHANIE BUHMANN on Color Chart at the Museum of Modern Art
	Color in general, as well as the emotional and highly individual effects it has on us, is mysterious and personal, no matter how neutrally it is applied. Though the way color was derived in many of the artworks on display was either scientific or arbitrary, the works nevertheless reach the audience on an emotional level that lies beyond anyone’s control.

posted 4/7//2008 GREG LINDQUIST on Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner
	Marcel Dzama's drawings evoke the ethos of an adult dreamscape while recalling a style of childrenís picture book.

posted 4/9//2008 DAVID COHEN on Jasper Johns's Drawings at Matthew Marks
	Regardless of the medium he works in, Johns's busy, agile yet weirdly reticent hand presents an oxymoronic mix of attributes, being at once tentative and emphatic

posted 4/7//2008 CATHY NAN QUINLAN on Poussin and Nature at the Met
	After spending time with the nymphs, and then trying to figure out what constitutes a Poussin drawing, one emerges into the later phase of the paintings and finds oneself wondering, “Is this all the same painter?”

posted 3/1//2008 DAVID OLIVANT on Takashi Murakami at the Geffen (now at the Brooklyn Museum)
	Murakami does not have to be self-conscious about his eclecticism and can quite happily superimpose characters cloned from Mickey Mouse, with the iconography of Buddhism, the stylistic devices of anime and the aesthetics of Muromachi screen painting. The burning question is what all of this adds up to apart from an exercise in fusion.

posted 3/30//2008 JOHN GOODRICH on Courbet at the Met
	As a painter, Courbet ravishes a nude in the same manner as he would a tree or a trout: for the visual evidence of its expressive physicality.

In the March 2008 issue:


Greg Lindquist

JOHN GOODRICH on Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham and Greg Lindquist at Elizabeth Harris
DAVID CARRIER on Ruth Root at Andrew Kreps
JONATHAN GOODMAN on Fay Ku at Kips
DAVID COHEN on Jeff Wall at Marian Goodman
ERIC GELBER on Sean McCarthy at Fredericks & Freiser
MORGAN TAYLOR on Stanley Lewis at the Bowery
DAVID COHEN on Luc Tuymans at David Zwirner
JONATHAN GOODMAN on Bingyi Huang at Max Protetch
DAVID COHEN on Juan Uslé at Cheim & Read, Silvia Bächli at Peter Freeman
ERIC GELBER on Diana Puntar at Oliver Kamm/5BE
DAVID CARRIER on Successive Approximation at Perry Rubenstein

In the February 2008 issue:
DAVID COHEN on Katy Grannan at Salon 94 Freeman and Greenberg Van Doren and Lisa Bertucci at Perry Rubinstein
GREG LINDQUIST on Lisa Robinson at Klompching
FAY KU on Shinique Smith at Moti Hasson
DAVID COHEN on Alan Saret at the Drawing Center, Richard Pousette-Dart at Knoedler

In the January 2008 issue:
JOE FYFE on Ariane Lopez-Huici at the New York Studio School
GREG LINDQUIST in Conversation with Will Cotton in his Studio
DAVID COHEN on Alberto Burri at Mitchell-Innes & Nash

In the December 2007 issue:
DAVID COHEN on Thomas Demand at 303, Merlin James at Sikkema Jenkins
REUBEN BARON & JOAN BOYKOFF BARON on The Panza Collection at the Albright Knox
JOE FYFE on Damien Hirst's Shark at the Metropolitan Museum
DAVID COHEN on Karen Yasinsky at Mireille Mosler, Alex McQuilkin at Marvelli, Isaac Julien at Metro Pictures
JOE FYFE on Alex McQuilkin at Marvelli
SANDRA SIDER on Mariana Cook at Deborah Bell Photographs
DAVID CARRIER on Painting Then for Now, Fragments of Tiepolo at the Ca'Dolfin at David Krut Projects
SANDRA SIDER on Pattern and Decoration at the Hudson River Museum
DREW LOWENSTEIN on The Age of Rembrandt at the Metropolitan Museum
JOHN ZINSSER'S THE MIAMI DIARIES

BOOK REVIEW
posted 5/4/2008
DAVID CARRIER on Art Power by Boris Groys

Groys discusses fundamental topics: the nature of the art market; the connection between museums and contemporary art; the role of curators; the relation of film to art; the place of video in the museum; the art critic’s position; art and terrorism; Hitler’s art theory; socialist realist art; the goals of cultural studies; the effects of privatization in Russia; and the roles of minorities in Europe.

LISTEN TO THE
APRIL 2008 REVIEW PANEL


Dore Ashton, Joshua Mack and Stephen Maine join David Cohen to review JULIAN HATTON at Elizabeth Harris, BYRON KIM at Max Protetch, ALEXANDER ROSS at Marianne Boesky and at David Nolan, and TABAIMO at James Cohan

posted 4/7//2008
Tribute to the late art historian
Michael Podro by DAVID CARRIER

Frank Auerbach

Paintings, Michael Podro wrote, “address us, and they do so in part through creating uncertainty.” The spectator, he explained in a typical commentary, is drawn into Rembrandt’s group portraits because they “surround the present objects with a sense of atmosphere, so that the spaces between objects are felt as part of a homogenous optical effect,” making us  “aware of an interplay between those objects and our own mental life.” Few writers employ words economically to such good effect as he consistently did.

LISTEN TO THE
MARCH 2008 REVIEW PANEL

Svetlana Alpers, Phong Bui and Linda Nochlin join David Cohen to review Jeff Wall, Michal Rovner, Catherine Sullivan, Dan Walsh and Silvia Bächli

BOOK REVIEW
posted 3/13/2008
MERLIN JAMES on Francis Picabia

A welcome notion of George Baker's much fêted new book on Picabia, Merlin James discovers, is that Picabia was less the nihilistic anti-artist than he is often seen to be, that he found, through and beyond Dada's rupturing and refusal of meaning, a new space for affirmation and signification, indeed for joy and love.

LISTEN TO THE
FEBRUARY 2008 REVIEW PANEL

Chris Martin

James Gardner, Barry Schwabsky and Robert Storr join David Cohen to review Katy Grannan, William Kentridge, Jane Freilicher, Ellen Berkenblitt and Chris Martin

BOOK REVIEW
posted 2/5/2008
DEBORAH GARWOOD on The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography since 1900 by Max Kozloff

LISTEN TO THE
DECEMBER 2007 REVIEW PANEL

Zhang Huan

Ben Davis, Lance Esplund and Lilly Wei join David Cohen to review TARA DONOVAN at the Met, ANNE HARRIS at Alexandre, BHARTI KHER at Jack Shainman, DAVID REED at Max Protetch and ZHANG HUAN at the Asia Society

 

LISTEN TO NOVEMBER'S REVIEW PANEL

Kara Walker

Arthur Danto, Vincent Katz and Linda Yablonsky join David Cohen to discuss KARA WALKER at the Whitney and at Sikkema Jenkins, KAREN YASINSKY at Mireille Mosler, ISAAC JULIEN at Metro Pictures, KATE SHEPHERD at Galerie Lelong and ANTONY GORMLEY at Sean Kelly

 

THE CRAFT OF CRITICISM

David Cohen discusses his work with DEBORAH SOLOMON
- live recording at the New York Studio School, Wednesday, September 26

 

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