Posts from December, 2007

The Panza Collection: An Experience of Color and Light


As the skies become grey, the sunlight becomes scarce, and the air becomes frigid, we find in snowy Buffalo at the Albright-Knox, a respite for all of this, an oasis of color and light.


Thomas Demand at 303 Gallery and Merlin James at Sikkema Jenkins & Co


Merlin James and Thomas Demand might seem as different as two contemporary artists can be. But a coincidence of means begs a comparison between shows of overtly contrastive mood and art-world temper. For both artists make their final images from models of their own making.


Damien Hirst’s Shark


Hirst seems to play to the peanut gallery, the broadest audience, those who think of art as hallowed, more so because they don’t understand it.


Alex Mcquilkin: “Joan of Arc”


Alex Mcquilkin at Marvelli Gallery


December 2007: Ben Davis, Lance Esplund, and Lilly Wei with moderator David Cohen


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


Painting Then For Now; Fragments of Tiepolo at the Ca’ Dolfin


When these three Tiepolos at the Met were removed from the main salon of Ca’Dolfin, the intended site-specific lighting effects were lost. But Alpers, Hyde and Kulok recreate the way that, to quote Alpers and Baxandall, “the world, on Tiepolo’s account, presents a conundrum and his painting makes us conscious of having to work to make things out.”


Karen Yasinsky at Mireille Mosler, Alex McQuilkin at Marvelli, Isaac Julien at Metro Pictures


Where Yasinsky accesses early girlhood through dolls and dinky illustration technique, McQuilkin seems dedicated to a perpetual state of teenage angst. The specific identification of both with early cinema relates to a broader trend in feminist-influenced art.


THE MIAMI DIARIES – John Zinsser’s dispatches from the fairest city


Even for seasoned navigators, there’s a lot of getting lost to be done in Miami, with everything oriented NE, NW, condo towers being built everywhere blocking one-way streets. Looking for the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) near downtown, we first passed a group of boxy nightclub buildings. These are the after-hours places, which pick up … Continued


The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art


In tribute to curator Walter Liedtke, tragically killed in the Metro-North train crash Tuesday.