Downes paintings reflect a unique combination of aggressive conception and passive elaboration. Fervent perceptions of space enliven their broad outlines; details follow, filling in the story of each site exactly “as is.” Colors add atmosphere and light.

Despite different approaches towards scale, texture and color, a common attitude pervades each artist’s style that isolates a cool tension between involvedness and restraint.

Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris by George Baker and I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation by Francis Picabia

Their biomorphic qualities are undermined by the fabrication process, but this increases the sense of otherness they generate. They suggest imaginary beings that are not the product of fantasy, but rather of imaginative speculation on the real but unknown.

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA 152 North Central Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90013 October 29, 2007–February 11, 2008 The late 20th century art world had a bad conscience about high art which was vilified as serious, profound, mysterious, spiritual, elitist, pretentious, outmoded and labor-intensive. This led to infatuation with popular culture (silly, superficial, obvious, materialistic, … Continued

Seeing Double is packed with elaborations of his trademark idiom: imagery transmogrified

Physical gesture means the artist’s hand is present yet transcended: there is no question that the arcs or circles are handmade, but an unforced, lyrical all-overness creates a cosmic, suprapersonal sense of order and well-being.

There is a pervasive ambivalence in Katy Grannan’s portraits: the gaze that returns the viewer’s is a mix of coyness and exhibitionism. The images themselves oscillate between similar extremes, building a visceral sense of the present through precision while succumbing to a remoteness that results from theatricality.

Published by Phaidon Press, 2007, www.phaidon.com 336 pages, 280 black & white photographs, 70 color photographs $69.95 When the findings of history, a discussion of uses and the reconstruction of story blend with criticism, portrait content, I hope, is enlivened. Still, the narratives within it keep on turning, like the expressions on faces, themselves… (p. … Continued

As Burri’s retrospective continues at the Guggenheim through January 6, a review from 2008