Posts Tagged ‘The New Criterion’

Who are the curators?

This article is a response to a Hyperallergic editorial which argued that curation by “frontline museum workers” is preferable to that of trained curators. Click on the image below to read the full text.

Abstraction x 4

In early March, The New Criterion published “A Cleaner Slate”—my review of four exhibitions of abstract painting: “Paul Mogensen” at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, “Gerhard Richter: Cage Paintings” at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, “Stanley Whitney: How Black is That Blue” at Matthew Marks, Los Angeles and “Jim Isermann: Hypercube” at Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles.

The New Criterion article on Wayne Thiebaud’s Clown series

Wayne Thiebaud is about to reveal his most recent body of work: a selection of paintings and drawings from the new clown series will be on view starting December 8th at the Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco. In conjunction with the exhibition, The New Criterion just published “There ought to be clowns,”—a new article I […]

Wayne Thiebaud’s Clown Series: Hour of the Clown

About four years ago, Wayne Thiebaud, the nonagenarian painter best known for his still lifes and landscapes, began to depict what he calls “clown memories.” These works in progress presently include approximately fifty paintings, twenty drawings, and six etchings. They are a response to the outside world, as well as another new segment in Thiebaud’s decades-long […]

Bob Ross and the art historical canon

If we take Henri Matisse’s famous assertion that art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue at face value, we might end up with something approaching the “happy [x]” philosophy of Bob Ross, whose message was perfectly suited for television—the medium which help to spread it. I discuss […]

Summer reading suggestions

A couple of months ago I came across a fascinating little book published by Frieze in 1998. It was a bibliography intended to help young artists to become better young artists. The material was solicited from a few dozen art world people (artists, critics, curators) by Jerry Saltz, who also edited the volume. The same […]

Tony DeLap Retrospective at the Laguna Art Museum

One of the bast museum shows I have seen in a while turned out to be a retrospective of a local artist in a local museum. My review of it is on The New Criterion site.