Krasner’s marriage to Jackson Pollock slowed her art because, it is suggested, she carried “two loads of self-doubt, his and hers”. But there were also benefits, coming from their critical engagement with each other’s work. At her first retrospective a critic noted some of Krasner’s work was “touched with real grandeur”. Decades later, that judgement seems affirmed. Images are here.
Bowling’s first retrospective has critics puzzled as to why he has been so long ignored. Is it race (he is from Guyana), his unfashionable abstractionism, or perhaps his avoidance of a signature style? Recognition from the London art establishment has been scant – New York has been more welcoming. Not that Bowling has been put off at all – “I still get a lot of juice out of abstraction.”
Puryear’s work has been called craftsmanly. That’s not craftsmanship in a contemporary sense but something from a past era when wood was an industrial material. His show in Venice – where he represents the USA – is in his characteristic style, abstract pieces that are modern but somehow carry historic overtones. “One of the most subtle and powerful shows of the Biennale.”
Brancusi felt a debt to America, its openness to the new. In return he has been “the fountainhead” of American sculpture. Listing his undoubtedly numerous innovations tends to obscure where his true greatness lay. An earlier critic is more specific – “his rapturous feeling for surfaces … [and endowing] his forms with something of the clarity and finality of law”.
Art glass struggles for attention as an area of sculpture. An exception has been created with the Corning Museum’s global survey of contemporary glass, the first such show in decades. The linked piece is not the most memorable of reviews but it sheds some light on an art form that has long left tumblers and jugs behind. More images are here.
China-based artists face significant headwinds. The government is not anti-art per se – it sees art as an important “business sector”. Limited self-expression is the issue. State surveillance (and self-censorship) have stopped explicit social criticism, particularly in genres like painting. Without liberalization, self expression will need to find different form – “something new has to start.”
Animals, for the Japanese, figure prominently in their culture. They feature in the Shinto religion, sometimes with supernatural powers, other times representing human foibles. Animal iconography also appears in secular political and philosophical discourse. And, of course, there is contemporary kitsch. All in all, a very, very Japanese thing.
With manga, Japan elevated “the modern graphic art of storytelling”. Manga is now widely influential in Western culture. Pictures dominate text and “the range of pictorial invention on display … is staggering.” Not all the stories are about superheroes: “Manga has become ubiquitous in Japanese daily life precisely because daily life is so often its subject.” A beginners guide is here.
Defining beauty is an old debate. Is it the property of an object or an expression of individual subjective judgement? Kant argued that beauty was a subjective judgement that had “universal validity”. Contemporary ideas include the notion of a “mutual realisation that unfolds between us and the object of our attention. Beautiful things … have the effect of ‘radically decentering’ us.”
The Whitney Biennial aims high – to profile “relevant and important” American art. As you might expect, it can’t satisfy everyone. Increased diversity of artists represented gets applause. From there, complaints. For one “There’s a lot to like … but there’s not a lot to love.” Another laments an absence of “the irresponsible joy of aesthetic experience”. Images are here.
Hurtado is 98, an active artist, and having her first show at a public museum. Remarkable. Her art has traversed abstraction, surrealism and stylized figuration, frequently portraying her own body. And, for good measure, a detour through text paintings. “Fabulous … utterly compelling and persuasive” says the reviewer. A conversation between artist and curator is here.
Since Ghenie appeared at the 2015 Venice Biennale, his prices have gone wild. This writer goes all in – “the world’s most exciting painter under the age of 50”. Others are less impressed – “incoherent compositions … assembled gimmicks that don’t add up.” Aware of the hype, the artist declares “there has to be energy and control”, sounding a bit like a personal trainer at the gym.
With his family wealth, Porter could afford to be contrary. New York was agog with boisterous abstraction but, having seen a Bonnard show in Chicago, Porter chose figuration. Landscapes and interiors best showcased his colourist abilities. One interior, a “low key visual symphony” seems to celebrate paint itself; maybe he was “a covert abstractionist after all”.
African photography is getting more attention, most recently in Paris. Tillim, perhaps Africa’s foremost contemporary photographer, has worked mostly in the post-apartheid era. Weary of images of war or famine that remove “a human drama from its context”, he now focuses on cityscapes. His images convey a sense of “peace … dynamism, yet uncertainty”. Images are here.