These past few decades Julian Schnabel has been largely ignored. “Sometimes the personality can get in the way” admits his gallerist. Now, suddenly, some attention. Schnabel puts it down to being “a nonconformist … maybe you come in and out of view.” Or perhaps, says the curator, it is due to his art: “It’s not a renaissance. It’s a sign of power and … impact of the work.”
Short and scathing. The writer attacks from the first sentence – “Jasper Johns is the minor artist with the major reputation”. His complaint seems to be that Johns hasn’t had any good ideas lately. “One day, there may be a reckoning of a legacy that has derived only diminishing returns from initial mid-century investments.”
Art tastes in early twentieth century America were sedate. So the 1913 Armory show, which included experimental European modernists, shocked. Its impact on American artists, the subject of a new show, was “new modes of thinking, and new forms of expression”. No one new style predominated, but rather “the beautiful chaos of innovation”. More images are here.
By the 1920’s the age of the machine had clearly arrived. European art responded with cubism and constructivism and these ideas were transplanted by the “precisionists” to America. Theirs was not a uniquely American art movement but they did view mechanization with New World optimism – “reverential commemoration of the clarity and simplicity of industrial forms”
Golub’s view was that history was full of “toxic masculinity … bad men doing bad things”. In response, he filled his paintings with violent images. Was Golub’s depiction of violence excessive? “[H]is critique of power and violence consisted of confronting slaughter by representing slaughter. Whether this amounts to a genuinely ethical response … is an open question.”
In 1656 Rembrandt was close to bankruptcy. Perhaps as a way of generating cash, or simply promoting himself to collectors, he made a set of drawings copied from Mughal paintings then reaching Amsterdam. “[A] painter of one “golden age” paying homage to a “golden age” on the other side of the world” An excellent backgrounder on Mughal art is here.
Wood’s American Gothic is “the most universally recognized American painting”. Yet many find it inscrutable and Wood’s other works too. His “perversely sexualised landscapes, dream trees, dream fields, dream corn, dream ribbons of roadway … no hint of actual dirt or dust. One cannot imagine wind blowing there.” (The March 20 newsletter carried a different review of this show.)