Hofmann taught a who’s who of 20th century American artists. That distinction overshadows his reputation as an artist, despite his leading role in New York abstract expressionism. Perhaps teaching provided the gestation period for his late career achievement, ‘colour plane abstractions’. They are “the pinnacle of American academic abstraction … a world of floating forms”.
Reviewers of Johns’ new show approach it as a puzzle to be solved, undeterred by his long-standing reluctance to help with interpretation. Mortality seems a preoccupation of the octogenarian artist (no surprise) but is that it? “What is the meaning of all this meaning? You mainly end up finding symbols that are symbols of other symbols.” A good bio piece is here.
An interesting companion piece to the item on British design. Some think Bauhaus the most important design aesthetic ever. Perhaps so, given how it oriented design around functional need. It is now accused of giving us “buildings of unparalleled ugliness, blighting urban environments worldwide. Behind the Bauhaus’s admirable idealism, you sense a kind of disgust with difference”.
How much of what we see is real, how much cultural myth? Throughout her career Simmons has used props, dolls and makeup to create images of domestic tableaux. “I knew that I wanted to stay in my studio and tell a certain kind of lie, to create a kind of ambiguity”. The linked piece covers her career highlights while a piece that delves into Simmons’ outlook is here.