Magazine

Auguste Herbin: The Architect of Abstraction and His Lasting Legacy

Auguste Herbin, born on April 29, 1882, in Quievy, France, was a major figure in the abstract art movement, especially during the first half of the 20th century. He is known for his role in develop...

Notes and Reflections on Rothko in Paris­ by Dana Gordon

Paris was cold. But it still had its satisfying allure, beauty all around. The grand Mark Rothko exhibition is in a new museum in the snowy Bois de Boulogne, the Fondation Louis Vuitton, a flashy ...

From Painting to Drawing: Richter's Creative Evolution in the Pandemic Era

A buzz percolates around a recent exhibition in New York claiming Gerhard Richter completed his last paintings between 2016 and 2017. Since 2017, the legend of his own brand of abstraction and uni...

Monet - Mitchell. Toward an Abstract Impressionism.

Much more than a visual comparison between pictorial languages: in the fall of 2022, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris places Impressionist master Claude Monet (1840-1926) and American abstrac...

The Exuberant Abstraction of Shirley Jaffe

This spring, the Centre Pompidou is honoring the remarkable abstract painter Shirley Jaffe with the retrospective exhibition aptly named An American Woman in Paris. For Shirley, a New Jersey nativ...

Joseph Beuys - An Artistic Healer For The Generations

Sculptor, teacher, mentor, pioneering environmentalist, political activist, self-styled shaman, and an alleged charlatan of questionable character - Joseph Beuys was most certainly a man who wore ...

Sophie Taeuber-Arp - A Major Female Force of Dadaism and Concrete art

Bold and dynamic, Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943), née Taeuber, was a major female force in the European avant-garde movements of Dadaism and Concrete art. Her career spanned two world wars and ush...

Following The Curves of Tony Cragg's Sculpture

Works by renowned British abstract artist Tony Cragg are on view this summer at Houghton Hall, a lavish British country estate currently occupied by David George Philip, the 7th Marquess of Cholmo...

How Drawing Revitalized Post-War America - at MoMA

With COVID restrictions in New York lifting, several museum shows whose runs were extended during the pandemic shutdown are beckoning. Among the best for fans of abstraction is Degree Zero: Drawin...

Elles Font l’Abstraction - An Interview with Pompidou Chief Curator Christine Macel

Centre Pompidou will write history this summer with Elles font l’abstraction - the most comprehensive elucidation ever of the contribution of female artists to the development of abstract art. Pom...

The Fervent Abstraction of Olivier Debré

One of the most intriguing exhibitions coming to London this summer is Olivier Debré: Fervent Abstraction, opening in late June at The Estorick Collection. My interest in the exhibition is in part...

The Seminal American Painting: The Eighties Exhibition, Revisited

In 2018, I declared Who RU2 Day: Mass Media and the Fine Art Print, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the most important exhibition in America. Today, I again believe the most important American exh...

How Space Stands Still in Paul Feeley's Art

The art of Paul Feeley reminds me of the similarities great abstract art shares with great music. Just as one might hear the Gymnopédies of Erik Satie performed over and over again by different mu...

Emily Mason, Between Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting

A pair of exhibitions this winter are drawing fresh attention to the work of Emily Mason, an American colorist painter who died in 2019 at age 87. “She Sweeps with Many-Colored Brooms”: Paintings ...

Jim Hodges Turns New York's Grand Central Into an Abstract Installation

Jim Hodges is one of those rare abstract artists whose work manages to express the most troubled aspects of the spirit of our time while simultaneously expressing its beauty. A new installation by...

(Re)Discovering Vivian Springford's Stain Paintings

Almine Rech Gallery in New York recently opened its second major solo exhibition of works by Vivian Springford. The artist has been the subject of a slow reassessment that began in the late 1990s,...

The Female Side of Minimalism at Thaddaeus Ropac

Every year, various exhibitions claim to herald work by marginalized artists unfairly left out of the historical canon. Often, the artists are in fact successful, just not “famous,” and the work h...

Two New Abstract Artworks Revealed as Part of Art Mapping Piemonte

Culture. People. Planet. Those are the three goals of Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo (FCSP), the philanthropic organization that recently partnered with the Piedmont Region of Northern Italy to...

How Abstract Expressionism Influenced Sculpture - A Guggenheim Show

A recently opened sculpture exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York feels confused when it comes to the legacy of white, patriarchal art movements from the past. Knotted, Torn, ...

Martin Barré, The Forgotten Abstract Artist, at Centre Pompidou

The retrospective Martin Barré, on view from 14 October 2020 through 4 January 2021 at the Center Pompidou, offers the most comprehensive look yet at the always-evolving career of this enigmatic a...

Gerhard Richter's Last Major Work? Stained Glass at a Monastery

Gerhard Richter has amassed a catalogue raisonné that now approaches 1000 major works, many of which are considered masterpieces. Yet, it is his most recent, and some say final, major work—a set o...

Hsiao Chin - Pushing the Limits of Abstraction

As a young art student in Taiwan in the 1940s, Hsiao Chin received advice from his teacher regarding the responsibility of an artist, which went something like this: an artist must find a personal...

Lee Seung Jio and The Origin of Nucleus

In addition to boasting one of the most effective COVID-19 responses on the planet, South Korea is also currently home to one of the most fascinating abstract art exhibitions of the summer: Lee Se...

José Parlá's Abstract Love Letter To New York City

José Parlá is quickly becoming one of the most beloved public artists in the world. His first public mural, unveiled early in 2011, graced an interior wall of a condominium development in Toronto....

Centre Pompidou Celebrates Henri Matisse’s 150th Birthday

In 1971, the French poet Louis Aragon published an unprecedented work of literature titled Henri Matisse, which Aragon described as a novel. It more closely resembles a loose amalgam of memoir, po...

Inside Donald Judd's MoMA Blockbuster

Though he passed away in 1994, Donald Judd remains one of the most influential American artists ever. This spring, we will have a chance to reconsider his legacy thanks to the retrospective Judd, ...

Gagosian Paris Gathers Artists Who Create Art Blanc sur Blanc

An exhibition at Gagosian Paris titled Blanc sur Blanc (White on White) has once again ignited the timeless debate about the validity of all-white art. This conversation goes back at least as far ...

IdeelArt Presents Homage to the Square Exhibition Curated by Richard Caldicott

An interdisciplinary artist known for his groundbreaking series of photographic abstractions, Caldicott has long been fascinated by the multitudinous properties of the square. Some of the oldest r...

Mnuchin Gallery Thinks It's Time You Heard About Mary Lovelace O'Neal

Mnuchin Gallery in New York recently announced it will present Chasing Down the Image, a solo exhibition tracing the entire career of Mary Lovelace O’Neal, in early 2020. This is great news for fa...

Finding Contemporary Insights in the Art of Leon Polk Smith

In the 1940s, the American artist Leon Polk Smith pioneered a unique abstract visual language that added curvilinear properties to the flattened planes and simplified geometry of Neoplasticism. An...

The Most Important Collection of Latin American Abstract Art Opens at MoMA

The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) has become recognized as the largest and most influential collection of Latin American abstract art in the world. In 2016, its founder Patricia Phe...

Female Abstract Artists Finally Get in The Much-Overdue Spotlight

The Katonah Museum of Art in New York recently spotlighted overlooked female abstract artists from the past in an exhibition titled Sparkling Amazons: Abstract Expressionist Women of the 9th St. S...

A World of Beauty, Science and Visual Delights-Takis On Tour

It is rare that an art exhibition gives me chills, yet it happened numerous times as I toured Takis: Sculptor of Magnetism, Light and Sound at the Tate Modern. Knowing little about the artist befo...

Behind the Scenes of Maison Matisse, Soon To Be Opened in Paris

It has been nearly 65 years since Henri Matisse died: sixty-five years since this artist who spent his career committed to the expression of beauty created anything new. This year would also have ...

Hans Hartung's Triumphant Return to Paris, Courtesy MAM

On 11 October 2019, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (MAM) will re-open, following a year-long renovation, with Hans Hartung: La fabrique du geste, a large-scale retrospective tracing the entire c...

A Word on the 100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum by Donald Judd

Few contemporary art destinations are more notable than Marfa, Texas. Though some complain that the mecca of Modernist asceticism has lately become more of a laboratory of Post-Modern avarice, at ...

Bernar Venet's Arc Majeur To Become World's Tallest Work of Public Art

If you drive the E411 in Belgium between Luxembourg and Namur in the coming weeks, you might notice a fantastical form rising up from the horizon. “L'Arc Majeur,” the latest work by French sculpto...

The Splendor of Alberto Burri's Grand Cretto of Gibellina

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the start of construction on the Grand Cretto, by Alberto Burri, a sacred work of land art built on the site of a lost Sicilian town. Nowhere in the history...

Richard Kalina Curates an Abstract Art Show at DC Moore Gallery

Richard Kalina is easily one of the most informed experts on contemporary art in America today. He has taught at Fordham University, Yale and Bennington College; is an influential art critic with ...

Pier Paolo Calzolari and an (Abstract) Art that Happens

Pier Paolo Calzolari has returned to Naples for the first time in more than 40 years, with a grand survey of his entire career at The Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (a.k.a. Museo MADRE). T...

Bernard Frize, Without Remorse at Centre Pompidou

Bernard Frize has returned to Paris this summer for his first major exhibitions there in 15 years. Bernard Frize—Without Remorse is on view until 26 August at the Centre Pompidou, and Bernard Friz...

Get Hypnotized by Bridget Riley at the National Galleries of Scotland

When the Edinburgh Art Festival opens in July, it will premier multiple groundbreaking surveys, including the first ever British collage survey, which traces the method back 400 years through more...

How Queer Artists Used Abstraction to Express Themselves

A number of exhibitions are currently on view in consideration of Pride Month, as well as the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots—protests following a police raid of a gay bar in Greenwich Vil...

What Do Ranjani Shettar and Wassily Kandinsky Have in Common?

Late in 2018, Shearsman Books in Bristol, England, published the first ever color edition of Klänge (Sounds), the only book of prose poetry that Wassily Kandinsky ever published. Accompanying his ...

David Novros' Kinesthetic Experiences at Paula Cooper

A week after the closing of David Novros: Paintings 1966, a sparse exhibition of three historic works at Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Los Angeles, Paula Cooper Gallery in New York opened David Novros...

Inside the Icelandic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019

A mystical world of color, sound, and hair extensions awaits visitors to the Icelandic Pavilion of the 2019 Venice Biennale. The installation is the creation of Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, a.k.a. Sho...

Un Art Autre - Abstraction in Postwar Paris at Levy Gorvy

In 1952, the French art critic and curator Michel Tapié coined the phrase “Un Art Autre,” meaning “art of another kind,” to refer to a trend he perceived in abstract art away from rationality, and...

Jane Benson’s Abstract Interpretations of Suffragette Mona Caird's Revolutionary Work

When German author W.G. Sebald died in 2001, he was considered the most talented English-language author alive. The Rings of Saturn, published in 1995, was among his most beloved books. In 2017, B...