Magazine

The Artist Who Could See Sound - Kandinsky on Google Arts and Culture

Wassily Kandinsky endeavored to achieve visually what musicians achieve with sound: the communication of complex feeling and emotion, without using narrative content. Kandinsky was not just curiou...

Quilting Histories - The Quilts of Gee's Bend

Two exhibitions of Gee’s Bend quilts - currently postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic - highlight the distinctive vision of an isolated group of artists descended from African American slaves. The G...

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...

Ten Latinx Abstract Artists To Know Right Now

Reflecting the cultural diversity of its surroundings has been central to the mission of BRIC (formerly Brooklyn Information & Culture) since it was founded in 1979. Their latest exhibition, L...

The Art of Lines

A line is said to connect two points. It is a one-dimensional visual element. But what else can a line be? When does a line become a plane? When does a line become a shape? When does a line obtain...

Dusti Bongé, A Force of Abstract Expressionism

If you are like me, the first thing you thought when you saw the title of this article is, “Who is Dusti Bongé?” It is all too often the case that little connection exists between the talent of an...

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 ...

Waiting (Patiently) for the Bourse de Commerce–Pinault Collection

After five years of watching and waiting, Parisians were told this week that because of ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, they must wait just a bit longer before going inside the much anticipated Bou...

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...

6 Most Expensive Abstract Artworks of 2020

Works by Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Gerhard Richter and Brice Marden were among the most expensive abstract artworks to sell at auction in 2020. But before we get to ...

Young-Il Ahn, Korean American Painter of Light and Surface, Dies at 86

Young-Il Ahn, an under appreciated master of abstract painting, whose work explored relationships be-tween color, reflected light, and human perception, died this month in Los Angeles at age 86. A...

The Nevelson Chapel, An Oasis of Silence

Rushing past the shops and office towers surrounding 54th and Lexington in Midtown Manhattan, it would easy not to notice you are in the presence of a meditative masterpiece of mid-century art. Th...

Jackie Saccoccio's Abstract Art on a Grand Scale

The beloved American abstract artist Jackie Saccoccio has died at age 56. According to a statement released by Van Doren Waxter, her longtime gallerist, Saccoccio had been battling cancer for the ...

The Eternal Vanguard—6 Extraordinary Female Abstract Artists from Latin America

I often talk about the avant-garde in terms of its failures, meaning it is a topic I anchor in the past, full of bygone stories of experimental things artists once wrote, once made, or once tried....

(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 Mohamed Melehi Made Waves in Moroccan Modernism

The COVID-19 Pandemic has claimed another victim from the world of abstract art: Moroccan painter Mohamed Melehi passed away on 29 October in Paris at age 84, from complications related to the nov...

The Movie-Like Story of Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals

I consider traveling to see art to be a metaphysical experience: a pilgrimage to secular sanctuaries. Some of my most memorable art passages have involved Mark Rothko. I fondly remember journeying...

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, ...

In The Spotlight - Carla Accardi, A Pioneer Italian Abstract Artist

Italian avant-garde artists of the 1960s have always interested me for their seemingly intuitive ability to make art less complicated, while somehow also making it more magical. Carla Accardi, who...

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...

Visiting Jean Dubuffet's Monumental Tour Aux Récits at Smithson Plaza

Londoners hunting for outdoor art experiences will delight at the recent installation of the Jean Dubuffet sculpture “Tour aux récits” in Smithson Plaza—that is, if they can find it. The small squ...

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...

The Guggenheim Presents: Jackson Pollock's Mural

One of the most storied American paintings is returning to Manhattan after a 22-year absence. “Mural” (1943) by Jackson Pollock will be on view at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York from...

Driven To Abstraction - A New Documentary on the Knoedler Scandal

The documentary Driven to Abstraction revisits the infamous Knoedler scandal. In 2011, after 165 years in business, Knoedler & Co., one of the most venerated fine art galleries in the world, c...

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...

Stripping Down the Canvas - Farewell to Ron Gorchov

During a 2017 interview with Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, the American painter Ron Gorchov (1930 - 2020) offered the following advice to young artists: “Be desperate and patient.” The seeming...

Minimalism: Less is More !

The drive toward Minimalism in abstract art is as old as abstraction itself. Seurat was on its trail when he pioneered Divisionism. Malevich nearly perfected it with his Suprematist compositions. ...

Spending a Night at Cedar Tavern with the Abstract Expressionists

Anyone researching the artists of The New York School has likely encountered references to a place called The Cedar Bar, or its later manifestation, The Cedar Tavern. An ordinary dive bar, The Ced...

Can Abstract Art Change Our Mindsets? Yes! A New Study Finds

A new abstract art study claims the human brain processes abstract art and figurative art in different ways. The study was led by four researchers from Columbia University in New York. Participant...

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...

Ready, Set, Paint! Performative Painting from IdeelArt

When defining action painting in 1952, art critic Harold Rosenberg demarcated the emerging movement through re-interpretation of canvas not as a picture but as an event. American action painters n...

6 Important South Asian Female Abstract Artists

Yet another museum exhibition sidelined by the COVID-19 Pandemic is Fault Lines: Contemporary Abstraction by Artists from South Asia, which opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in early spring...

Otto Freundlich - A Revelation of Abstraction

The year was 1912. At age 34, the still relatively young Otto Freundlich, who had only recently committed himself to becoming an artist, had reason to celebrate. He had just sold a major new work ...

Here's Some Soothing Grey Abstract Art For Your Wall

Falling between two absolutes - black and white - grey is nothing less but perfect neutral. Its complexity is deeply entrenched in the balance it embodies and its intermediate essence. Being expel...

Pat Passlof - Six Decades of Important Art

Pat Passlof gave me one of the most significant gifts an artist can bestow upon an art viewer, besides the gift of pure sensorial pleasure: she convinced me to question my own taste. My first enco...

Browsing the Artworks of the Digital Abstract Art Realm

The rapid development in digital technology had a profound impact on all aspects of our existence and art could hardly be spared of its disruptive influence. Today’s art emerges through the click ...

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....

Enrich Your Home With a Large Abstract Painting!

Art may come in all sizes, but abstract art comes large. Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko - the progenitors of large canvases - with their unprecedented large-sized paintings put a...

Abstraction is in the Physical - Jules Olitski

The career of the Ukrainian-American artist Jules Olitski (1922 – 2007) reminds us that art is not a fixed human endeavor, which has to be done the same way by every practitioner, like, say, flyin...

The Most Influential Living African American Abstract Artists

African American abstract artists - especially those descended from slaves - face continual pressure, from both inside and outside, to make their identity a central part of their work. This pressu...

Hard Edge Painting For Sale? Look No Further!

Forms are finite, flat, rimmed by a hard clean edge, notoriously explicated Jules Langsner, an art critic and curator, the emerging tendency of simplified, often geometric forms with razor-sharp c...

Art Beyond Mexican Muralism - Manuel Felguérez Barra

Mexican artist Manuel Felguérez Barra has died at age 91 - one of nearly half a million members of the human family whose lives have so far been taken by COVID-19. A legend, whose abstract paintin...

Contemporary Gestural Abstraction At Your Fingertips

Unpremeditated spontaneity and unconstrained freedom most distinctly captured in the gestural abstraction matured along with the artist's fervent quest for freedom, authentic self, and a myriad of...

Eva LeWitt - Harmonizing Color, Matter, Space

For the past few years, Eva LeWitt has been delighting a growing fan base with her completely fresh, lively and luminous sculptures. The first encounter many viewers had with her work was in her s...

Decorate Your Wall With Some Purple Abstract Art!

The scarcity of the pigment extracted from the Mediterranean sea snails made the Tyrian purple early on abundant with superlatives - the most prestigious, admired, and expensive of all colors. Fro...

The Art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Monumental in Every Way

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were the kind of artists you could study your entire lifetime and never grow tired. Their life together was filled with love, art, and incredible planning: three insepara...