Magazine

A Revolutionary Painter – Our Interview with Olivier Mosset

Swiss-born abstract artist Olivier Mosset has been making revolutionary aesthetic statements for more than 50 years. His work is visually intense and minimal, based on a geometric, monochromatic l...

Why Mark Grotjahn Is In Focus These Days

Mark Grotjahn is one of the most loved and most hated artists of our time. He is loved not for his art, primarily, but for how that art has made a lot of powerful art collectors and dealers rich (...

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Pays Homage to the American Minimal Art

The legacy of American Minimal art is on view in Monumental Minimal, at the Paris Pantin location of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. The exhibition includes more than 20 objects created by six of the mos...

The Wonders of Geometric Art of Latin America

One of the most intriguing exhibitions of abstract art anywhere in the world right now is on view at the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris. Titled Southern Geometries, from Mexico...

Abstract Art – Differentiating Brexit Supporters from the Opposers?

A recently released report in The British Journal of Sociology 2018 claims to have identified a fascinating link between abstract art and Brexit. The scientists behind the report hypothesized that...

Arthur Dove, One of America’s Greatest Painters

The name Arthur Dove may not be as well known today as the name Georgia O’Keeffe, but the two painters and their oeuvres share a great deal in common. Both were on the forefront of early 20th Cent...

Why Harold Rosenberg Was Seminal for Abstract Expressionism

Harold Rosenberg (1906 – 1978) is the art critic most often credited with helping Abstract Expressionism gain a foothold as a mainstream American art movement. But it could also be said that Abstr...

Shedding a Light on Andy Warhol's Shadows

This month, “Shadows” (1978-79) by Andy Warhol will be partially on view at the headquarters of Calvin Klein, at 205 W 39th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The most ambitious work Warhol ever created...

Marsden Hartley, The Painter of Maine

The American painter Marsden Hartley (1877 – 1943) is referred to today as “The Painter of Maine.” He wasn’t given that title by critics or his fans, but rather Hartley gave himself that moniker l...

Centre Pompidou Takes a Fresh Look at Cubism in a Comprehensive New Show

On 17 October, the first major Cubist exhibition in Paris in 65 years opens at The Centre Pompidou. Cubism (1907-1917) brings together more than 300 works in an attempt to expand our understanding...

Who is Zao Wou-Ki, China's Auction Record-Breaker?

The stunt Banksy pulled at the 5 October Contemporary Art Auction at Sotheby’s London, with his self-shredding “Girl with Red Balloon” painting, was truly newsworthy, but it also took attention aw...

Why Liz Nielsen’s Photography Is So Unusual

Liz Nielsen is part photographer, part conjurer. She coaxes into existence vividly colored photograms from the pitch dark confines of her analog photographic dark room. The images that emerge out ...

How Much Do You Know About Frank Sinatra’s... Paintings?

This December, a selection of Frank Sinatra paintings will be offered at Sotheby’s New York, in the Lady Blue Eyes: Property of Barbara and Frank Sinatra sale. Not only will the sale include paint...

18 Contemporary Abstract Artists Open Up About Their Lineage

It is dangerous and impossible to teach art. Yet it is also imperative. For art to exist, artists must learn how to become whatever it is that they are going to become, and how to create whatever ...

Getting the Most in the Simplest Form - Anne Truitt at Matthew Marks

A rare exhibition of paintings by Anne Truitt is currently on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York. Truitt (1921 – 2004) is mostly known for her sculptures, or structures as they are most oft...

What is Rayonism?

Rayonism was a Russian avant-garde art movement founded by the painters Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov around 1911. The movement was based on the concept that material objects are really ...

The Genius of Blinky Palermo

When I think of Blinky Palermo I think of two things: the incomplete becoming complete, and the underestimated becoming profound. If you know the life story of this artist, you might think I am tr...

Grand Palais Welcomes a Grand Retrospective of Joan Miró Works

On 3 October, the Grand Palais in Paris will open Miró, an ambitious retrospective examining the oeuvre of Joan Miró. It has been 44 years since the museum has so honored this Modernist pioneer wh...

Examining Theo van Doesburg’s Counter Compositions

When people think of the Dutch art movement De Stijl, they tend to think of its most famous representative: Piet Mondrian. Yet Mondrian was by no means its only founder. Theo van Doesburg was equa...

5 Abstract Artworks From 'Soul of a Nation' Exhibition of African American Artists

The monumental exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power opened this month at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. This is the third venue for this extraordinary show, which opened at...

Dana Gordon in Paris – New Abstract Painting from New York

Dana Gordon's elegant, powerful new work sings beautifully in its refined setting in Paris's Galerie Metanoia, on rue Quincampoix in the Beaubourg neighborhood. "Lucky Paris" is the response from ...

Barbara Takenaga's Fluctuations of Space

DC Moore Gallery in New York recently opened Outset, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Barbara Takenaga. These paintings, however, might be better described as worlds. They possess a sort of g...

The Power of Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red Blue and Yellow

Piet Mondrian painted “Composition with Red Blue and Yellow” in 1930. It marks a subtle turning point in the evolution of his distinctive, singular style of painting, which he called Neo-Plasticis...

4 Books on Abstract Art Worth Reading Right Now

My cousin recently asked me if I could recommend any abstract art books for a newbie. I was visiting him in Houston, and ended up dragging him to visit the Menil Collection, where we spent several...

The Kaleidoscopic Nature of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s Art

It may not be obvious to many people at first why Sunset, Sunrise, the first international retrospective of the work of Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, is being held at the Irish Mu...

Shara Hughes - Subverting Traditional Representational Landscapes

Shara Hughes makes paintings that are decidedly contemporary, and yet the artificial landscapes that she conjures evoke comparisons to a multitude of aesthetic traditions from the past. Their intu...

Why Naum Gabo Was Instrumental for 20th Century Sculpture

Naum Gabo was one of the quintessential “important artists” of the 20th Century. He was shaped by his time, and he developed an artistic position that shaped his time, and ours, in return. What ma...

Sam Falls’ Abstract Shapes of Nature

Multi-disciplinary artist Sam Falls was raised in rural Vermont, one of the least populated parts of the United States. He grew up wandering his natural surroundings and marveling at the ways the ...

6 Examples of Public Abstract Art on the Verge of the Representational

Sometimes people embrace abstract public art, and sometimes they most definitely do not. Some abstract public artworks become beloved parts of the public landscape; others are misunderstood, or ev...

Achieving Luminescence - Mark Rothko’s Orange and Yellow

Mark Rothko may be the most misunderstood 20th Century artist. His work is almost exclusively discussed in terms of its formal qualities, like color and shape, yet Rothko insisted his paintings we...

The Rigorous Art of Tomma Abts

Tomma Abts has managed a difficult feat: she makes paintings that are simple and straightforward that nonetheless hold the eye for long periods of time. The compositions contain a limited number ...

The Rhythm of Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie

“Broadway Boogie Woogie” (1943) was one of the final paintings Piet Mondrian created before he died. Austere in some ways, chaotic in others, the painting is simultaneously an image of movement an...

How the 9th Street Art Exhibition Stepped Out of the New York Art Canons in 1951

Some people say the 9th Street Art Exhibition was a radical act of culture jamming. Others say it was an act of desperation initiated by a bunch of starving artists who had nowhere else to show th...

On Abstraction and Empathy, Wilhelm Worringer’s Fundamental Work

For anyone interested in understanding how spirituality came to be associated with abstract art, “Abstraction and Empathy: Essay in the Psychology of Style” (1907), by Wilhelm Worringer, is an ess...

Visiting The Bernar Venet Foundation

French conceptual artist Bernar Venet wants you to celebrate the legacy of Yves Klein, but he also wants you to work for it. Klein would have turned 90 this year. In his memory, the gallery of the...

An Interview with Los Angeles-Based Australian Photographer George Byrne

George Byrne has an eye for recognizing the formal visual patterns of everyday life. In his adopted home town of Los Angeles, he wanders the city capturing photographic compositions that mimic the...

Ellen Carey and The World of Color in Photography

An exhibition of new work by Ellen Carey, titled Ellen Carey: Mirrors of Chance, opens at Galerie Miranda in Paris this month. The show introduces a new body of work by Carey called “Zerograms.” F...

The Concrete Utopia of the Yugoslav Architecture

Some of the most jarring images I have ever seen are on view right now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in an exhibition titled Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1...

Why Was Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square Painting So Seminal?

For the past several generations, art historians have been telling people that the painting “Black Square” (1915), by Kazimir Malevich, was the most important, most seminal painting of the 20th Ce...

A Word on the International Klein Blue

Had he not died of a heart attack at age 34, Yves Klein would have turned 90 this year. In celebration of this would-be milestone, Blenheim Palace in the UK is currently exhibiting more than 50 Kl...

Motherhood, Maternity, Femaleness, Gender - Judy Chicago’s Birth Project

Between the years 1980 and 1985, Judy Chicago enlisted more than 150 needleworkers to collaborate with her on the creation of dozens of large-scale tapestries that formed the basis for a monumenta...

The Story Behind Wassily Kandinsky's Composition VII

“Composition VII” (1913) by Wassily Kandinsky is considered by many abstract art aficionados to be the most important painting of the 20th Century—perhaps even the most important abstract painting...

Jeff Elrod, Alex Hubbard, Yang Shu and the Three Approaches to the Painted Medium

Simon Lee Gallery in Hong Kong recently opened the eponymously titled Jeff Elrod, Alex Hubbard, Yang Shu, a new exhibition of works by three painters from three different cities. I am a bit baffle...

Lino Tagliapietra, A Maestro of Glass

Abstract glass artist Lino Tagliapietra received the title of maestro when he was only 21 years old. Since it means “one who is distinguished,” it should not come as a surprise to find out that fe...

How Enid Marx Redefined the 20th Century Design

Enid Marx was only 26 years old in 1928 when Virginia Woolf wrote the famous line: “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” But indeed...

A Rush of Colors in Sabine Moritz’s Eden

Sabine Moritz has made a reputation for herself as a figurative painter—a creator of dreamlike floral images and haunting urban scenes. But a new exhibition of her work at KÖNIG GALERIE in Berlin ...

The Science of Color and The Way it Captivated Artists

To get an idea of just exactly how complex the science of color is, take a moment after reading this article to visit the Cooper Hewitt collection website. At the top of the page you will see an o...

A Museum in Tasmania Gathers the Founders of the Zero Art Movement

Australian art collector and gambling magnate David Walsh recently opened a landmark exhibition of the Zero art movement at his Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania. Titled ZERO, t...