Magazine

The Legacy of Trailblazer of Abstract Art, Gillian Ayres

British abstract painter and printmaker Gillian Ayres has died at age 88. Her death leaves an empty spot in the world of art, and also in the worlds of education and role-modeling. Ayres was easil...

Three Chinese Artists Wed the East with the West in New York

A revelatory exhibition of recent Chinese abstract art is currently on view at Boers-Li Gallery in New York. Featuring the work of three artists—Wu Dayu, Yu Youhan, and Zhang Wei—Brush and Beyond ...

Re-Visiting Color Field and Op Art of Celebrated Polish Artist Wojciech Fangor

Wojciech Fangor had a knack for expressing both simplicity and depth in his art. Originally trained as a realist artist in his native Poland in the 1930s, he spent the early years of his career de...

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art Honors Abstract Expressionist Sculptor Herbert Ferber

Herbert Ferber was an enigma. He was one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century, and yet most people today have never heard of him. Ferber hobnobbed with the most famous of the famous...

Artist Andy Bauch Hid $10,000 Worth of Cryptocurrencies in his Abstract Lego Artworks

Based on the number of articles generated per exhibition hour, New Money, an exhibition of 14 new works by Andy Bauch, easily became the most written about show of the year during its three day ru...

Willem de Kooning's 1975 "Untitled XII" - Sold at Art Basel Hong Kong for $35 Million!

Last week, at Art Basel Hong Kong 2018, the team at Lévy Gorvy gave the art world a lesson on how to sell a modern masterpiece. The dealer sold “Untitled XII” (1975) by Willem de Kooning for $35 m...

Behind the Abstract Object Paintings of Otis Jones

Otis Jones has been described as a Texas Minimalist. You would be forgiven for not knowing what that moniker might mean. Texas is the Lone Star State—that could potential sound minimal; one lone s...

An Abstract Homage to Walt Disney, Courtesy Bertrand Lavier

A small selection of works by French artist Bertrand Lavier is the subject of the latest exhibition at the 60-square meter London location of the Paris-based Kamel Mennour gallery. Titled Walt Dis...

How Ismail Gulgee Contributed to Abstraction in Pakistan

At the time of his sudden death in 2007, Ismail Gulgee was the most famous artist in Pakistan. He was beloved not only for his immense talent as a painter and sculptor, but also because he built a...

The Galaxies and Universes of Robert Pan

The inaugural exhibition at the new Bermel von Luxburg Gallery in Berlin is a showing of new works by the Italian-born abstract artist Robert Pan. There could not have been a more appropriate choi...

Behind Josh Sperling’s Dynamic “Composites”

American artist Josh Sperling recently wrapped up his first international solo exhibition, at Perrotin, Paris. The work was colorful and whimsical—a perfect introduction to what Sperling does. One...

Howardena Pindell - Finally in the Spotlight

Two concurrent Howardena Pindell exhibitions recently opened in Chicago—one, a complete retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago; the other, at Document Space, presents an in-...

Richard Tuttle and his Thoughts of Trees

Twenty-three new works by Richard Tuttle debuted in South Korea on 9 March, at Pace Gallery Seoul. Each of the works is made out of the same materials, and each is contained within a nearly identi...

Yinka Shonibare - A Post-Colonial Hybrid

A new sculpture by Yinka Shonibare, MBE was recently installed at the southeast entryway to Central Park, in the center of Doris C. Freedman Plaza. The swirling, energetic, colorful, fiberglass fo...

Improvisation and Uncontrolled Creativity in Gestural Abstraction

When we say that a work of art is gestural, what do we mean? A gesture is a signal; a sign; a movement of the body. Gesture is one of the aspects of a painting that tells us about the painter. We ...

Were the Neanderthals the Very First Creators of Abstract Cave Art?

A recent report in the journal Science has scientists buzzing about the origins of human culture. The report, which was published on 23 February and was co-authored by 14 scientists representing f...

Andy Woll’s 150 Paintings of Mount Wilson

Western Wear, a solo exhibition of the work of Andy Woll on view at Denny Gallery in New York through 25 March, could be the basis for a masters course in art criticism. Objectively, it mostly fea...

The Many Sides of Sarah Morris’s Art

If I was asked to list the most subversive abstract artists of our time, Sarah Morris would be near the top of the list. Morris makes films and paintings. She employs the language of typology in b...

Kupka, Pioneer of Abstraction, At Grand Palais

František Kupka thought of his artworks as organisms. As material objects, they came into being as the result of natural processes. Those processes included the ecological systems that led to the ...

Maija Luutonen - A Star Shining Bright on the Finnish Contemporary Art Scene

Finnish artist Maija Luutonen was recently given an important opportunity—and an even more important responsibility. She was chosen as the first artist to participate in a groundbreaking new art p...

The Luminous Constructs of Al Held

The first Al Held painting I ever saw was called Flemish VII—a black canvas covered with a jungle of overlapping geometric shapes outlined in white. The first thing that jumped into my mind when s...

How Do 5 New York-Based Contemporary Artists Draw Upon Ellsworth Kelly’s Legacy?

The exhibition Painting/Object, currently on at The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, examines five contemporary artists making work in conversation with the art of Ellsworth Kelly. It has been 69 ...

How Tarsila do Amaral Invented Modern Art in Brazil

Two weeks ago, the exhibition Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil opened at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Known colloquially in Brazil as just Tarsila, this influential ...

Loie Hollowell Debuts in Asia with New Abstract Artworks

Loie Hollowell has tapped into something powerful. She sold out her first solo exhibition at Pace Gallery Palo Alto in 2017. Now her second solo show, Loie Hollowell: Switchback, opening on 26 Mar...

The Master of Day-Glo and Big Paintings - Peter Halley

It is tempting to talk about the work of Peter Halley solely in terms of its formal aspects—such as the Day-Glo and textured house paints he uses, the geometric language of shapes in his work, and...

Inside - And Outside - Ellsworth Kelly’s Pavilion in Austin

A new destination for art pilgrims has just been added to the American Southwest—Ellsworth Kelly: Austin. Located on the grounds of the Blanton Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Tex...

Sonia Gechtoff - The End of an Era in the Male-Dominated Abstract Expressionism

Throughout her life, Sonia Gechtoff heard the same questions again and again. Every interviewer asked her about her years as a pioneering, California Abstract Expressionist painter, and one of jus...

In Dubai, A Show Celebrating Masters of Modern Indian Art

An exhibition currently on view in Dubai offers a rare glimpse at some of the major voices of Indian Modern art. It shines a light on a regional history that is vast and complex; one that has some...

The Labor-Intensive Art of Neysa Grassi

What metaphors lurk within natural processes—what dreadful, mythic allegories? These are the thoughts I contemplate when looking deeply at the work of Neysa Grassi. Born in Philadelphia in 1951, G...

Icon of the Late Abstract Expressionism, William Scharf, Has Died

American abstract painter and educator William Scharf has died at age 90. Scharf is often categorized either as an Abstract Expressionist or as a Color Field artist. Each of those labels has some ...

The Artist Who Painted the Sky, Every Sunday for Seventeen Years

Byron Kim is an abstract artist, but he has a troubled relationship with abstract art. Some of the evidence of that troubled relationship was recently put on public view in the exhibition Sunday P...

Amy Sillman’s Narration versus Abstraction

The current Amy Sillman exhibition at Gladstone 64 gallery in New York has my head spinning. Titled Amy Sillman: Mostly Drawing, it features a new series of works on paper, which, as the title sug...

The Everlasting Legacy of Jack Whitten

Jack Whitten—celebrated abstract painter, social philosopher, and cultural leader—is dead at age 78. In an exhibition career that spanned more than 50 years, Whitten created an artistic legacy bas...

London to Get Re-acquainted with the Work of Elaine Sturtevant, Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac

If you are a fan of philosophy and art, mark your calendar—the work of Elaine Sturtevant, known professionally as Sturtevant, returns to London this year, with the exhibition Vice Versa. On view f...

Who are the Most Innovative Representatives of Chinese Abstract Art Today?

The phrase “Chinese abstract art” is troubling for me. China is home to the longest, continuous tradition of art making on earth today. That tradition is immense and complex, far more so than the ...

LA Art Scene Legend Ed Moses Dies at 91

Ed Moses, pioneer of the California avant-garde, died peacefully on 17 January 2018, in his Venice Beach home, surrounded by family. Many people today do not know who Moses was. Or if they know th...

Robert Morris - An Artist and Sculptor Like No Other

Robert Morris defined art by barely defining it at all. He said, “Art is primarily a situation.” Rephrasing that in human terms, imagine if you met Morris at a party and he was introduced to you a...

Behind the Light and Space Movement at MCA Chicago

I credit the Light and Space Movement with first opening my mind to abstract art. In my youth, I was irritated by anything I could not understand. Abstract art only added to my confusion, and incr...

When Miriam Schapiro Used Computers to Generate Geometric Abstract Art

Miriam Schapiro was a legendary figure in the art world for more than half a century. She was a masterful visual artist, an influential teacher, and a brilliant theorist. But her most commonly kno...

The Magic of Polly Apfelbaum’s Installations in Vienna

Polly Apfelbaum installations are oft described in mythic terms. In 2016, art critic Christopher Knight, writing for the Los Angeles Times, described the Apfelbaum installation Face (Geometry) (Na...

An "Artist of Vivid Forms" - Elizabeth Murray

Over the course of her 40-year career, Elizabeth Murray built a unique aesthetic legacy—one that was undeniably serious, and yet also one at which it is impossible not to smile. As an artist, she ...

Our Ephemeral Future – How Contemporary Abstract Artists Engage with the Environment

The coastline is where earth, wind and water meet. Poetically, it is a place teeming with allegory, where things can only stay the same through constant change. It is both concrete and abstract—an...

Jaanika Peerna Interview: These Waters Have Stories to Tell

Jaanika Peerna embodies nature. In her performances, she flows with the rhythms of air and water. To the eye, her movements appear both intuitive and inevitable. She is creating something new on t...

Dynamism and Conflict in the Art of Ali Banisadr

Ali Banisadr is an emergent master. His impossibly complex oil paintings open magical windows into imaginary space. Lush and dynamic, to view one is to be drawn into it. The Iranian-born Banisadr ...

The MoMA Collection Honors its Artists' Revolutions in “The Long Run”

A gauntlet has been thrown down, daring us to change the way we think about the careers of artists. The challenge comes via an essay written by Ann Temkin for The Long Run, a recently opened exhib...

The Den Mother of Abstract Expressionism - Betty Parsons

Betty Parsons died 35 years ago, when I was 13 years old. I never knew her. Theoretically, I guess I could have met her, had I known to try. But I had no idea she existed until it was much too lat...

How Art Recovery Found Stolen Hans Hofmann Paintings After 12 Years

Art theft may soon become less lucrative. That is largely thanks to the efforts of one of the most successful art detectives in the world—Brooklyn-born Christopher Marinello, who recently made new...

The Evolution of Art for Charles Gaines

Several works by Charles Gaines will be making their way around the United States over the course of the next two years, in a touring exhibition called “Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/Giuffri...