01/03/2017

Aaron here today with some NYC shows of note; Leanne Shapton looks back at 2016; New Sikoryak; Connor Willumsen; Joanie and Jordie & Suzie and Cecil

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Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim Museum through January 11

Hilton Als wrote about Martin in the New York Review last July:

Martin contradicted all that nihilism. She used the grid as a forum for belief—a space where the viewer as well as the artist could contemplate the hand making the thing being observed. In her well-considered 1971 appreciation of the artist, Kasha Linville wrote:

Once you are caught in one of her paintings, it is an almost painful effort to pull back from the private experience she triggers to examine the way the picture is made. The desire to simply let yourself flow through it, or let it flow through you, is much stronger…. Her paintings exert themselves differently, depending on their line, their pattern, and the quality of the ground color on the canvas. Some are less lyrical, evincing aggression or tension…. Others suggest spaciousness or vast space, again without using illusionistic devices or the egotistical implication of infinitely extendible surface.

One pauses at the extraordinary line “the egotistical implication of infinitely extendible surface.” Unlike her male predecessors, not to mention contemporaries, Martin didn’t use the grid as a means of describing the infinite—the infinite “I” of being an artist. Instead, her work ends at the canvases’ edge.One begins and then one finishes; the grace is in the doing. Her touch was her personality; looking at canvases such as Friendship, of 1963 (made of incised gold leaf), or the ghostly Grass of 1967, one sees various lines that begin with verve, grow faint and then run out, slowly and calmly, like a swimmer beginning strong and then using wide, unhurried strokes once they see the shore. “Line is where she speaks most personally,” Linville said. “It is her vocabulary as the grids are her syntax.”

Kerry James Marshall: Mastry at the Met Breuer through January 29

 

Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction at the Museum of Modern Art through March 19

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The Top Pinks and Purples of 2016
Via Leanne Shapton at the New Yorker.

9. Willy Wonka’s frock coat, as worn by Gene Wilder in the 1971 movie; 10. Sky at dusk over Greenport, Long Island; 11. Cotton candy at the Four Seasons Restaurant; 12. Supermoon; 13. Hillary Clinton’s lapels; 14. Walls of Cecily Brown’s show at the Drawing Center

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The Unquotable Trump
R.Sikoryak with a new mash-up for 2017.

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Connor Willumsen’s Portraits continues to enthrall. This magazine sized 16-page beautifully printed booklet (by WestCan – who also printed thee Santoro School Handbook) is available HERE.

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Joanie and Jordie – 1-3-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio

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Suzy and Cecil – 1-3-2017 – by Gabriella Tito