(An Appropriate Distance)

 

FROM THE MAYOR'S DOORSTEP

Well, I thought I knew all about Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992). But it turns out that the only parts of his career that had stuck in my mind were its beginnings (in the early 1940s) and its long-lived end (onward from the 1960s). Thus “Richard Pousette-Dart: The Centennial” at Pace (its 57th Street space) came as a welcome surprise to me for its inclusion of several stimulating & unfamiliar paintings from the 1950s (through October 15).  Read More 

Somehow I feel like I’ve always known about Zao Wou-Ki. Perhaps that’s why it was such a pleasure to encounter (or re-encounter) his art in “No Limits: Zao Wou-Ki” at the Asia Society Museum in New York (through January 8) and thereafter at the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine (February 4 through June 4, 2017). Read More 

Herewith my third and last installment of coming attractions for this fall. Like the others, it runs a gamut-- ranging from shows of modernists like Walter Darby Bannard to those of postmodernists like Pipilotti Rist to the "homemade architecture" of Beverly Buchanan to historical figures like sexy Guido Cagnacci of the baroque and Mexican modernism in its glory days of revolution.  Read More 

Herewith Installment #2 of this season's coming attractions, ranging all the way from prewar Vienna to gay 20th-century New York, and with detours to Jerusalem in the Middle Ages to 6th century China. Enjoy! Read More 

Below you will find capsule entries on a selection of exhibitions to be held (mostly by museums, large and small, and mostly but not exclusively in New York) this autumn. It’s not the best season I’ve seen, but it should be of unusual interest to admirers of superannuated female minimalists and overwrought Italianate baroque painters.  Read More 

I don’t why, but I seem to visit the Studio Museum in Harlem in summer more often than at any other season. Last year, it was the excellent show of Stanley Whitney that propelled me northwards. This year, it was Nadine Witkin, daughter of the illustrious Isaac Witkin, who reported on Facebook that  Read More 

During the steam heat of a Manhattan August, not much goes on in the art world. But two abstract painters are keeping alive some longstanding contrasts between modernism and postmodernism, in “Joyce Weinstein: Recent Paintings” at Berry Campbell and “Eva Lundsager: Other Night Other Light” at Van Doren Waxter (both shows through August 26). Read More 

Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) is best known as the painter of mysterious theater folk and ethereal parables of silken dalliance called fêtes galantes. But this exquisite little exhibition of his work at The Frick Collection depicts more warlike subjects – and reveals the steel beneath his silk in more ways than one. Read More 

I am probably the wrong person to review “Stuart Davis: In Full Swing” at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through September 25). To be sure, I’d agree with other critics that it’s a cheerful, brightly-colored exhibition of approximately 100 examples of this fine All-American artist’s mature late Synthetic Cubist style. Read More 

You didn’t have to shout to get me to the media preview of “City of the Soul: Rome and the Romantics” at the Morgan Library and Museum (through September 11). I adore anything Romantic, but this show wasn’t what I expected—which is not to say that, once I understood how the Morgan defines “Romantic,” I didn’t like it -- a lot.  Read More