Contributed by Adam Simon / The five abstract paintings in Medrie MacPhee’s “The Repair,” at Tibor de Nagy, have just enough indications of figure/ground and observed reality to evoke landscape, interior space, aerial view, blueprint. What also connects these paintings to the physical world, as we perceive it, are minor shifts of line, contour, or color that activate the surface and keep the paintings from being flat. While the paintings are large, all but one measuring 64 x 84 inches, somehow the small gallery doesn’t feel crowded.
Tag: Julian Schnabel
Francesco Clemente’s visual facility
Contributed by David Carrier / I have been writing a book about art in the churches of Naples’ historic center. There I also visited the new Kunsthalle Madre, which contains an elaborate two-story permanent installation by Francesco Clemente called “Ave Ovo.” Like baroque Catholic art, Clemente’s work features elaborate symbolism. While the old masters employed it to present church dogma, his symbolism is personal and more elusive. In Naples, however, both exhibit a penchant for sensory overload: more is more. In his splendid show “Summer Love in the Fall,” now at Lévy Gorvy Dayan, Clemente still uses some of the same symbols – male and female body parts, his own portrait – but the colors in its 23 paintings are more subdued. The title may well refer to the psychic place of erotic images in his later life as well as the timing of this exhibition, for now his work seems more serene.
The uppercrust on display in “Wave Pattern”
Contributed by Jacob Patrick Brooks / The lofts of downtown New York occupy a special place in American art history. They functioned most importantly as incubators for Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, eventually giving way to the galleries of the 1980s and 1990s. Today, the spaces once occupied by Barbara Gladstone, Pat Hearn, and Willem de Kooning have been replaced with Uniqlo, Nike, and expansive apartments for the super wealthy. In “Wave Pattern,” a downtown apartment show on the sixth floor of an unassuming Broadway building, art world scions Dylan Brant and Max Werner provide some relief from this cluttered, big-box nightmare.
Jules and Julian: Painting for generations
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Julian Schnabel and Jules de Balincourt are hardly strangers to socially or psychologically attentive art. Schnabel’s neo-expressionist painting as well as his films have often manifested an acute sense of history and conscience. And de Balincourt in his work has consistently demonstrated a penchant for celebrating the grand resonance of particular moments. At the same time, though, neither has ever seemed overtly essayistic or advocative, as though he were self-consciously speaking for his fellow human beings. With their respective solo exhibitions now up at Pace, that disposition appears to have changed.
Yes, Julian Schnabel painted the Van Goghs
Contributed by Sharon Butler / While watching At Eternity’s Gate, Julian Schnabel’s new film about Vincent Van Gogh, I wondered if Schnabel had made the […]
Art and Film: Van Gogh’s sanity
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / “One man’s insanity is another man’s genius,” Joyce Carol Oates has written. In the popular imagination, though, Vincent Van Gogh […]
Yau on Schnabel: Pedestrian at best
In The Brooklyn Rail, John Yau compares Julian Schnabel to Jean Cocteau, another self-agrandizing artist who was a better filmmaker than a painter. “What aberration […]
Fathoming the depths of Schnabelia
“Julian Schnabel: Navigation Drawings,” Sperone Westwater, New York, NY. Through Feb. 16. In the catalog for the show, Sounding in Fathoms: Julian Schnabel�s Recent Navigation […]
Rave reviews for Schnabel’s new film in which a paralysed man dictates a memoir with his eyeball
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” directed by painter-filmmaker Julian Schnabel. I’m a big fan of Julian Schnabel’s films, especially Basquiat–what painter doesn’t appreciate the […]
Julian Schnabel nominated for Gucci filmmaking award
In Variety, Nick Vivarelli reports: �Julian Schnabel is among the nominees announced by the Gucci Group and the Venice Film Festival for the Gucci Group […]