Georg Baselitz, at Gagosian Gallery, NYC. Through Dec. 22. The German painter Georg Baselitz rose to fame in the '70s and '80s for his fearless and direct confrontation with his nation's disgraceful 20th Century. At a time when his teachers and the German art world embraced American pop art, Baselitz went art brut. He was kicked out of his East German art school and came west to make big, sloppy canvases that snaked with wide swaths of bright color, black outlines, sloppy drips. He painted an infamous canvas of the child Adolf Hitler with an erection the size of a salami. It was all very scandalous to a nation trying to forget the past. For years, Baselitz painted all of his canvases upside down. It's hard to say why. There's the formalist's explanation: that modern paintings are always about the surface of the canvas, and nothing could reinforce that like a decade or two spent seeing form first, subject second. The painting painted upside down (and not just hung upside down) is seen as abstract form instead of as a picture of known objects. I've never been satisfied with the formalist explanation, since I think most successful drawing and...
I almost walked through Sophie von Hellerman's show at Greene Naftali without thinking, which is to say without really looking. My eye went to a canvas that features a group of figures gathered around a table with a huge drawing or map unfolded on top. I couldn't figure it out visually, what it was. Then I marvelled at how little von Hellerman used to suggest a figure -- a dash of line here and a blotch of color there -- and became enchanted. Her work looks soft and sloppy, but don't be deceived. It's strategic and suggestive. She is often described as dreamy or Romantic, and it's easy to agree. Her imagery is magical and her method is to work around the concrete facts. Instead of drawing the meat of a subject, she'll dash a minimal outline or wash a color field that's very non-specific. She applies pigment directly to unprimed canvas -- like Morris Louis -- so the colors have a subtle glow. Take the photo above: two faces looking at a group of bees. One face washes out, as if a shadow. The bees could be a threat or a discovery. It's Sophie von Hellerman's art to...
Will Ryman, "Tuesday Afternoon" at Marlborough Gallery, NYC. Through Dec. 8. Will Ryman's work can look like hell, which is absolutely perfect for the monster hangover he's laid out in Marlborough's new Chelsea space. Ryman spent ten years as a writer and dramatist and first created sculpture for one of his plays in 2001. Narrative and character tension is still there in these playful sculptures that wear their handmade qualities pretty raw. "Tuesday Afternoon" is made of two large sculture groups. One is a teeming city street with all sorts of characters and a beautiful lamp post. The other is a larger than life portrait of a man in bed, surrounded by a pack of cigarettes, Doritos, and beer. These two sculptures are designed to be read as happening at the same time -- a Tuesday afternoon. The bed is amazing. There's a larger-than-life slapdash quality to the intimate way Ryman has formed each cigarette and Dorito with wire mesh and paper mache that's reminiscent of Claes Oldenberg. It takes disposable culture seriously not for irony's sake, but because junkfood and beercans are the props in our lives. Is the man on the bed asleep with a cigarette? Closing...
These are not photographs. Robert Longo's charcoal drawings are incredibly life-like -- and huge (note the scale in the second photo, where you can see the first photo reflected, along with other gallery-goers). His latest show, called "Children of Nyx," is a small group of drawings of children and infants. The children all seem to be asleep, eyes closed and lips slightly parted. Seeing these kids is like seeing a movie theater from the outside. You can only guess at the dreams inside. Nyx was the Greek goddess of the night and creation, mother of Sleep and Death. Longo's drawings capture these associations perfectly. The children are slightly unsettling. Their faces are luminous but surrounded by a coal black, as if they're being seen by flashlight. The black void, combined with the six-foot scale of these drawings, makes them suggestive and towering and slightly ominous. What seems peaceful at first can become precious, precarious, in danger. Is this what it feels like to have children? Robert Longo at Metro Pictures, NYC, through Dec. 8....
I first came across Tucker Nichols' work on his What a Day site, where the artist makes one small work a day and posts it online for all to see. His pieces are deceptively simple and engaged in Nichols' everyday life. One piece could feature the simple scrawl of an advertising phrase, while another could be a mysterious shape that looks like cotton balls trapped in a bird cage. His work seemed to be about taking the things we throw away or don't pay attention to and clarifying them in small, strong compositions, like seeing a city reflected in rainwater that's gathered in a bottle cap. As much as I liked seeing his work online, I later happened to see his show at a very fancy, upscale gallery in Chelsea and decided to e-mail Tucker to figure out what's going on. Be sure to visit http://www.tuckernichols.com to play along. Daily Gusto: How did you start creating art? Tucker Nichols: There was never a break between drawing as a kid and now, really. I started taking drawing more seriously when academia didn't fit the things I wanted to say. The decision to "become an artist" came as a result of...
