What's a signature mean?

I ask because I don't know. It could mean nothing. It could add to the meaning of a work. In Jasper Johns' case, it certainly means at least one thing: big $$. But I want it to mean more. I started thinking about Johns' signature because I went to his show of drawings from 1997-2007 at Matthew Marks Gallery (NYC, through April 12). I noticed in the end of his show that he marked some of his drawings with very precise signatures. It's not just his signature on this handful of pieces. It's "J.Johns / March '06 / St....

The rough sheen of Faris McReynolds

Faris McReynolds makes paintings like good baseball pitcher throws spitballs. It's nasty stuff, roughed up and delivered with a predictable inpredictability. There's an amazing moment where you lean in and ask "How did he do that?" And as soon as the question is asked, he's got you. Check out the photos above, of a painting in his current show at Goff + Rosenthal (NYC, until April 26). One is a detail from the other. It's a big painting of a bunch of cowboys looking at strippers on a stage. The close-up makes one the of the dancers look like...

Taking the train with Robert Morris

Artist Robert Morris spoke last night at the New School as part of the Sculpture Center's "Subjective Histories of Scultpure" series. I have a soft spot for Morris' sculptures. In 1991, I saw a small collection of his work at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It was like a miniature retrospective of his work. I was just in high school, and growing up in a Richmond suburb, I hadn't been exposed to minimalism or any of the more radical artistic developments from the last 50 years. Entering the gallery, I saw one of Morris' felt sculptures. I looked at...

Katy Moran, downright Constable-esque

In the same way we can be moved by the rustic paintings of Lascaux, seeing something innately human in their creation and stroke, we can look at Katy Moran's paintings and be moved at something that will last as long as our DNA does. They are like cave paintings of the future, descended from those damp, rough walls via Delacroix and Joan Mitchell. There's just something about Katy Moran's paintings that is very, very old. Or really, I mean "old masterful." Old master-y. Whatever the kids call it. (Spray Glue calls them "Victorian.") Moran, a 33-year-old from Great Britain,...

Julian Hatton's folded lanscapes

Julian Hatton isn't exactly a cubist, but his approach to landscape is that of an artist trying to compress multiple perspectives into one flat canvas. His colorful landscapes, currently on view at Elizabeth Harris Gallery (in NYC, until April 12, so act fast), are suggestive, evocative, and ultimately satisfying in themselves. His work can be a bait-and-switch where, in the end, you're happy to be fooled. The color is extrapolated, which is to say it's not realistic but nor is it unrealistic, exactly. He'll use perspective lines that evoke a fence by a country road, or a round-ish shape...

Thomas Nozkowski at Fisher Landau

Painter Thomas Nozkowski spoke to a crowd gathered at the Fisher Landau Center in Long Island City, Queens. The occasion was a small survey of his paintings there (until April 14). Pace Wildenstein also has a show up, of Nozkowski's most recent work (until May 3). The show at Fisher Landau spans all of Nozkowski's mature period since the early 1970's, and includes 20 of his small-ish canvases. Mr. Nozkowski, who arrived in his Suburu just as I got to Fisher Landau, is a pleasant and modest man with big ideas and an unassuming manner. He talked about going...

Art bloggers around a table

If bloggers have a roundtable and no one blogs about it, is it still a media event? I'm not sure, but I'll do my duty and blog about it any way. Hung over and in not a great mood to look at art, I was pleased to listen to the Red Dot Art Fair's blogger's roundtable at the Park Hotel. It featured Carol Diehl (ArtVent, Edward Winkleman, C-Monster, Paddy Johnson (Art Fag City), Sharon Butler (Two Coats of Paint) and Joanne Mattera was moderator. My favorite part was bloggers recounting their favorite big-traffic headlines. Who can top "How to...

Christie's contemporary

I took some time today to stop by the Christie's in Rockefeller Plaza for the First Open Post-War and Contemporary Art preview. The auction happens April 1. There were a lot of shocking sticker prices that made me wonder how long the art market can maintain this. The place was packed, however, and there was a lot of good work there. This is one of those cases where I didn't photograph all my favorite work -- just what struck my fancy for one reason or another. See photos below, with Christie's estimated prices attached -- and my totally unqualified commentary...

Reading John Ruskin

Reading John Ruskin is like sitting in a living room with that good old grandmother of yours who lived through the Great Depression and World War II and everything after. Not the annoying one who talks about being part of "the Greatest Generation" (though that seems to be more of an anxiety-born boomer label for them). I'm talking about the one known for her patience, thoughtfulness, inner strength and forgiveness. Perhaps she's named Mildred or Barbara and she's tougher than you and twice as kind. Reading John Ruskin's thoughts on art reminded me of her. "Imperfection is in some sort...

Jasper Johns: Gray at the Met

There is an orgy of art happening at the Met these days and I encourage everyone to check out the Poussin show (which converted me to playing in the fields with nymphs), the Courbet show (wowsers) and last but not least, Jasper Johns. There were several surprises for me in the Johns "Gray" show: first, the show is big. I was thinking a small gallery of a handful of paintings. No. It's pretty much a Johns retrospective in black and white, as if you've bought a cheap used copy of a '60s book on Johns -- only they're the...

'Unmonumental' at the New Museum

After hearing so many negative things about the inaugural show at the new New Museum, I really draged my feet before heading down to check it out. Since the waves of negativity primed me for a bad show, I was in the best possible place to go see it: Things could only look up from what I was expecting. Right? Right. It's not as bad as you've heard, but let's face it: it's still not good. The show features lots of work using disposable materials, magazines and cardboard boxes and couches found on the curb. This doesn't make it a...

The new New Museum

I finally made it out to the new New Museum on Bowery. I have fond memories of the old building in Soho, although I would always leave that space remembering the awkwardness and particularities of a museum shoe-horning itself into a very old building not designed for museum display. The first thing I noticed approaching the new building on Bowery is that it looks like a prison, except designed for Dr. Caligari. I understand the steel fence is supposed to operate like a scrim, filtering out light to a shimmering effect. Instead, it just looks like constrictive chain link....

Whitney Biennial, off the top of my notes

I went to the Whitney Biennial today. I plan on writing a longer review, but I thought I would draw up a list of words and phrases out of my notebook to maybe give the tenor of what's up. Like most Biennials, it was a mixed bag of work. Very few stand-outs for me, but the mood was very strong -- like a lo-fi Indie rock album. If it's supposed to be a portrait of the artworld moment, then the curators did a good job. Here's my list : found objects involuntary medium slap-dash rickety DIY boring games shifting perspective...

Luc Tuymans at David Zwirner

It's test time. Which of the following words best describes the above painting? 1) Soft 2) Luminous 3) Monochrome 4) Gruesome...

Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham

For anyone who believes painting's connection to an artist's observation of nature, Rackstraw Downes is a hero. Downes can spend months on a canvas, going out to a site every day for a half hour or so -- so the light remains the same each day -- observing a scene and making sketches from nature. And when I say nature, I don't mean the glorious American escape of the Hudson River painters, or even Downes' classmate Neil Welliver. I mean the complicated and well-trodden landscape of populated America. Much of Downes work, in fact, is of busy urban street...

Juan Usle's organic geometry

I apologize for the photos above--it's impossible to convey the charms of Juan Usle's warm, charming paintings. He paints in thin, translucent layers, grids mostly, to which the press release for the show credits his living in New York City part time. I'm not sure about that, but the discrete blocks in much of this work makes me think of the many discrete days Usle had to sit down to get his canvases to glow like they do. At Cheim & Reid until March 15....

Chris Martin

Chris Martin is at the end of his rope. The top of the ladder. There's nowhere to go. So why not play? If Pollock was melted Picasso, Chris Martin can be melted de Kooning with shellacked Wonder Bread (really!) sorted by a hairbrush. Most of his work in the current show is abstract and contains added collage elements to make the paintings three dimensional. I was reminded of Joan Mitchell's roll-up-your sleeves ethic to get every last drop out of a surface. Her canvases always look like she's worked hard to make her surfaces shimmer. But those were the...

Weschler's Robert Irwin

It says a lot about artist Robert Irwin that my favorite work of his has never actually been created. Irwin is a conceptual artist, horse race afficionado and dreamer whose artistic career is sketched in Lawrence Weschler's superb book "Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees." This book gives Irwin's conceptual art a humanity that experiencing it in person does not. Weschler's book traces how Irwin went from being a precocious teenager winning national figurative drawing contests to joining the second generation of abstract painters in Los Angeles, to becoming a mature artist stretching a rope in...

Georg Baselitz remixes German history

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...

Sophie von Hellermann: Sleepwaking

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...

Will Ryman is dreaming

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...

Robert Longo: Children of Nyx

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...

Artist Julie Armbruster talks sharks and gesso

There's nothing like eating a southern breakfast under a team of manatee angels. I was eating biscuits and gravy at the Early Girl Eatery in Asheville, NC, when I became enchanted by these small, colorful paintings on the walls. There was a swarm of blubbery angels and a potato boy. They were cartoony but very textured. The paintings have a beautiful, milky encaustic surface that makes the wild imagery even more mysterious and dreamlike. I decided to e-mail artist Julie Armbruster about her work. [Pictured left: Her Evil Nature Could No Longer Remain Hidden. 4 x 5 inches. Click on photo for larger image.] Gusto: How did you become an artist? Julie Armbruster: I have always loved the idea of becoming an artist, but I originally studied to be a teacher. After I tried teaching at a private school/cult in Connecticut I decided I needed to be a better artist if I wanted to be able to teach. So, I enrolled in the most fantastic MA program at NYU to study painting in Venice, Italy. It never occurred to me that being an artist was a viable option, but I spent months enjoying the idea of it. I had a fantastic studio in Venice off of the Zattere and spent every waking hour working out my ideas. The more [time] I spent painting and drawing the more I became addicted to the idea of making a go at exploring my personal vision more seriously. I spent the next two years in Williamsburg, Brooklyn trying to keep my head above water and make enough money to earn free time. It was a losing battle and I decided to move to a place where I could work less for money and more for myself. I moved to Asheville, NC in 2005 and have been working on my paintings ever since. I spend about 30 hours a week in the studio and feel that I have just scratched the surface of where I want to be as an artist. There is a unique balance here of creative people, affordable living, and natural beauty in Asheville and I feel that the energy and creative support I’ve found here keeps me going. More specifically, it was my first show at Early Girl Eatery that helped me to believe that this was a real option. When I proposed the show to the owners I had no new work. I wanted to make it site specific. I wanted to incorporate the quirkiness of Asheville with the diner colors of the restaurant with my own personal vision. Three months later, I made over 40 paintings for the opening and worked out my current process. Within a year I sold over 100 paintings and have set up two studios and maintain a 30-hour studio work week. I currently have a new show up at Early Girl. It is becoming more real to me with every show; I grow more and my paintings are becoming increasingly involved, detailed, and personal.

Lisa Yuskavage: 'People take me too seriously'

Lisa Yuskavage gave a talk yesterday at the New School for the Public Art Fund. She showed slides of her work since college and how her work evolved from somehwat precious, quiet paintings about light to big, outrageous canvases of caricatured naked women. She talked about the breakthrough moment when she had her first New York show in 1990 and actually hated the work she put up. "I remember thinking 'oh my god my work sucks'," she said. She took a year off from painting but came back with the kinds of canvases she's so well known for now. She...

David Salle's "Bearding the Lion in His Den"

In his evocatively meaningless art installation from 1977, David Salle manages to mathematically determine just how many elements an art work should have to seem important. The answer is four. A recreation of "Bearding the Lion in His Den" currently fills the back room at Deitch Projects (until March 24). Although it was made before Salle painted the towering collage work that made his name, "Bearding" is a 3-D form of the basic David Salle idea. That idea is to come as close as possible to making a work that means something without crossing the line. In the middle of...

Overheard at hip Williamsburg art gallery

The art was ok. The conversation was lacking. DUDE: Dudes, don't ever get married. HIPSTER: Not. In. The. Plan. DUDE: Good, because my wife manages to find my money no matter how well I hide it. HIPSTER #2: Cha! That's their specialty....

Give 'em the razzle dazzle

Camouflage fashion has become so passe. It was great when Public Enemy did it. But Gwen Stefani? Let her eat MREs!. The opposite is much better: when fashion designers take over the military. (Thanks, Angelo)...

Saul Bass wears the crown

Movies used to have boring credits. Saul Bass changed that. In his intros to Vertigo and The Man With the Golden Arm, he married graphic design and motion pictures into a new art form. Check it out....

Art day: Van Gogh with a side of Bacon

Check out the great site built for the Met's van Gogh drawing show. And six degrees of (ear) separation... there's audio of Kevin Bacon reading van Gogh's letters!...

Seth! Seth! Seth!

I've raved before about him. Now it's time again for me to plug Seth, a comic book artist whose new book "Wimbledon Green" has just hit stores. He's got an elegant line and a wistful style. He's graced the cover of your favorite Aimee Mann record. Now read the Onion interview with Seth (and check out the great photo)....

Seth, the "Self-Pitying Melancholic" We Love

Your DG editors are big fans of Seth, born Gregory Gallant*, the Canadian indie comics artist (or "graphic novelist," in the parlance of our times). In fact, we like him so much that we bought an original drawing a few years ago at a signing at Million Year Picnic in Cambridge, Mass. Interviews with Seth are fairly rare, so we were thrilled to see this one in Bookslut, in which he discusses, among other things, his notorious nostalgia: The modern world is very ugly… and the pop culture is so mind-numbingly dumb that you have to make a conscious effort...

Danny Gregory's Portraits of Homeless Men at TMN

Because we like to keep you updated on artist and storyteller Danny Gregory... The Morning News has posted his three portraits of homeless men. Is it me, or is Mr. Gregory just getting better and better? p.s. We just got Everyday Matters, and it's definitely worth every cent....

I Know, I Miss His Posts, Too

Since Harry has been too busy at work to blog, I thought I'd post some links to some excellent fairly-recent art articles. I'm no art scholar, so you'll get just the facts from me. The New Yorker on Agnes Martin. The Guardian Online (I get all my links from the Guardian these days, it seems) on my sister's favorite, Alice Neel and Edward Hopper, as well as a Robert Hughes piece on "defend[ing] art against the degrading power of the wealthy collectors" (bring on the "art fascist" epithets!)...

Hutcheson's Hosanna

Gusto alumni R. Hutcheson has cooked up a delicious art project to see how many people he can get to view one of his paintings. His sideshow circus style will bring a smile to your face. Take a look....

Our Favorites are the "Fudge Packer" (Not What You're Thinking!) and the "Gymnast's Guillotine"

How did we miss this? Gusto seldom misses an opportunity to plug Danny Gregory, particularly his lovely collaborations with The Morning News. Anyone who has ever flown in an airplane (or, incidentally, watched the "Props" game on Whose Line is It Anyway -- Anglophiles' version, please) will appreciate The Sky Mall Pop Quiz....

I'm feeling Wet, Wet, Wet

The fine folks over at Sharpeworld have scanned in two full issues of seminal 70's punk rock/new wave rag Wet for your viewing pleasure. Don't you owe them a big kissy thank-you? Wet had outlandish DIY collage, loud graphics, and innovative typography. It was L.A. at its finest. Visit an archive of Wet covers here, and read a brief intro to the magazine here....

Creative Taxidermy

People always object to boxing as a barbaric sport that insults human decency. But would those same people object if squirrels were outfitted with gloves and went 12 rounds? I think not. Pictured at left are real animals in a real boxing match. Of course, these animals have been dead for over a century and have been posed by 19th century taxidermist Edward Hart (b. 1847 - d.1928). It's just one of the many wondrous discoveries over at A Case of Curiosities. (via brokentype)...

My pet peeves about artists all involve whiskey

"This my pet peeve about artists," the former buffalo rancher said. "They assume buffalo have horns like cattle. But they're built differently, damn it."...

May is not Rasterbation month

As hard as it is for me to believe, the internet does occasionally wander into being useful. Witness the Rasterbator. It takes a small photo and blows it up to billboard size, dividing it into handy printable portions. Now we can all be Gilbert and George!...

The "Provocatively Unfashionable" Mr. Freud

Ok, I'm a freak for Lucien Freud. First I post about the London showing of Freud's latest work, and then I get into a long philosophical argument in praise of Freud in comments at TMFTML. Now I'm going to repeat: Freud is here. In New York. In America. Come one, come all! In an ideal world, retirees would hop into their RVs and camp outside the Acquavella Galleries on 79th Street and make their autumn years full of Freud's feisty paintings. NY Times critic Michael Kimmelman reviewed the show yesterday....

Meanwhile, at the pool...

Artist Danny Gregory is back from his vacation in the Dominican Republic and has the sketchbook to prove it. I first discovered Gregory's watercolor sketches on The Morning News, where he spent a day at the Martha Stewart trial and came back with great unexpected drawings. He's also collaborated online with TMN editor Rosencrans Baldwin to draw characters from Baldwin's Brooklyn neighborhood. In his latest book, Everyday Matters, Gregory documents his daily life by drawing the things around him and writing a observations on his life and community....

Galleries 57

There were a few good art shows on 57th Street yesterday; fortunately I got there on the last day of one the of the better ones. Kraushaar Gallery showed Leon Goldin's "Five Decades of Works on Paper" (which ended on April 10; work shown left). Goldin's abstract charcoal drawings seem drawn from life, but yet are completely abstract lines and shapes. The one exception is probably the most beautiful and haunting of the works on display. You can immediately understand the trees, horizon line, and pathways in his "Riverside Park" from 1964. Goldin will scratch and rub charcoal into the...

Britain's Greatest Living Artist

Robert Hughes reviews painter Lucian Freud's show currently on view in London, and appearing in New York at Acquavella from April 28 - May 27. The Guardian has a bunch of good stuff for the Freud obsessive -- a short profile, a piece on his horse's ass, and a sneak peak at his portrait of artist David Hockney. One of Freud's models describes what it's like to sit for Freud. Check out the catalog for Freud's first show at that gallery here. (via TMFTML)...

Looking at Elizabeth Peyton

Elizabeth Peyton is a conceptual artist masquerading as a painter. She is most famous for painting images of Kurt Cobain and Leonardo DiCaprio and other pop icons. Peter Schejdahl, reviewing the current show at the Whitney for the New Yorker, describes Peyton as "the moral center of the Biennial." Peyton's work is charming and very likeable. Its small scale (her paintings are usually less than 20 inches tall or wide) and recognizable subject matter make the work inviting. She has certain skills as a colorist and decorative designer in the tradition of Matisse and David Hockney, with whom she shares...

Whitney Biennial: Crappier Than You Think

Just because the NY Times describes this year's Whitney Biennial as "easily the best in some time," don't expect big changes in the kinds of work that are shown. The Biennial is always about the art world, and the art world has been astray for a long, long time. But since there's so much wrong about the show, I'd like to point out what's right. I'll be returning to look at many of these artists again, and probably revise my opinions. But here are my highlights. Amy Cutler uses surrealistic imagery (like women's torsos on bicycle wheels) and trees in...

Dionysus at the Met

If you're coming to New York for dirty pictures, don't bother going to Ninth Avenue. Right now the lewdest show here is at the Met. "Playing with Fire: European Terracotta Models, 1740–1840" features small clay sculpture. Among these are neo-classical pieces modeled on Greek and Roman myths, and a common theme was the grappling/embracing of the man-beast Centaur and a fiesty lass. One sculpture features the Centaur spreading the woman's ass while the two struggle, and his fingers going into regions Hugh Hefner would find a tad shocking. Perhaps Camille Paglia's right about the high porn of classical antiquity. If...