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latest postings: Qigu Jiang, Film on Ariane Lopez-Huici, Roxy Paine, Allison Katz, Regina Granne, Venice Biennale, Berlin, Automoblies in Art, Chantal Joffe, Takako Azami, The April Review Panel, Chuck Close, 1992009, Picasso,

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PIC OF THE WEEK
June 29 - July 5

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE

The Floor Scrapers, 1876. Oil on canvas, 31-1/2 x 39-3/8 inches. Private collection

on view in the exhibition, Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings from Paris to the Sea, closing at the Brooklyn Museum July 5

It would be odd to describe the richest Impressionist as the Cinderella of that movement, but Gustave Caillebotte has always been its sleeper.  His wealth, perhaps, was to blame: a passionate yachtsman, he seemed as happy on the sea as painting it.  In acknowledgement, an entire wall in this two room show is given over to sleek wooden models of boats after the master’s designs.  The exhibition keenly misses the key loans that would give it a definitive air, such as The Parquet Floor Strippers from the Museé d’Orsay or Paris Street, A Rainy Day in the Art Institute of Chicago, but an appropriately minor show for a minor artist can still pack gems, such as this smaller study of floor scrapers.  In their absorption and sweaty exertions they surely constitute an iconic depiction of labor, comparable in astuteness of observation to Courbet’s stonecutters and Velázquez’s spinners.  Equaling its social insight is the picture’s value as a painting about painting, in the way the stripped veneer accentuates a sense of surface that is at once literal and metaphorical.

DAVID COHEN

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
(718) 638-5000

archive of prior pics:
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REVIEWS

posted 06/26/2009 DAVID BRODY on Roxy Paine at the Met
	Paine manages to steer these leafless “Dendroids,” as he calls them, between the Scylla of transparency and the Charibdis of mechanization.

posted 07/03/2009 DIANE THODOS on Qigu Jiang at the Koehnline Museum, Des Plaines
	Jiang’s work is philosophy in motion: Essence of line and essence of modern truth are his constant themes.

posted 06/26/2009 from Montreal, Canada CHRISTINA KEE on Allison Katz at Battat Contemporary
	Although this exhibition consists of a wide range of works done over the past two years it is purely, and unapologetically, commemorative in spirit.

posted 06/28/2009 EMILY WARNER on Regina Granne at A.I.R. Gallery
	Precisely situated in undelineated seas of space, Granne’s forms feel at once boldly declarative and alarmingly precipitous

posted 06/23/2009 JOAN BOYKOFF BARON & REUBEN BARON on John Chamberlain, Chakaia Booker and Dirk Skreber
John Chamberlai	Three exhibitions in New York last month showed that despite lagging sales of American cars, the car's role in art works remains undiminished.

posted 06/19/2009 JONATHAN GOODMAN on Chantal Joffe at Cheim & Read
	Joffe is not a perfectionist. Instead, she is intent on capturing a moment in time, not with a photographer’s precision, but as a painterly tableau

posted 06/13/2009 DEVEN GOLDEN on Chuck Close at PaceWildenstein
	The impulse to take Close for granted is perhaps all the greater because the work has an effortless assurance to it.  But we must slow down, look past the facility, past the celebrity, to find the real investigation still taking place

posted 06/13/2009 JONATHAN GOODMAN on Takako Azami at M.Y. Art Prospects
	One of the most interesting aspects is Azami’s negative capability: her technique demonstrates a willingness to expunge the self in favor of a poetic exactitude of description

posted 06/13/2009 COLLEEN ASPER on 1992009 at D'Amelio Terras
Jessica Diamond	1992009 is a group show with a catchy sci-fi name that offers the theory that 1992 and 2009 share not only similar cultural landmarks–the replacement of a Bush in the White House with a Democrat, the war in Iraq, and fiscal failure–but also an artistic vision.

FEATURES

Dispatches: Venice
BILL BERKSON on the
53rd Venice Biennale


Mona Hatoum

Film Review
DEBORAH GARWOOD on Ariane Lopez-Huici: The Body Close Up: A Film by Marilia Destot

If sexuality and non-conformity are abiding topics in Lopez-Huici’s oeuvre, Destot’s remarkable film asserts that the body’s jubilation, exuberance, and self-acceptance are themes that lie at its heart

Dispatches: Berlin
DAVID CARRIER
on exhibitions of Giotto and Rothko at the Gemäldegalerie, and Picturing America at the Deutsches Guggenheim

Giotto

Essay
DAVID BRODY on
Late Picasso at Gagosian

The problem with late Picasso has to do with his stubborn insistence on diaristic expressionism increasingly isolated from changing times

podcast
THE REVIEW PANEL
April 2009


Peter Saul

Carol Diehl, Blake Gopnik and Alexi Worth join David Cohen to review exhibitions byTacita Dean, Jenny Holzer, Stephen Prina and Peter Saul.

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