Some Memorable Shows from 2021-2022

The past two plus years have been challenging in so many ways -- no travel, no restaurants, no openings, no hugs -- to mention only a few of the more minor Covid losses....Nevertheless, some important shows happened in New York, and I was able to get to a small fraction of them. Here are images from a few of the standouts. My sincere regrets to all my friends and colleagues whose shows I missed.

 

 Jacqueline Humphries at Greene Naftale

 

 

Joan Mitchell at David Zwirner

 

 

 Richard Pousette-Dart at Pace

 

 

 Thornton Willis at David Richard

 

 

 Michelle Stuart at Lelong

 

 

Ron Gorchov at Vito Schnabel

 

 

David Diao at Postmasters

 

 

Mary Obering at Bortolami

 

 

 Frank Bowling at Hauser & Wirth

 

 

 Svenja Deininger at Maryanne Boesky

 Brice Marden at Gagosian

Maja Ruznic at Karma

Terry Winters at Matthew Marks

 

 

 

 Jasper Johns at the Whitney Museum

More Memorable NY Shows from 2019

Squeak Carnwath at Jane Lombard

Mary Corse at Pace and Dia Beacon

Helen Frankenthaler at the Parrish Museum & Mnuchin

Peter Halley at Greene Naftali

Jasper Johns at Matthew Marks

Jasper Johns at Craig F. Starr (see post below)

Brice Marden at Gagosian (see post below)

Knox Martin at Hollis Taggart

Joanne Mattera at Odetta

Alice Neel at David Zwirner

Doug Ohlson at Washburn

Michelle Stuart at Galerie Lelong

John Zurier at Peter Blum

JASPER JOHNS at Craig F. Starr

 Jasper Johns, Corpse and Mirror II, 1974-75, oil & sand on canvas (4 panels), 57 x 75 inches

  Jasper Johns, Corpse and Mirror II (detail)

Craig F. Starr Gallery is featuring a remarkable collection of Jasper Johns "Crosshatch" paintings -- some that have never been shown, through January 18, 2020.

Johns developed this motif in the mid 1970s, and it is a distinct high point in his oeuvre. Emerging at a moment when painting was marginalized, this body of work marks Johns' first major foray into pure abstraction, and is a tour de force of sensuality and conceptual rigor. Here Johns devised an intricate system of mirrored structures that allowed him to dance around the space/plane of the painting, moving this way and that, building beautiful matrices of existential engagement.

  Jasper Johns, Between the Clock and the Bed, 1983, oil on canvas, 17 x 30 inches

  Jasper Johns, Between the Clock and the Bed, 1983, oil on canvas, 17 x 30 inches

  Jasper Johns, Cicada, 1979, oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches

  Jasper Johns, Cicada, 1979, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

 Jasper Johns, Dancers on a Plane, 1982, graphite wash on India paper, 35 x 27 inches

THE CRITIC SEES part 1: Johns

Jasper Johns, Between the Clock and the Bed, 1982

The plethora of reviews of the Johns "Gray" exhibition have presented an interesting microcosm of current art criticism in general. It's sometimes hard to tell that the various critics are talking about the same show. And it can be equally hard to say why we subject ourselves to reading this stuff at all. It can also be interesting to consider what it must have been like for Johns to work his whole professional life since that first Castelli show in the center of that criticism vortex. Fact is, for many critics, Johns' work is inseparable from the body of criticism it has generated. The reputation precedes and eclipses the work. 

With paintings, there's almost always a disconnect between the critics' spin and what is actually there. But especially with Johns, the critical reputation is one thing, and the presence and resonance of his work (individually and as a body) is something else that happens one-to-one between the viewer and the objects. There is also a big difference between where Johns' work sits as a critical entity, and how his work has resonated and persisted in the minds of painters. One of the first shows I saw when I moved to NYC in 1975 was the cross-hatch paintings at Castelli uptown. That memory is still quite vivid. At a time when the broad critical consensus was that painting was at best irrelevant, Johns was making what I consider to be his greatest work, paintings that exist far beyond words, and hold their own against any painting from any time.

I recommend Joanne Mattera's sensitive and intelligent report on the "Gray" show from the vantage point of a painter.