Last point in this Artsy write up is true- I discovered KAWS abstract work first (GQ wrote about him recently as well). It’s kind of funny that the big “A” Art world still toys with an in/out paradigm discussion at all- like either choice (or success in either world) is about anything other than money. Being sold in a specific channel makes something Art? No, the time and weight of history does that.
#kaws
Like most 80s kids I remember Spirograph so Juxtapoz caught my eye with this one. I had to post them because ANALOG!!! Click through to his IG feed and watch some video.
#jamesnolandgandy
Mosaic Room in London went #tbt with this show exploring how Melehi and other “artists in postcolonial Casablanca created a specifically Moroccan form of Modernism, merging the influences of Pop art and Hard-edge painting with the rich tradition of abstraction in Berber craft and architecture.”
#mohamedmelehi
Big time #tbt
The featured image for this Artsy article caught my eye because Stuart has always fascinated me– I’ve been known on more than one occasion to espouse the idea that abstract painting aspires to a condition which jazz naturally achieves (where form and content are indistinguishable). Great job by Jackson Arn to point out that Davis’s aspirations for his work “had already been achieved by virtuosic black musicians.”
#stuartdavis
I discovered Robert when he and I were in a show together. Check out more of his newest work.
#roberthyatt
So sad to see Thomas has passed. He left some good ones for us!
I did a double take when I saw the synopsis for an article titled Surrealism and the Subjective with the image below. The connection to and use of automatism- some would just call it “intuition”- by practitioners of abstraction is well documented and in this instance striking given the technical rigor of work whose apparent premise of planning belies the use of chance.
#jamesflynn
I found Sanford through someone else’s IG feed, lots of feels about his current show at Minus Space. Can definitely relate to the impulse to adopt a compositional strategy that one can explore indefinitely.
#sanfordwurmfeld
I’d say this is a profound read about the first and only tenured African American faculty member in the history of the Yale School of Art. Amazing story and really excellent formalist work that belies the notion that abstraction doesn’t stand for other ideas.
I also made a Pinterest “gallery” of his work, including uploading some images myself from other sources.
#robertreed
Seeing Morris Louis’s Gamma Delta in Hyperallergic’s review of Spilling Over made me go revisit David’s IG feed.
#davidmatthewking
Since February is Black History Month, I thought it was worth digging in a little bit to find out what part of US History had perhaps been missing from my education- I know for a fact of course that there are black painters making work I love (Stanley and Elias, looking at you).
After reading this great article from Art News circa 2014, I settled on Norman. If you guessed from the print below that he was influenced by Ad Reinhardt, my theory is that went both ways. Read this bio from the Smithsonian and check out this Pinterest board I made as well.
#normanlewis
Zest is a French graffiti artist-turned-gallery-artist; Widewalls had a blurb up about his newest show and there’s a great bio there, too. The paintings are pretty good and his public work is really strong, easy to see why he caught the eye of Art world folks.
#zest
Painting After Art is Dead 