abstraction

Richard Serra Discusses TV, the Internet, and His Drawings at the Met

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opens Richard Serra’s first drawing retrospective to the public today — and quite the eye-opening, austere exhibition it is for the Met. Serra expands the definition of modern drawing by using drawing as a system of thinking, while focusing on process, gravity, and weight rather than representation and figuration. The radical exhibition, which runs through August 28 and then travels to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Menil Collection in Houston, features some 50 dynamic drawings — many of them monumental in scale — and a selection of sketchbooks from the past 40 years. We spoke with the artist at the Met to gain a deeper understanding of his groundbreaking work, to get his opinion on why young people prefer figurative work, and to capture his realistic thoughts on TV and the internet. … Read More

Daily Dose Pick: Harry Smith

Based on a 2001 symposium at the Getty Research Institute, Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular surveys the artist’s influence on American film, music, and the visual arts.

Featuring color reproductions of Smith’s images, as well as essays by scholars, friends, and colleagues, the book explores the life of the 20th-century Renaissance man best known for his definitive Anthology of American Folk Music — a six-record compilation of commercial songs from 1926-1932 that helped facilitate the folk revival of the ’60s. The multifaceted mystic also achieved cult-hero status in the world of cinema for his experimental films, and received critical praise for his rare, freeform abstract paintings. … Read More

Gerhard Richter: A Master of Abstraction

Arguably the greatest living painter working today, Gerhard Richter is a master of every style and genre of the medium. Richter is a recognized contributor to pop art, minimalism, neo-expressionism, photo-realism, and abstraction who has made portraits, landscapes, and still-lives. A major retrospective of Richter’s large abstract paintings traveled to two cities in Germany last year, and now New York’s Marian Goodman Gallery hosts his latest experiments with abstraction. … Read More