Sanford Schwartz | The New York Review of Books

Young and in Love

Salman Toor’s absorbing show at the Whitney depicts the pleasures, tensions, and small moments of gay life.

Salman Toor: How Will I Know

an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, November 13, 2020–April 4, 2021

April 8, 2021 issue

A Painter’s Performances

In Frank Auerbach’s paintings, we can see the mysterious and often ferocious bouts he seemed to have with his materials.

Frank Auerbach: Selected Works, 1978–2016

an exhibition at Luhring Augustine Chelsea, New York City, October 31, 2020–February 20, 2021

March 11, 2021 issue

Jacob Lawrence: Massacre in Boston, 12 x 16 inches, 1954–1955; panel 2 from Struggle: From the History of the American People

The Revolutionary Jacob Lawrence

‘Struggle: From the History of the American People’ charts the strife of early US history in a fierce Cubist/Expressionist style.

Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle

an exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, January 18–August 9, 2020; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, August 29–November 1, 2020; the Birmingham Museum of Art, November 20, 2020–February 7, 2021; the Seattle Art Museum, March 5–May 23, 2021; and the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., June 26–September 19, 2021

November 5, 2020 issue

Horace Pippin: The Getaway, 24 5/8 x 36 inches, 1939

With Flying Colors

Horace Pippin, American Modern

by Anne Monahan

Horace Pippin: From War to Peace

an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, July 19, 2019–December 31, 2020

May 14, 2020 issue

Félix Vallotton: Dinner by Lamplight, 22 1/2 x 35 1/4 inches, 1899

Vallotton’s Demons

Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet

an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, June 30–September 29, 2019; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, October 29, 2019–January 26, 2020

February 13, 2020 issue

Martín Ramírez: Untitled, 45 1/2 x 31 inches, circa 1948–1952

Band of Outsiders

“Memory Palaces: Inside the Collection of Audrey B. Heckler” at the American Folk Art Museum

Memory Palaces: Inside the Collection of Audrey B. Heckler

an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, New York City, September 17, 2019–January 26, 2020

The Hidden Art: 20th- and 21st-Century Self-Taught Artists from the Audrey B. Heckler Collection

by Valérie Rousseau with Jane Kallir, Anne-Imelda Radice, and others

December 5, 2019 issue

Giovanni Battista Moroni: The Tailor, 39 1/8 x 30 1/4 inches, circa 1570

The Pure Portraitist

Moroni: The Riches of Renaissance Portraiture

an exhibition at the Frick Collection, New York City, February 21–June 2, 2019

May 9, 2019 issue

Dana Schutz: The Visible World, 108 x 140 inches, 2018

Impossible Pictures

Dana Schutz: Imagine Me and You

an exhibition at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York City, January 10–February 23, 2019

April 18, 2019 issue

John Dunkley: Banana Plantation, 29 1/8 x 17 5/8 inches, circa 1945

Close Up and Far Away

John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night

an exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, May 26, 2017–January 14, 2018; the National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, April 29–July 29, 2018; and the American Folk Art Museum, New York City, October 30, 2018–February 24, 2019

March 21, 2019 issue

Jack Whitten: Homage to the Kri-Kri, 25 x 8 x 13 inches, 1985

The Secret Sculptor

Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963–2017

an exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, April 22–July 29, 2018; and the Met Breuer, New York City, September 6–December 2, 2018

December 6, 2018 issue

Carroll Dunham: Any Day, 78 x 100 inches, 2017

A Bosch for Us Now

Into Words: The Selected Writings of Carroll Dunham

edited and with a foreword by Paul Chan, and an introduction by Scott Rothkopf

Carroll Dunham: Wrestlers

catalog of an exhibition at Blum and Poe, Los Angeles, April 28–June 17, 2017, with an essay by Alexi Worth

Carroll Dunham

an exhibition at the Gladstone Gallery, New York City, April 20–June 22, 2018

November 8, 2018 issue

In Their Own Worlds

Learning more about, and trying to place, “outsider” artists

Outliers and American Vanguard Art

an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., January 28–May 13, 2018; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 24–September 30, 2018; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, November 18, 2018–March 18, 2019

Vestiges and Verse: Notes from the Newfangled Epic

an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, New York City, January 21–May 27, 2018

June 7, 2018 issue

The Master of Eglfing-Haar

Should Eugen Gabritschevsky be called an outsider artist? The question hovers over his pictures, adding yet another level of mystery to them.

Eugen Gabritschevsky: 1893–1979

an exhibition at La Maison Rouge, Paris, July 8–September 18, 2016; Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, November 11, 2016–February 19, 2017; and the American Folk Art Museum, New York City, March 13–August 13, 2017

October 26, 2017 issue

Florine Stettheimer: Picnic at Bedford Hills, 40 5/16 x 50 1/4 inches, 1918

Taking Her Place in American Art

Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry

an exhibition at the Jewish Museum, New York City, May 5–September 24, 2017; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, October 21, 2017–January 28, 2018

July 13, 2017 issue

Jean-Siméon Chardin: The Morning Toilette, 19 1/4 x 15 1/2 inches, 1740–1741

A Swedish Collector in Paris

Treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden: The Collections of Count Tessin

an exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York City, February 3–May 14, 2017

May 11, 2017 issue

David Salle: Tennyson, 78 x 117 x 5 1/2 inches, 1983

‘The Sheer Excitement of Being an Artist’

How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art

by David Salle

March 23, 2017 issue

Picabia’s Big Moment

A reevaluation of the complex French artist

Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction

an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich, June 3–September 25, 2016; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, November 20, 2016–March 19, 2017

February 23, 2017 issue

The Genius of Making It Small

The surprising, delighting, and sometimes mystifying art of Charles LeDray

Charles LeDray Works

an exhibition at the Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York City, September 9–October 29, 2016

November 10, 2016 issue

Stuart Davis: Landscape with Garage Lights, 32 x 42 inches, 1931–1932

Stuart Davis’s America

He kept reimagining, and making more imposing, his art of form and color

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, June 10–September 25, 2016; the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., November 20, 2016–March 5, 2017; the de Young, San Francisco, April 1–August 6, 2017; and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, September 16, 2017–January 8, 2018

October 13, 2016 issue

Small clay sculptures from Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s series Suddenly This Overview (1981–present), which depict, according to Sanford Schwartz, ‘historical events, moments that might have been, and visualizations of age-old sayings and concepts we believe we ought to know,’ as well as ‘everyday scenes and objects.’ Clockwise from top left: Book and Reader, Galileo Galilei Shows Two Monks That the World Is Round, The Alchemist I, and The Dog of the Inventor of the Wheel Feels the Satisfaction of His Master.

Art That Reclaims the Ignored

Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better

an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, February 5–April 27, 2016; and the Museo Jumex, Mexico City, June 9–September 17, 2016

May 12, 2016 issue