Author Archives: Rachel Nackman

Carter Foster on Jasper Johns

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/12/2010

A drawing like this one may seem limited on first viewing, as if the artist has provided himself with numerous constraints. A simple, rectilinear structure of two rows keeps things firmly in place. There is no color, just modulations of gray and black. The numbers are signs so familiar one might consider them boring. Space is not rendered in any deep, volumetric way.

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Anne Wheeler on Donald Judd

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/11/2010

“One thing I want is to be able to see what I’ve done,” Judd explained in a 1964 interview: “Art is something you look at…it’s nothing until it’s made visible.”

Holly Shen on Ellsworth Kelly

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/10/2010

Ellsworth Kelly is a celebrated artist whose oeuvre successfully combines both Minimalist and Color Field tendencies. Vibrant color, geometric shaped canvases, and relational scale are hallmarks of his paintings. However, Kelly’s artistic practice is marked by periods of exploration in other mediums. He pursued printing and producing handmade paper in 1973 during his collaborative years with Kenneth Tyler, the founder of Tyler Graphics in Bedford, New York, and a key figure in the so-called “American Print Renaissance.” Kelly’s revival of a traditional art form highlights his adherence to the craft of the artist.

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Erwin Redl on Jay Kelly

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/09/2010

Look closer…

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Deborah Nehmad on Win Knowlton

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/08/2010

same subject
x
same media
x
same dimensions
x
same colors
x
same hand
=
nine discrete images
nine distinct palettes
nine unique compositions
÷
one grid
=
a meditation on individuality

Look closer…

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Tad Mike on Barry Le Va

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/07/2010

Barry Le Va: In the Realm of Bach, Voltage and Love

Just as the needle threads in and out on both sides of the surface being sewn, so also the mind plunges down and reappears, tracing and linking with its strands the surface of things which is the world, the canvas of categories. It forms patterns on the latter, and their first outlines…Embroidery.
Paul Valéry

Karen Schiff on Sol LeWitt

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/06/2010

I would like to call these “non-pyramids.” First, they cannot exist in conventional three-dimensional space. (No wonder LeWitt called this series “Complex Forms”!) Second, they are not positive shapes: what might not be visible in this picture of this picture is that they are formed by filling in the negative space all around. Each “form” actually represents the absence of most of the colors that LeWitt uses to create the dark space.

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Linda Lynch on Sol LeWitt

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/05/2010

Five simple components: red, yellow, blue, black, line.
One simple instruction: horizontal brushstrokes not straight.

Within a set of specified components resides the source of all colors and the first element of drawing.

A specified instruction results in a single type of action.

But what is the impulse to make the drawing?

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Jill O’Bryan on Linda Lynch

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/04/2010

Inside this drawing live an infinite number of drawings, fluidly created and recreated by the artist until black pastel pigment and white paper coexist, neither one emerging triumphant over the other. Impossible to erase, the black pastel demands a one-way journey. Once black, forever black. And yet the white of the paper is not just the absence of black… just as Dark Ribbon Drawing is not a drawing of a ribbon. The conceptual origin of this work is Minimalism. Lynch says: “Pigment, plane, paper. Nothing more.”

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Mark Williams on Robert Mangold

By Rachel Nackman | Published: 02/03/2010

A quick look is not uncommon. Things are often what they seem. Well–they are and they aren’t. A little time is warranted to discover the pleasures of this work by Robert Mangold.

Everything you need to know is right there in the artwork.

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