Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Farrell Brickhouse’s recent paintings, on view at JJ Murphy Gallery, embody aging and stamina and the grungy inventiveness that comes with them. In these terms, perhaps the signature piece is Summers End II, tucked away all by itself in the gallery’s rear alcove. Just a foot-and-a-half square, it is a still life of Rauschenberg-grade grit that holds court, depicting what looks like a vase of motley flowers on a stand, waning but defiant in the face of time. Distressed as they are, they look not just alive but capable of aggression. The work is textured in th ..read more

Contributed by Adam Simon / I happened to visit Mary Carlson’s exhibition “Garden” at Kerry Schuss Gallery the day I finished reading Titus Groan, the first of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels, written in the 1950s. I’m not usually drawn to fantasy fiction – this book was a gift – but Peake’s dreamlike rendering of a forbidding castle with clinging ivy and bizarre inhabitants had me in thrall, primed to receive Carlson’s medieval world and its symbiotic relationships between plants and people. One of the characters in Titus Groan uses the ivy to scale the castle walls, while two others take t ..read more

Contributed by David Carrier / What is the present state of painting? For as long as I have been writing art criticism, that question has been much discussed. Some critics have said painting was dead, perhaps to be replaced by Minimalist or conceptual art. Others have argued that because painting is an inherently bourgeois art form, it can continue only as long as it is politically tinged. The Milwaukee Art Museum’s show “50 Paintings” takes an essentially empirical approach to the question. Co-curators Margaret Andera and Michelle Grabner gathered mostly mid-sized recent paintings by artists ..read more

Contributed by Vittorio Colaizzi / Some painters insist on calling themselves painters rather than artists, and it’s clear why. “Art” designates is a broad category that admits almost anything, while painting is a tradition centered on a medium. In his recent book, Duchamp’s Telegram, Thierry de Duve argues that, while Marcel Duchamp did not single-handedly invent art in general, he perceived and announced its arrival. Before that, art was inconceivable outside the context of specific media such as painting, sculpture, and architecture. Duchamp’s insight, of course, did not spell the end of pa ..read more

Please join us: For the 2024 iteration of Dumbo Open Studios, painter and Two Coats publisher Sharon Butler will have some new paintings on view, and she has also organized “BIG TOP," an exhibition of 13 talented young artists she met while teaching in the University of Connecticut's MFA Program ..read more

Contributed by Natasha Sweeten / One thought I had upon seeing Robert Moskowitz: Paintings and Drawings from Four Decades at Peter Freeman Inc. was that I could’ve been satisfied to encounter only the large wall of drawings. Arranged loosely yet thoughtfully, in a reconstruction of a wall from the artist’s studio, over sixty works of mostly oil or pastel on paper hang with a kind of majestic poise, each pinned by two thumbtacks in the top corners. Every drawing a vertical, together they present our city: here the finely ridged silhouette of the Empire State Building, there the graceful curve o ..read more

Contributed by Peter Malone / Richard Serra’s legacy carries a unique paradox. The conventional pragmatism that helped him navigate the art world went largely unnoticed, hidden by his disdainful attitude towards the public that underwrote a myth of fierce independence. Serra famously told Hal Foster in a 2018 book-length interview ..read more

Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / A striking feature of the paintings and works on paper of Janice Biala (1903–2000), now on view at Berry Campbell in a show craftily curated by Jason Andrew, is their seamless reconciliation of civilizational clutter and spatial order. Fixing that notion is the earliest painting, The Studio (1946), arraying the artist’s active workspace and establishing her intent to embrace the world through it. (Coincidentally, Vera Iliatova’s “The Drawing Room” at Nathalie Karg gamely recaptures and updates kindred impulses.) Biala’s work here, spanning the immediate post ..read more

Welcome to the April edition of the Two Coats painting-centric guide to art exhibitions in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. We’ll be updating next week, so if you have shows opening in the middle or at the end of the month, and you want us to consider them for inclusion, shoot us a note at staff@twocoatsofpaint.com. Please put “NYC Guide” in the subject line ..read more

Contributed by Karlyn Benson / Turley Gallery in Hudson is moving to a new space on Warren Street and opening three new shows on April 6. Other notable April openings include Becca Lowry and Ashley Lyon at Headstone in Kingston, Debra Ramsay and Leslie Roberts at the Garrison Art Center, and Susan Still Scott and Pearl Cowan at LABspace in Hillsdale. I’m also looking forward to the opening of The Re Institute in Millerton for the season with a show of new work by the space’s founder Henry Klimowicz. At nearby Geary there are a few weeks left to see Will Hutnick's solo exhibition and on April 2 ..read more