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Alfred Stieglitz
Equivalent
1927
Phillips Collection

Lynn Stern
PHOTO ABSTRACTIONS
by Donald Kuspit

May 10, 2012
The first photograph was abstract, however inadvertently. It was made by Joseph Niépce in 1826 or 1827. Here is Douwe Draaisma’s description of it: “The exposure time was a full eight hours. In this way an ‘impossible’ image was created: the opposite walls have both caught the sunlight. The afternoon sun erased the morning shadows.”(1)

...more

Donald Kuspit Archives for 2011

Apr. 25, 2012	Carol Brown Goldberg AT THE CENTER by Donald Kuspit Carol Brown Goldberg's hand at drawing is as deft, swift and masterful as the medium's masters -- Matisse, Dürer and Rembrandt.

Apr. 25, 2012	Affinities and Enchantments: CAROL BROWN GOLDBERG'S DRAWINGS by Donald Kuspit Carol Brown Goldberg's hand at drawing is as deft, swift and masterful as the medium's masters -- Matisse, Dürer and Rembrandt.

Apr. 19, 2012	Kathy Ruttenberg IN THE FEMALE UNCONSCIOUS by Donald Kuspit Kathy Ruttenberg's ceramic sculptures seem to have sprung directly from the artist's sensual, down-to-earth unconscious.

Apr. 14, 2012	Bipolar Paintings PETER HOWSON, THE SCOTTISH BOSCH by Donald Kuspit Artist Peter Howson, whose new works are on view at Flowers Gallery in New York, renews the religiosity of painting.

Apr. 11, 2012	Fred Wilson BLACK AND WHITE AND NOTHING IN BETWEEN by Donald Kuspit Apr. 11, 2012 Fred Wilson's "Venice Suite," responding to Pietro Longhi, is a study in contrasts between the popularizing and the avant-garde.

Apr. 3, 2012	William Bailey CONSTRUCTED HALLUCINATIONS by Donald Kuspit William Bailey's paintings are abstract fantasies whose forms and colors are more important than their emotional and social meaning.

Mar. 5, 2012	Mel Ramos AMERICAN DREAM GIRLS by Donald Kuspit Mel Ramos is an ironical dialectician, and a social moralist and critical realist despite himself.

Feb. 6, 2012	New Art Examiner AMERICAN ART CRITICISM LIVES! by Donald Kuspit Every article in The Essential New Art Examiner, the new anthology of Chicago art criticism, is worth the serious read.

Jan. 31, 2012	Jean Dubuffet QUIXOTIC QUICKSAND? JEAN DUBUFFET'S "GROUNDLESS" PAINTINGS by Donald Kuspit In his final years, the 80-year-old Jean Dubuffet continued his experiments with elevating street art to high art.

Jan. 3, 2011	Beverly Fishman DECEPTIVE PLEASURES by Donald Kuspit The neuron spikes in Beverly Fishman’s new abstract paintings at Galerie Richard in New York.

Dec. 23, 2011	Jane Wilson THE ECLIPSE OF LANDSCAPE by Donald Kuspit In Jane Wilson's landscape paintings, an apotheosis of the whole of nature, restored to its naked state in a modern urban world.

Dec. 13, 2011	Francis Picabia GORGONS IN DISGUISE: PICABIA'S WOMEN by Donald Kuspit Alarmingly charming, Picabia's late words, now at Michael Werner gallery, registered the fall of aristocratic modernism and the rise of mass culture.

Nov. 23, 2011	ANDREAS GURSKY'S OCEANIC FEELING by Donald Kuspit Andreas Gursky's photographs of apocalyptic oceans and a harsh, unpopulated earth symbolize a technological society that has lost its "sense of bonding with the universe."

Nov. 18, 2011	Roberto Matta THE GREATNESS OF MATTA by Donald Kuspit Cosmic magnificence and colorful munificence in enormous abstractions by Roberto Matta at Pace Gallery.

Nov. 15, 2011	Nan Goldin TRADITION ENVY by Donald Kuspit Tradition and the contemporary in Nan Goldin's "Scopophilia" at Matthew Marks Gallery.

Oct. 18, 2011	Vincent Desiderio PITILESS PATHOLOGY: VINCENT DESIDERIO'S PAINTINGS by Donald Kuspit In his new show at Marlborough Chelsea, painter Vincent Desiderio considers the indecent human story.

Oct. 7, 2011	Willem de Kooning BEAUTY AND THE BEASTLY ARTIST: WILLEM DE KOONING'S DESTRUCTIVENESS by Donald Kuspit Who is de Kooning's woman? An essay on the occasion of "De Kooning: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art."

July 12, 2011	Lyonel Feininger GATES OF LIGHT & THE HUMAN COMEDY by Donald Kuspit Lyonel Feininger’s double vision, in "Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World" at the Whitney Museum.

June 20, 2011	Sheila Hicks WOVEN COLOR by Donald Kuspit A survey at the Philadelphia Museum of works by one of the great fiber artists, Sheila Hicks.

June 6, 2011	Marc Chagall MEDIOCRE MODERNISM by Donald Kuspit At the Philadelphia Museum, "Marc Chagall and His Circle" raises questions of modernism, traditionalism and idealism in a harsh world.

May 9, 2011	Ben Grasso DOOMSDAY PREACHER by Donald Kuspit The wonders of painter Ben Grasso's uninhabitable wooden houses at Thierry Goldberg Projects.

Apr. 27, 2011	Briceño & Lóránt SAVE THE FOREST, SAVE THE PEOPLE by Donald Kuspit At the Gabarron Foundation in Manhattan, photographers Antonio Briceño and Attila Lorant work to save indigenous cultures.

Apr. 18, 2011	Raghu Rai THE DRAMA OF INDIA by Donald Kuspit The luminous contrast of old and new in photographs by Raghu Rai at New York’s Aicon Gallery.

Mar. 30, 2011	James Grashow: CARDBOARD BERNINI by Donald Kuspit James Grashow's "Corrugated Fountain," designed for obsolescence (like all art in the modern world?), at Allan Stone Gallery.

Mar. 29, 2011	Ceramics et al.: CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE ARTS by Donald Kuspit The Zeitgeist haunts us, and makes the work of art haunting, and convincing.

Feb. 24, 2011	Pollock's Mural: A CLEAR CHOICE? by Donald Kuspit Go ahead and sell Jackson Pollock's $150-million Mural and use the proceeds for a scholarship fund.

Feb. 9, 2011	SECRETS OF SUCCESS by Donald Kuspit Paradoxes and problems of the reproduction and commodification of art in the age of the capitalist spectacle.

Jan. 20, 2011	SADISTIC STUPIDITY: JOHN BALDESSARI’S PSEUDO-ART by Donald Kuspit Is erasing or effacing an image creative work?

Donald Kuspit Archives for 2010

Dec. 10, 2010	SOKARI DOUGLAS CAMP TOUGH AS STEEL by Donald Kuspit Sokari Douglas Camp’s African figural sculptures at Stux Gallery.

Nov. 24, 2010	MOOD OF MONEY by Donald Kuspit Ben Aronson’s Wall Street traders are stalked by death.

Nov. 22, 2010	The New Naturalism by Donald Kuspit Mia Brownell and Derrick Guild paintings of a demystified nature.

Nov. 3, 2010	THE PHALLIC WOMAN by Donald Kuspit Conflict and fragmentation in Louise Bourgeois’ depiction of the female body.

Oct. 20, 2010	WHAT’S SO CLASSY ABOUT MODERN CLASSICISM by Donald Kuspit "Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy and Germany, 1918-1936" at the Guggenheim Museum.

Oct. 12, 2010	THIN-SLICING REALITY by Donald Kuspit Photography is the pre-eminent art of the age of the unconscious.

Oct. 7, 2010	A LITTLE MADNESS GOES A LONG CREATIVE WAY by Donald Kuspit A new look at Franz Xaver Messerschmidt’s emotional crisis and the portrait busts that resulted.

Aug. 5, 2010	A NOTE ON LATE RENOIR by Donald Kuspit The emotional realism behind Impressionism’s utopian naturalism.

July 9, 2010	PURVIS YOUNG: SOCIAL EXPRESSIONIST by Donald Kuspit Dramatically direct and emotionally honest, Young’s paintings are tears in the social fabric.

May 17, 2010	IN THE MIRROR OF THE PAST by Donald Kuspit Daniel Ludwig and the "great machine" of romantic literary painting.

Mar. 24, 2010	CRITICAL DIX by Donald Kuspit Otto Dix was first and foremost a critic of capitalism.

Feb. 26, 2010	SPEEDING BULLET by Donald Kuspit Beatrice Caracciolo drawings embrace the Existenstialists’ "dreadful freedom."

Feb. 18, 2010	THE MYTH OF MYSELF (AND MODERNISM) by Donald Kuspit Reevaluating the Italian Neo-Expressionist Sandro Chia at his retrospective in Rome.

Jan. 15, 2010	Through History to Authenticity: John Millei’s Paintings by Donald Kuspit Turning artistic territory into a terra incognita of abstraction and existential mystery.

Donald Kuspit Archives for 2009

Dec. 22, 2009	THE REAL IN PHOTOREALISM by Donald Kuspit When ruthless objectivity becomes disturbingly unreal.

Dec. 2, 2009	WAR MACHINE by Donald Kuspit The Bauhaus as a purveyor of anonymity and mechanization.

Nov. 20, 2009	SUPER POWER ART by Donald Kuspi Simon Schama’s The Power of Art.

Nov. 3, 2009	ABSTRACTION WITHOUT BOUNDARIES by Donald Kuspit Frank Stella, Martha Russo and "boundless abstraction."

Sept. 30, 2009	PATCHING IT OVER by Donald Kuspit The deconstructed picture in Conrad Marca-Relli’s collages.

Sept. 22, 2009	Falling Apart And Holding Together: Kandinsky’s Development by Donald Kuspit Kandinsky’s development as seen in "Kandinsky" at the Guggenheim Museum.

Sept. 2, 2009	THE VARIETIES OF BODY by Donald Kuspit The National Academy Museum’s "Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009."

July 10, 2009	GODDESS OR GYNECOLOGY? by Donald Kuspit Robert Graham’s female nude.

May 21, 2009	THE ULTIMATE REALIST by Donald Kuspit Graham Nickson’s "Italian Skies" balance inner and outer beauty.

Apr. 28, 2009	THE ULTIMATE REALIST by Donald Kuspit Steven Assael and the four kinds of realism.

Apr. 8, 2009	Asia on My Mind by Donald Kuspit "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989" at the Guggenheim Museum.

Mar. 27, 2009	Charley Toorop, Moral Realist by Donald Kuspit The human condition was an esthetic condition for the Dutch painter Charley Toorop.

Mar. 19, 2009	Berlin, Mon Amour by Donald Kuspit A visit to two collections of Surrealist art, Peter Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial, and more, in Berlin.

Donald Kuspit Archives for 2008

Dec. 8, 2008	SPANISH ABSTRACTION by Donald Kuspit Elie Halioua’s abstract paintings reach for the "incommunicado core of the self."

Nov. 24, 2008	ZEN ABSTRACTION by Donald Kuspit In Philadelphia, new sculptures, and sets for Fidelio, by Jun Kaneko.

Oct. 30, 2008	FAME-FUCKING AND OTHER FRIVOLITIES by Donald Kuspit The temptations of Elizabeth Peyton’s idealized celebrities.

Sept. 11, 2008	THE TRIUMPH OF SHIT by Donald Kuspit Andres Serrano, Paul McCarthy and the avant-garde artist as an anal masturbator.

May 13, 2008	THE ADVANCE OF BEAUTY by Donald Kuspit Thomas Chimes and Lynda Benglis at Locks Gallery in Philadelphia.

Apr. 4, 2008	THE WATER OF LIFE by Donald Kuspit Fabrizio Plessi’s islands of digital art.

Feb. 12, 2008	THE GRAYING OF MODERNISM by Donald Kuspit The whimper of "Jasper Johns: Gray" at the Metropolitan Museum.

Donald Kuspit Archives for 2007

Nov. 21, 2007	NOT A FAIRY TALE by Donald Kuspit Judy Fox’s Snow White and the Seven Sins.

Sept. 17, 2007	THE MACHINE SELF AND THE SQUIGGLE GAME by Donald Kuspit Rebecca Horn’s performance of her body ego.

Aug. 20, 2007	THE TROUBLE WITH YOUTH by Donald Kuspit The adolescent avant-garde versus the new Old Masters.

July 18, 2007	HYPING SERRA by Donald Kuspit Is Richard Serra’s sculpture the Titanic of avant-garde abstraction?

June 26, 2007	THE TRUTH ABOUT GERMANY? by Donald Kuspit Neo-Rauch’s dialectical fables.

May 5, 2007	THE AURA OF TIMELESSNESS by Donald Kuspit Desert images by Mel Pekarsky and Berber portrait photographs by Lazhar Mansouri.

Mar. 29, 2007	THE PAINTERLY FIGURE by Donald Kuspit Jörg Immendorff, Odd Nerdrum and Nora Speyer engage a truly human esthetic.

Mar. 6, 2007	ART VALUES OR MONEY VALUES? by Donald Kuspit An analysis of the art market boom.

Donald Kuspit Archives for 2006

Dec. 13, 2006	PROVOCATIVE REALISM by Donald Kuspit New Objectivist portraiture in "Glitter and Doom" at the Metropolitan Museum.

Nov. 22, 2006	EDWARD HOPPER: CUBIST IN DISGUISE? by Donald Kuspit Geometry is eternal, people are transient.

Nov. 10, 2006	DOT DELIRIUM by Donald Kuspit Jennifer Bartlett’s early plate works.

Oct. 26, 2006	BOTERO’S HUMANISM by Donald Kuspit Fernando Botero’s paintings of Abu Ghraib.

Oct. 13, 2006	LUCAS THE LOVABLE by Donald Kuspit Avant-garde narcissism in new works by Lucas Samaras.

Oct. 5, 2006	SACRED SADNESS by Donald Kuspit Sean Scully’s Romantic geometry.

Aug. 25, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 10, Part 2: The Decadence of Advanced Art and the Return of Tradition and Beauty: The New as Tower of Conceptual Babel: The Tenth Decade.

Aug. 21, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 10, Part 1: The decadence of advanced art and the return of tradition and beauty.

Aug. 16, 2006	GIRODET’S SENSATIONALISM by Donald Kuspit Charismatic rebel or kitsch romantic? Populism, eroticism and revolution in David’s greatest student.

Aug. 9, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 9: The search for authenticity and the rebellion against Conceptual pseudo-art.

July 28, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 8: Postmodernity from Polke and Judy Chicago to German Neo-Expressionism.

July 21, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 7, Parts 4 & 5: The tragic beauty of Robert Smithson, Joseph Beuys and Eva Hesse.

July 14, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 7, Parts 1, 2 & 3: Minimal and Pop art and the atrophy of the avant-garde.

July 7, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 6: The dialectic of myth and abstraction in Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Art Informel.

June 27, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 5: From Abstract Expressionism to Expressionistic Symbolism, via Pollock, Gorky, de Kooning

June 16, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 4, Part 4: Picasso, Braque, Léger, Matisse, de Chirico, Stanley Spencer and more.

June 1, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 4, Parts 2 & 3: Max Beckmann, Hannah Höch, John Heartfield and fantastic realism.

May 17, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 4, Part 1: Classicism and conflict in Klee, Pollock and Picasso.

May 10, 2006	FRESH AS TOMORROW: ALEX KATZ IN THE ‘60S by Donald Kuspit Alex Katz’s ‘60s paintings offer a new kind of social realism.

May 5, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 3, Part 3: from the peintres maudits and the Vienna Secession to the Bauhaus.

Apr. 25, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 3, Part 2: from the Exquisite Corpse to Giacometti.

Apr. 14, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 3, Part 1: automatism in Ernst, Breton and Surrealism.

Apr. 5, 2006	SELF-PORTRAITS AND OLD MASTERS by Donald Kuspit Painter F. Scott Hess conveys the universal in the contingent.

Mar. 24, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2, Part 4: Picabia, collage, Futurism, Orphism, Malevich and more.

Mar. 17, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2, Part 3: Marcel Duchamp’s invention of the readymade.

Mar. 14, 2006	Unstable Nudity by Donald Kuspit Robert Graham’s new nudes have a nonconformist primordiality.

Mar. 6, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2, part 2: spiritualism and nihilism: the second decade.

Feb. 17, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2: Spiritualism And Nihilism: The Second Decade

Feb. 3, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 1, Part 4: New Forms For Old Feelings: The First Decade

Jan. 26, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 1, part 3: New Forms For Old Feelings: The First Decade.

Jan. 10, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 1, part 1 & 2: New Forms For Old Feelings: The First Decade.

Donald Kuspit Archives for 2005

Dec. 27, 2005	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit In the introduction to his new book, to be published in Artnet Magazine, the author examines the rise of the avant-garde.

Oct. 12, 2005	SHAMELESS AND UNASHAMED by Donald Kuspit Digital art is grounded in codes rather than images.

August 5, 2005	The Matrix of Sensations by Donald Kuspit Digital art is grounded in codes rather than images.

July 5, 2005	SOCIAL STRUCTURE by Donald Kuspit Cheryl Goldsleger’s paintings and drawings resurrect the designs of utopian women architects.

June 8, 2005	Sustaining Abstract Painting by Donald Kuspit The many layers of Wlodzimierz Ksiazek.

April 13, 2005	The Contemporary and the Historical Donald Kuspit More at odds than ever before.

March 3, 2005	HOMAGE TO DAVID BIERK by Donald Kuspit An artist whose work is tragic, mournful and subliminally joyous.

	View All Donald Kuspit Archives

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