Painting

Latest Articles

Portrait of Hitler as a young man

Failure
What if Hitler had continued his art career?
By KARL STEVENS | January 17, 2012

Review: The Mill and the Cross

Conceptually confusing
Clever CGI allows the effective recreation of a 16th century Flanders.
By GERALD PEARY | October 18, 2011

'Degas and the Nude' at MFA

Baby got back
A splendid survey of a modern master as well as girls, girls, girls.
By GREG COOK | October 12, 2011

Starving artists-in-training

Failure
They're probably all cartoonists, now.
By KARL STEVENS | September 06, 2011

Photos: Swoon Art Wall at the ICA

Art Wall Installation | Institute of Contemporary Art
The Institute of Contemporary Art hosts a long-term art wall installation by Swoon, a.ka. Caledonia Curry.
By JOEL VEAK | September 01, 2011

Painting – and video – of the American landscape

Manifest destiny
"Painting the American Vision" — 45 rapturous paintings from the New York Historical Society — surveys the Hudson River School painters, dubbed for the upstate New York river where they spent their summers prospecting for sights to transform into ravishing canvases in their Manhattan studios each winter.
By GREG COOK | August 02, 2011

Slideshow: ''Painting the American Vision'' at the Peabody Essex; ''Shifting Terrain: Landscape Video'' at the Currier Museum of Art

"Painting the American Vision": Though Nov 6, 2011 | "Shifting Terrain": Through Sep 18, 2011
This slideshow of images from "Painting the American Vision" at the Peabody Essex Museum and "Shifting Terrain: Landscape Video" at the Currier Museum of Art accompanies Greg Cook's review of both exhibits, "Painting — and video — of the American landscape."
By PHOENIX STAFF | August 02, 2011

Review: Kovac's ''Comfortable Distance'; Kurt's ''Sex Objects''

Covered up, stripped down
In Delia Kovac's painting Semi Self-Portrait As a Ski Mask , the eyes stare out of the cartooned mask doleful and maybe a bit bonkers, while the mouth hole is empty.
By GREG COOK | June 21, 2011

Painter and sculptor converse at CMCA

An unlikely pairing
Paintings by Elizabeth Cashin McMillen and sculptures by Duane Paluska currently share the main gallery at the Center for Maine Contemporary in Rockport.
By BRITTA KONAU | June 10, 2011

Louise Marianetti at Bert Gallery; plus, Brian Knep at RISD

Into the mystic
The starched woman in Louise Marianetti's 1942 painting holds a copy of the libretto to Verdi's Aida . Her blonde ringlets are decorated with flowers, a pair of blue birds, and a veil. But what sticks with you how she stares with her eerie blue eyes.
By GREG COOK | February 01, 2011

Review: ''American Gothic'' painter Grant Wood gets to leave the closet

American gay
Who was Grant Wood? Millions of Americans know him as the artist who painted American Gothic — and that's about it. But since his death, from pancreatic cancer, in 1942, he's become the poster boy for the right and the whipping boy of the left.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 07, 2011

Review: It's no joke: Grant Wood is truly a great artist

America's best-kept secret?
Even if the name isn't instantly familiar, the painting will be. You've seen it on billboards, on magazine covers from Mad to Time , in Charles Addams cartoons, on Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 07, 2011

Review: Roustan at AS220; and 'Seeing Through Lines'

Objects and abstracts
Paul Roustan is a virtuoso painter of odd subjects. Namely, the Pawtucket artist airbrushes makeup directly onto the naked bodies of fit models, which he presents in photographs.
By GREG COOK | December 08, 2010

Review: Bangor artist Kenny Cole lights the 'Hellfire' at SPACE Gallery

When there's smoke
"The Hellfire Story" is a tough pill to swallow.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | November 24, 2010

Slideshow: Yamile Pardo and Edel Bordon at Galeria Cubana

Yamile Pardo and Edel Bordon | Galeria Cubana | Through December 12, 2010
Husband and wife Edel Bordon and Yamile Pardo showcase their artwork at Galeria Cubana through December 12, 2010.
By YAMILE PARDO AND EDEL BORDON | November 15, 2010

Review: Patrick Corrigan's dueling creations at Gallery 37-A

Story storage
It's probably safe to say Patrick Corrigan went through a surrealist phase.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | October 07, 2010

Peter Max's pop life

The artist on fame, Andy Warhol, and the 'complete freedom' of his expression
Peter Max rocketed to fame as one of the iconic psychedelic artists of the late '60s.
By GREG COOK | August 18, 2010

Unholy contraptions

Tavares Strachan's rockets, plus 'The Boat Show' at Drive By, and 'Sensed, Unseen' at GASP
In Tavares Strachan's video The Rocket Launch (2009), two black men in white chemical suits load sugar cane into the back of a three-wheeled mini-truck, then drive down a palm-tree-lined road to a run-down building labeled Bahamas Aerospace and Sea Exploration Center.
By GREG COOK | June 23, 2010

Review: Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies

Linking movies and Cubist painting
Picasso seems to have done so, though preferring Chaplin slapstick and cowboy silents to artsy fare, and biographers place him at several screenings of Lumière shorts.
By GERALD PEARY | June 24, 2010

Art in the air conditioning

Local museums keep you cool — and the art's pretty good, too
From Picasso to William "Shrek" Steig's cartoons, and surfer photos to a Twilight Zone toy store, New England offers art worth traveling to this summer. Here we round up the best in the region, no matter the weather or your artistic inclinations.
By GREG COOK | June 16, 2010

Rain check

When bad weather strikes, just go indoors!
We have just the thing to cure your summer-vacation blues: Maine, from the inside.
By ANDREW STEINBEISER | June 16, 2010

Homer's home

The PMA shows the Maine coastal artist at work
A hundred years after his death, Winslow Homer is still making waves.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | June 16, 2010

With plans for a downtown mural, Shepard Fairey returns to Providence

Obey
It is a rather unremarkable collection of bricks at the moment: an exterior wall at the back of Trinity Repertory Company’s Pell Chafee Performance Center in downtown Providence.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 16, 2010

Moving forward

The CMCA Biennial balances past and present
The Center for Maine Contemporary Art is back in full swing after an unexpected winter hiatus.
By ANNIE LARMON | June 01, 2010

An expanding world

Americans look at European modernism
Housed in two galleries at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, “Methods for Modernism: Form and Color in American Art, 1900 to 1925” presents a healthy survey of works by artists featured in the two most definitive venues for introducing European modernism to America.
By ANNIE LARMON | May 05, 2010

Random stuff

Versteeg’s ‘In advance of Another Thing,’ ‘Sitings 2010’ at RISD
If you were going to create a portrait of the Internet, what would it look like?
By GREG COOK | April 28, 2010

Slideshow: ''The Beast In Me - Johnny Cash''

Artworks from "The Beast In Me—Johnny Cash: Art Influenced by the Struggle of a Man" at the Nave Gallery
Artwork from "The Beast In Me—Johnny Cash: Art Influenced by the Struggle of a Man" at the Nave Gallery
By NAVE GALLERY | April 20, 2010

Cheap thrills

The inky delights of Dr. Lakra
They say Dr. Lakra got his pen name from the doctor’s bag he carried around when he first began tattooing, two decades ago. “Lakra” puns on the Spanish word “lacra,” meaning scar or blemish, but it’s also slang for “delinquent” or “scumbag.”
By GREG COOK | April 21, 2010

Review: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Banksy makes his directorial debut. Or does he?
The art of underground prankster Banksy is hard to pin down.
By BRETT MICHEL | February 24, 2011

The other LA

Danny Jauregui brings the Left Coast to Bowdoin
“Absent the Center” is a collection from two of Danny Jauregui’s most recent series of works investigating social space, both are deeply rooted in a cultural and historical context specific to Los Angeles.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | April 21, 2010