Jo Baer (1929–2025): The Painter Who Turned from Minimalism Back to the Figure
Appraising American painter Jo Baer (1929–2025): her 1983 apostasy against formalist abstraction, 'Radical Figuration', and the contested teleology of modernism.
Studios Burned in Altadena: What the Loss of a Painting Takes with It
Reflecting on the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires: the physical destruction of painterly archives in Altadena and the irrecoverable materiality of painting in a digital age.
Cattelan's Banana and the Absence of the Figure: A 6.2 Million Dollar Certificate
Dissecting the $6.2M Sotheby's sale of Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian to Justin Sun: conceptual certificates, radical dematerialization, and the persistence of figurative craft.
Frank Auerbach (1931–2024): A Face Erased Every Morning
Commemorating Frank Auerbach (1931–2024): the ferocious impasto of the School of London, decades of intimacy with a single sitter, and painting as continuous erasure.
Ai-Da and Alan Turing: Whose Portrait Is a Robot's Painting?
Examining the $1.08M Sotheby's sale of A.I. God: Portrait of Alan Turing by humanoid robot artist Ai-Da: algorithmic agency, authorship, and the Turing test at auction.
Mehmet Güleryüz (1938–2024): The Painter Who Pushed the Figure
Appraising Mehmet Güleryüz (1938–2024): the theatricality of expressionist figuration, socio-political satire, and the enduring vitality of the human form in contemporary Turkish art.
A Banquet at the Olympic Opening: Which Painting Did We See?
Interrogating the Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony controversy: Jan van Bijlert's The Feast of the Gods versus Leonardo's The Last Supper, and Erwin Panofsky's iconology.
A King Drowned in Red: Jonathan Yeo's Portrait of King Charles III
Analyzing Jonathan Yeo's monochromatic crimson portrait of King Charles III: royal ceremonial traditions, environmental activism, and the crisis of state portraiture.
Venice 2024, The "Portraits" Room: Other Faces of Modernism
Reviewing Adriano Pedrosa's 60th Venice Biennale, Stranieri Ovunque: the historical Nucleo Storico 'Portraits' gallery and the polyphonic modernisms of the Global South.
"Fräulein Lieser": Klimt Lost for a Century and an Unnamed Sitter
Analyzing Gustav Klimt's rediscovered 1917 portrait Bildnis Fräulein Lieser, auctioned for €30M in Vienna: Nazi-era provenance gaps, the Washington Principles, and the identity of the sitter.