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Best Art of 2023 Best Art of 2023
(about 5 hours later)
Roberta SmithRoberta Smith
Color has a life all its own. Without art, without people, it is everywhere, one of the natural wonders of the world. Still what people have managed to do with it sometimes seems miraculous, a gift. Especially in art, where its generosity and warmth become even more direct. Many of my fondest art memories this year involved powerful doses of saturated or unusual color, manifest in a variety of materials and techniques.Color has a life all its own. Without art, without people, it is everywhere, one of the natural wonders of the world. Still what people have managed to do with it sometimes seems miraculous, a gift. Especially in art, where its generosity and warmth become even more direct. Many of my fondest art memories this year involved powerful doses of saturated or unusual color, manifest in a variety of materials and techniques.
It started with two historic exhibitions that looked afresh at the innovations in color and paint handling that made early Western modernism possible. The summer brought “Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth,” a survey of his career at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., that concentrated on his involvement with nature and the landscape. The show introduced a less anguished Munch, whose improvisatory stain painting and fresh unexpected colors were ahead of their time. (Read our review of “Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth.”)It started with two historic exhibitions that looked afresh at the innovations in color and paint handling that made early Western modernism possible. The summer brought “Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth,” a survey of his career at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., that concentrated on his involvement with nature and the landscape. The show introduced a less anguished Munch, whose improvisatory stain painting and fresh unexpected colors were ahead of their time. (Read our review of “Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth.”)
Further adventures in loose painting and bold colors arrived in October with “Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain and the Origins of Fauvism,” on view at the Met through Jan. 21. It examined the first, possibly shortest modern art movement of the 20th century, which solidified during the summer of 1905 when Henri Matisse and André Derain worked side-by-side in the South of France. It came to be labeled “les Fauves,” or “the wild beasts,” amid the scandal their work ignited at the Salon d’Automne that fall. The artists were influenced by Munch’s work, but they went for stronger colors and juicier surfaces. Whether or not this show breaks new art-historical ground, it should earn Fauvism an expanded presence in the annals of modernism. (Read our review of “Vertigo of Color.”)Further adventures in loose painting and bold colors arrived in October with “Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain and the Origins of Fauvism,” on view at the Met through Jan. 21. It examined the first, possibly shortest modern art movement of the 20th century, which solidified during the summer of 1905 when Henri Matisse and André Derain worked side-by-side in the South of France. It came to be labeled “les Fauves,” or “the wild beasts,” amid the scandal their work ignited at the Salon d’Automne that fall. The artists were influenced by Munch’s work, but they went for stronger colors and juicier surfaces. Whether or not this show breaks new art-historical ground, it should earn Fauvism an expanded presence in the annals of modernism. (Read our review of “Vertigo of Color.”)
In New York’s galleries, one of the season’s color surprises was an exhibition of 100 eye-popping weed pots made by the little-known Los Angeles-based ceramic artist Doyle Lane from the late ’50s to the early ’70s. The show, at David Kordansky, constituted the first New York solo of his work. With their small spherical bodies and short, narrow necks (to hold the stem of a weed), Lane’s pots were charmingly eccentric. But the colors and unusual surface textures that he devised for them have a stunning intensity. (It helped that he favored bright reds and oranges.) When it comes to saturated, man-made color, glazes can leave paint-on-canvas in the dust. (Read our review of “Doyle Lane: Weed Pots.”)
“Henry Taylor: B Side” at the Whitney Museum (through Jan. 28) didn’t take this challenge lying down. This thrilling retrospective, which originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, established the L.A.-based artist, now 65, as one of the greatest painters of his generation. His subject is the sometimes gritty reality of Black life in America — from family and community to politics and incarceration — conveyed without resorting to a traditionally realist style. His images are strengthened by his blunt sense of form and composition and his use of slab-like planes of color. With his lavish surfaces, Taylor’s figures often project a nearly physical presence. (Read our review of “Henry Taylor: B Side.”)