NPR has a profile on painter Elaine de Kooning (wife of Willem de Kooning) this week, focusing on the artist’s interest in portraiture as a retrospective of her work opens at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., including her famous depiction of John F. Kennedy.  “The idea of a man who happens to be president of the United States — well, that’s already, right there, he’s bigger than life,” de Kooning said in 1976. “I was scampering up and down the ladder to do this painting.” (more…)

The annual BP Portrait Award has announced this year’s shortlist, featuring artists from the UK, Israel and Spain.  “It was good to see even more international artists entering and my fellow judges and I were impressed by the different styles of portraiture, some quite new to the exhibition, and intrigued by the stories behind the portraits,” says Pim Baxter, the deputy director at London’s National Portrait Gallery. (more…)

Marlene Dumas, The Image as Burden (1993) © Marlene Dumas

Currently on view at Tate Modern is Image as Burden, a retrospective looking at the career of the prolific South African painter Marlene Dumas. Adopting its title from an oil on canvas painting in which a male figure is depicted carrying a female figure, the retrospective, considered the most expansive survey of Dumas’ work in Europe so far, sheds a light on the exceptionally subliminal oeuvre of Dumas, who has, for the most part of her career, maintained a humble profile despite the scholarly and commercial recognition her work has achieved globally. (more…)

Kehinde Wiley, Arms of Hugo von Hohenlanderberg as Bishop of Constance with Angel Supporters (2014)

The Brooklyn Museum is hosting a mid-career retrospective of Kehinde Wiley, the L.A.-born and New York-based artist known for his juxtapositions of contemporary youth through the lens of a classical notion of aesthetic. Wiley’s mostly street-cast models, sporting untouched urban attires, replace the highly familiar figures of classic European paintings that generally exclude people of color.  Wiley consequently redeems what is missing from the canon of Western art in his intricately detailed oils on canvas, yet pays homage to Old Masters such as Velásquez or Ingres. Maintaining some distinct elements such as outfits and posture, his models, mostly young males of African descent, do not simply recreate what was already done centuries ago, but also reclaim a collectively missing part of their history. (more…)

Alec Soth, Woodville Farm Labor Camp, San Joaquin Valley, California (2013), all images via Sean Kelly

Alec Soth presents an exhibition of over 25 new black-and-white photographs at Sean Kelly, focusing his lens on small-town community events across America. Soth’s work has frequently delved into the modern day folklore of Americana throughout his career, capturing images that are at once familiar and spellbinding.

Alec Soth, Brian. Williston, North Dakota (2012) (more…)

Egon Schiele, Portrait of Gertie Schiele (1909), all photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

The energy on view in the paintings of Egon Schiele often feels as if the surface itself cannot contain it, as if the visceral poses and lucid, flowing lines of the artist’s hand posses an ethereal force beyond that of his practice.  The Austrian painter, who died at the young age of 28 during the Spanish Flu epidemic, poured himself into his works with an enthusiasm few have ever matched, constantly pushing the gestural formats and emotional charges of his materials and subjects.

Egon Schiele: Portraits (Installation View)

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Cory Arcangel, Asshole 2 / Lakes (2014), via Team

Given Cory Arcangel’s past exhibition tendencies, the work on view at the artist’s newest Team Gallery solo exhibition downtown is something of a concise affair.  Gone are the artist’s abstracted consumer objects, video game hacks and gradient paintings, substituted for a series of simple flat-panel televisions, each bearing a pixelated digital image, and offset by a deep red carpeting that runs along the gallery’s floor.  On-screen, the smiling faces of Hilary Clinton (or rather, Hilary Clinton’s book jacket), Jay-Z and P. Diddy, among others, stare out of the viewer, as a delicately waving digital effect below them gives the impression of a liquid reflection. (more…)

Mickalene Thomas, Carla (2014), via Lehmann Maupin

Tête de Femme, a show of new work by artist Mickalene Thomas at Lehmann Maupin, places the exploitation and regulation of the female form at its center, exploring the female figure and visage through eight large-scale portraits. Making use of screen-printing, collage, and candy-colored swatches of fabric, Thomas creates and re-creates the elements of a face in order to deconstruct a coherence presumed and projected into measurements of personhood.  Through bold geometric and material choices, Thomas approaches the question of identity as an problem to be solved through a concentrated treatment of each element, much in the same nature of Picasso’s work of the same name.

Mickalene Thomas, Tête de Femme (Installation View), via Lehmann Maupin (more…)

Martin Kippenberger, Untitled (from the series Raft of the Medusa) (1996), Art Observed

One of the last series of work from Martin Kippenberger, The Raft of the Medusa is nothing if not impressive.  Taking the dramatic tableau of Theodore Géricault’s 19th century work as his inspiration, the artist threw himself body and soul into this series of paintings, drawings, photographs, and even a single tapestry, turning his own body into the fuel for a powerful engagement with the destruction and pathos of the original work.  It’s this inspiration that sits at the center of Skarstedt Gallery’s current show of the series of works, compiling Kippenberger’s sketches and photographs alongside his series of visceral, energetic canvases, which served as the apex of his work in the series.  

Martin Kippenberger, Untitled (from the series Raft of the Medusa) (1996), via Art Observed (more…)

The shortlist for the BP Portrait Award has been announced, featuring works by Thomas Ganter, Richard Twose, and David Jon Kassman.  The nominees will be on view at London’s National Portrait Gallery from  June 26th to September 21st, with the winner announced just before the exhibition opens on June 24th. (more…)

Maria Lassnig, Lady with Brain (1990), via Art Observed

The work of Maria Lassnig is deceptive in its simplicity.  Bright, seasick colors and sloping, often pathos-inspiring, self-portraits seem to fade in and out of focus, occasionally giving away to the staunch white of the surrounding canvas.  In others, the artist blends cool tones and and an even smoother application to create pieces almost completely vacant in their emotional intensity.  But in each work, a powerful subtext can be detected, a self-awareness both vocally present and consistently self-aware in its definition and re-defining of itself.  (more…)

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait (1983), courtesy Skarstedt Gallery

Playing with constructed images of self and cultural phenomena, Robert Mapplethorpe’s challenging self-portraits were an influential and essential part of the 1970’s New York arts scene.  Now, the artist’s work in the medium is documented through eleven photographs at Skarstedt Gallery currently on view through June 15th. The photographs are extremely personal explorations that the artist took of himself periodically throughout his life, meant to explore different aspects of his own identity, as he captures himself in a variety of states and moods.

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge (1892), courtesy The Frick Collection

The Frick Collection is currently displaying a series of nineteenth-century French drawings and prints by a variety of Realist, Impressionist, and Post-impressionist masters, made possible by the Florence Gould Foundation.  Exploring the varying approaches of figuration, depiction and ornamentation throughout 19th century drawing and prints, the exhibition is on view through June 16th.

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Artist Elizabeth Peyton and designer Dries Van Noten recently sat down with the Financial Times’s Style section to talk about their ongoing friendship, their mutual respect for each other’s work, and Peyton’s portraiture of Van Noten.  “The faces people make when they are photographed, and the face they have when you draw them are very different. It’s a very special thing to share with someone, because it’s time spent together that is not about eating or the usual social things.” Peyton says. (more…)

Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (1872), via Royal Academy of Arts

London’s Royal Academy of Arts is currently exhibiting an ambitious retrospective of portraiture by iconoclastic French painter Édouard Manet (1832 – 1883), collected from across Europe, Asia and the United States.  This is the first-ever exhibition of work by Manet that focuses on his broad body of portraiture, tracing the artist’s artistic evolution in the format throughout his life, as well as his contributions to modern portraiture in the contemporary era.  While Manet worked across a range of subjects in figurative painting, portraiture makes up about half of his body of work, offering perhaps the strongest evidence of the artist’s creative motivations throughout the course of his life.

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Chuck Close, Installation View, Courtesy of Pace Gallery

Pace Gallery in New York is home to Chuck Close’s first gallery show in the city since 2009. The gallery has represented Close since 1977. This latest exhibition features some of the artist’s newest pieces such as Cindy (2012) (a portrait of photographer Cindy Sherman) along with some of Close’s older works. (more…)

Julian Opie – (Installation View), Lisson Gallery

Billed as “the largest single display of his practice to date,” Lisson Gallery is currently exhibiting a broad selection of works from British multi-media artist Julian Opie.   Bending the artist’s fascinations with traditional portraiture and painting through his own aesthetic lens, the show continues Opie’s explorations of modern visual language and its relation to art history.

Julian Opie – (Gallery View), Lisson Gallery

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