tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2987736854176165487.post8288274401078398684..comments2024-03-26T10:07:14.049-04:00Comments on Painting: David Row at Loretta Howard (Feb18-April 2) Martin Mugarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12799696151828817646noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2987736854176165487.post-4107530173711765962018-02-22T05:58:18.763-05:002018-02-22T05:58:18.763-05:00Row has a pattern of quoting artists like de Kooni...Row has a pattern of quoting artists like de Kooning and Held. Owens ditto with Stella and draws from multiple visual sources outside of painting. In both cases they kill the source just as Zombie Formalism stuck its stake into the heart of Modernism.Martin Mugarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12799696151828817646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2987736854176165487.post-26151525983573293482018-02-17T06:23:52.307-05:002018-02-17T06:23:52.307-05:00This notion of quotation or citation in Row's ...This notion of quotation or citation in Row's work seems to have cropped up in Owens's work,except she quotes from all visual sources muddying and murkifying the tradition of painting.Martin Mugarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12799696151828817646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2987736854176165487.post-2699339087809927232016-03-15T07:39:09.343-04:002016-03-15T07:39:09.343-04:00Peter Plagens wrote this about the show in the WSJ...Peter Plagens wrote this about the show in the WSJ. <br />The paintings of David Row (b. 1949) are handsome with a capital H. They’re perhaps a little too handsome. Mr. Row’s ingredients are bold graphic compositions and a worked-on, fussed-over surface that practically shouts, “I’ve labored really hard on these paintings, and they’re much more profound than mere eye candy.”<br /><br />Mr. Row is a master of his mode, and his astute cramming of geometric shapes (ovals are a favorite) into dynamically constricting formats makes his compositions seem all the more muscular. Recently, he’s been working on polygons, and his color, while measured and considerably muted by his relentless attention to the surface, is nevertheless expert and crisp. “Joule” (2016), a seven-sided wood panel containing a white oval so wide that the black negative shapes in the center and at the corners seem like positive spaces, has the added attraction of a few thin red lines that almost imply wounds. It’s one of the best paintings in the show.<br /><br />If every work in the exhibition were as good as “Joule,” this would be one of the most memorable painting displays in Chelsea in recent memory. The show, however, attempts to cover the full 40 years of Mr. Row’s artistic efforts, and is necessarily uneven. An overview in a commercial gallery is always a bit of an odd duck. Commercial crackle and hoped-for institutional augustness don’t easily mesh, as is evident on the checklist, where a few paintings are listed as “museum only.” I asked at the desk if that public declaration meant only a museum could buy them, and was told yes.Martin Mugarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12799696151828817646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2987736854176165487.post-12210875514190788992016-03-08T22:55:14.739-05:002016-03-08T22:55:14.739-05:00My use of the notion of domestication in talking ...My use of the notion of domestication in talking about Row's relationship to de Kooning is based on Rorty's statement that Hans Gadamer domesticated Heidegger. He was thus able to apply Heidegger's seminal ideas to language theory.Martin Mugarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12799696151828817646noreply@blogger.com