In a recent, engaging series of articles for Hyperallergic, writer John Yau proposes a re-examination of artists outside the mainstream narrative, a narrative he finds to be "based on the rather flimsy, narcissistic assumption that the art world got it right the first time, with its own obsession with surface and spectacle..." In Yau's profiles of Sylvia Plimack Mangold and the San Francisco Bay Areavisual art scene of the 1950s and 60s, he convincingly argues that these alternative narratives are historically significant and influential in the work of contemporary artists.
April's top painting posts reflect an interest among contemporary artists in a broader narrative of painting. In addition to an excellent Brooklyn Rail interviewwith painter Katherine Bradford (another artist profiled by Yau), many of the most popular Painters' Table posts were those that focused on the work of underknown artists including abstract expressionistCharles Seliger, west coast abstract painter Frederick Hammersley, and the figurative painter Avigdor Arikha, as well as abstractionist-turned-landscape painter Tom Goldenberg.
Enjoy these and other great painting posts below. You can find more everyday at painters-table.com - the magazine of the painting blogosphere.
