New York Time article on Louise Nevelson’s show at the Jewish Museum.

Nevelson earned her place in art history, somewhere between the totemic structures of David Smith and the emotionalism of Eva Hesse, with mysterious abstract assemblages made from street-salvaged remnants of wood: baseball bats, milk crates, driftwood, picture frames, toolboxes, toilet seats, newel posts and gingerbread carvings. Her grand — even grandiose — oeuvre recycles themes of royalty, mortality, marriage, displacement and the tension between interior and exterior space.

Nevelson is one of my favorite artists, and there is a great collection of her work at The Farnsworth Museum, in Rockland, Me. (the second largest collection of her work in a public institution in the US, by the way), (and, which I blogged about here) if you’re ever up this way.

So there was an ad for Paul Matthews’ newest show, at Atea Ring Gallery (no website, sorry), in this months Art in America magazine (the May 2007 issue–the front page of the site changes every month). He’s a very fine figurative painter, who does mostly nudes, showing (among other things) pregnant women, child birth, old men’s fantasies, and a general view of modern life. Many of these paintings are on his site–paulmatthews.net (nudity, NSFW)–and there are links to his portraiture, and landscape, galleries, which, unfortunately, are not online yet. His paintings are lush, and well formed, with beautiful colors, and brushwork, some have background landscapes, seen through windows, that rival his figures. Really a must see as far as I’m concerned.

(Image: Sunlit Wife, Oil on Canvas, 10×15 inches, 1992–Paul Matthews)