Hrag Vartanian

Since the galleries are lame in August, I decided to tour the online art circuit instead…here’s some posts that stood out:

• Time Magazine’s Richard Lacayo looks closely at the source of Elizabeth Murray’s artistry:

When she was studying at the Art Instutute of Chicago in the late 1950s Murray had what she always thought of as a crucial encounter with one of the Institute’s Cezannes, The Plate of Apples, a painting she described years later as one where “the space is all pouring out somehow at you.” At the time the painting’s main importance for her was simply that it turned her on to the joy of looking at painting. But plainly something of the canted, tilted iceflow surfaces of Cezanne’s still lifes would find its way into Murray’s work.

• poet Sylvia Plath’s paintings have surfaced and soon they’ll be published;
• the Met Museum’s library gets hip and starts phlogging its amazing collections (direct Flickr link);
• Two Coats of Paint gauges the criticism of MoMA’s deathly boring “What is painting” show;
• check out galleryist Jen Bekman’s take on artists who blog;
• some thoughts on minimalism’s origins;
• a Richard Serra spotting in Greenpoint {via Gothamist};
• an Anselm Keifer sculpture has been evicted in Connecticut; and
• JamesWagner.com does a great job of touring SVA’s Open Studios — Joshua Allen HARRIS, Steve PAGE, Kenneth WALKER, Luis TOVAR, Lisa SMITH & Hagar SADAN.