A R T   L E T T E R

The Timely Magazine of Art

Kim O'Grady at Lanning Gallery	7/1

Nine assorted untitled paintings definitely worth looking at: #1: Like an old
linoleum floor. #2: Red glop is good and beefy, big brushstrokes seem
slightly forced, blue squares  arbitrarily stuck-on. #3: Best of show by far;
complex, layered space, uses but is not controlled by techniques. Purposeful
and unexpected. #4: Interesting dark tile with poodle. #5,6,7&8:
Atmospheric, romantic, dull. #6: Mossy  headstone. #7: Waterlilies. #8: Lard
clouds. #9: Snappy but too small: surface overwhelms image.-B.D. 

Kim O'Grady at Lanning Gallery	7/1

Untitled #3 is a wonder in a show that seems created by "the 3 faces of
Eve". A bit of flat pebbled tile-texture mixed with a patina from a wall in
Rome. The best part is guessing whether the figurative element is the head
of a cigar box Indian or a very demented map of the U.S.A. P.S.: Take away
this woman's power sander! -Louise Cranston



Martonette Borromeo at Sally Sprout Gallery	7/1

Only the perceptual effects work in the paintings: black on black rectangles
flicker in and out of existence, lines and dots hang suspended in a spatially
ambiguous limbo. The aimless compositions of lines, rectangles and arcs
act as throw-away props for Borromeo's visual gymnastics. The drawings,
lacking the perceptual effect of the paintings, have nothing. -B.D.



Melissa Miller at Texas Gallery	6/24

In the 80's, the fatuous trend for oversize, overcolored, wormy paintings of
tragic deer fighting mangy wolves was so disheartening I wanted to quit
art.  Miller's  imagery to me is hokey. Vaguely mythological, it doesn't yield
to interpretation: we just aren't meant to look too closely. Why is a tiger
shedding a deer skin? No one knows. The fine, if soddenly brushed,
illustrative craft of these works, though rarely seen, shouldn't make them
harder to dismiss than any  other insincere narrative paintings. -Delfina



Blinky Palermo vs. Brice Marden at the Menil	fall

Palermo's Times of Day I and II are simple, concrete, literal, almost folky.
Brice Marden's Four Seasons (at the other end of the Menil) is lyrical and
transcendent. Palermo's colors are familiar, like crayons; his surfaces
drippy and unkempt, his scale modest. Marden's colors are moody, like the
color swatches from a Tweeds mail order catalog. All three of these cool
works are from 1974-75.-B.D.



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