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Installation view of Thomas Chimes’ "The Iambic Paintings" at Locks Gallery

THE ADVANCE OF BEAUTY
by Donald Kuspit

May 13, 2007

It’s hard to speak of Thomas Chimes and Lynda Benglis in the same breath, apart from the fact that they both had overlapping exhibitions at the Locks Gallery in Philadelphia, among the choice venues of contemporary art in the United States. It is even harder to think of their works as beautiful -- eloquent examples of modern beauty at its most dialectically extreme. But they would be lost without the wonder of their strange beauty. They would become epitomizing homages to a modernism -- Symbolism in the case of Chimes, Abstract Expressionism in the case of Benglis -- that seems far in the historical past, even if they showed that the past can still be inspiring.
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Donald Kuspit Archives for 2007

Apr. 4, 2008	THE WATER OF LIFE by Donald Kuspit Fabrizio Plessi’s islands of digital art.

Feb. 12, 2008	THE GRAYING OF MODERNISM by Donald Kuspit The whimper of "Jasper Johns: Gray" at the Metropolitan Museum.

Nov. 21, 2007	NOT A FAIRY TALE by Donald Kuspit Judy Fox’s Snow White and the Seven Sins.

Sept. 17, 2007	THE MACHINE SELF AND THE SQUIGGLE GAME by Donald Kuspit Rebecca Horn’s performance of her body ego.

Aug. 20, 2007	THE TROUBLE WITH YOUTH by Donald Kuspit The adolescent avant-garde versus the new Old Masters.

July 18, 2007	HYPING SERRA by Donald Kuspit Is Richard Serra’s sculpture the Titanic of avant-garde abstraction?

June 26, 2007	THE TRUTH ABOUT GERMANY? by Donald Kuspit Neo-Rauch’s dialectical fables.

May 5, 2007	THE AURA OF TIMELESSNESS by Donald Kuspit Desert images by Mel Pekarsky and Berber portrait photographs by Lazhar Mansouri.

Mar. 29, 2007	THE PAINTERLY FIGURE by Donald Kuspit Jörg Immendorff, Odd Nerdrum and Nora Speyer engage a truly human esthetic.

Mar. 6, 2007	ART VALUES OR MONEY VALUES? by Donald Kuspit An analysis of the art market boom.

Donald Kuspit Archives for 2006

Dec. 13, 2006	PROVOCATIVE REALISM by Donald Kuspit New Objectivist portraiture in "Glitter and Doom" at the Metropolitan Museum.

Nov. 22, 2006	EDWARD HOPPER: CUBIST IN DISGUISE? by Donald Kuspit Geometry is eternal, people are transient.

Nov. 10, 2006	DOT DELIRIUM by Donald Kuspit Jennifer Bartlett’s early plate works.

Oct. 26, 2006	BOTERO’S HUMANISM by Donald Kuspit Fernando Botero’s paintings of Abu Ghraib.

Oct. 13, 2006	LUCAS THE LOVABLE by Donald Kuspit Avant-garde narcissism in new works by Lucas Samaras.

Oct. 5, 2006	SACRED SADNESS by Donald Kuspit Sean Scully’s Romantic geometry.

Aug. 25, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 10, Part 2: The Decadence of Advanced Art and the Return of Tradition and Beauty: The New as Tower of Conceptual Babel: The Tenth Decade.

Aug. 21, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 10, Part 1: The decadence of advanced art and the return of tradition and beauty.

Aug. 16, 2006	GIRODET’S SENSATIONALISM by Donald Kuspit Charismatic rebel or kitsch romantic? Populism, eroticism and revolution in David’s greatest student.

Aug. 9, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 9: The search for authenticity and the rebellion against Conceptual pseudo-art.

July 28, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 8: Postmodernity from Polke and Judy Chicago to German Neo-Expressionism.

July 21, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 7, Parts 4 & 5: The tragic beauty of Robert Smithson, Joseph Beuys and Eva Hesse.

July 14, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 7, Parts 1, 2 & 3: Minimal and Pop art and the atrophy of the avant-garde.

July 7, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 6: The dialectic of myth and abstraction in Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Art Informel.

June 27, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 5: From Abstract Expressionism to Expressionistic Symbolism, via Pollock, Gorky, de Kooning

June 16, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 4, Part 4: Picasso, Braque, Léger, Matisse, de Chirico, Stanley Spencer and more.

June 1, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 4, Parts 2 & 3: Max Beckmann, Hannah Höch, John Heartfield and fantastic realism.

May 17, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 4, Part 1: Classicism and conflict in Klee, Pollock and Picasso.

May 10, 2006	FRESH AS TOMORROW: ALEX KATZ IN THE ‘60S by Donald Kuspit Alex Katz’s ‘60s paintings offer a new kind of social realism.

May 5, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 3, Part 3: from the peintres maudits and the Vienna Secession to the Bauhaus.

Apr. 25, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 3, Part 2: from the Exquisite Corpse to Giacometti.

Apr. 14, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 3, Part 1: automatism in Ernst, Breton and Surrealism.

Apr. 5, 2006	SELF-PORTRAITS AND OLD MASTERS by Donald Kuspit Painter F. Scott Hess conveys the universal in the contingent.

Mar. 24, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2, Part 4: Picabia, collage, Futurism, Orphism, Malevich and more.

Mar. 17, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2, Part 3: Marcel Duchamp’s invention of the readymade.

Mar. 14, 2006	Unstable Nudity by Donald Kuspit Robert Graham’s new nudes have a nonconformist primordiality.

Mar. 6, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2, part 2: spiritualism and nihilism: the second decade.

Feb. 17, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2: Spiritualism And Nihilism: The Second Decade

Feb. 3, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 1, Part 4: New Forms For Old Feelings: The First Decade

Jan. 26, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 1, part 3: New Forms For Old Feelings: The First Decade.

Jan. 10, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 1, part 1 & 2: New Forms For Old Feelings: The First Decade.

Donald Kuspit Archives for 2005

Dec. 27, 2005	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit In the introduction to his new book, to be published in Artnet Magazine, the author examines the rise of the avant-garde.

Oct. 12, 2005	SHAMELESS AND UNASHAMED by Donald Kuspit Digital art is grounded in codes rather than images.

August 5, 2005	The Matrix of Sensations by Donald Kuspit Digital art is grounded in codes rather than images.

July 5, 2005	SOCIAL STRUCTURE by Donald Kuspit Cheryl Goldsleger’s paintings and drawings resurrect the designs of utopian women architects.

June 8, 2005	Sustaining Abstract Painting by Donald Kuspit The many layers of Wlodzimierz Ksiazek.

April 13, 2005	The Contemporary and the Historical Donald Kuspit More at odds than ever before.

March 3, 2005	HOMAGE TO DAVID BIERK by Donald Kuspit An artist whose work is tragic, mournful and subliminally joyous.

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