Pat Steir's "Line" in Video, Katharina Grosse, Alec Soth as Critic, etc. [Collected]

Martha Friedman, Rubbers, 2010. Cast silicon, pigment, and metal, 134 ½ x 3 ½ x 3 in. at Wallspace's "Swagger, Drag, Fit Together." Photo: 16 Miles

• Drawing Pat Steir's "The Nearly Endless Line" at Sue Scott Gallery in New York. [Art Clogged]

• Martin Bromirski visits Katharina Grosse's sprawling MASS MoCA show. Her last one-person show in New York was in 1997. [Anaba]

• Alec Soth's top 10 (plus a few) photography books of 2010 includes Thomas Demand, Hannah Höch, and Chris Verene. [Little Brown Mushroom Blog via Ocular Octopus]

• A concise archive of artist's editions, catalogues, and books. [The Cottage Library]

• A Morandi still life with a delicious-looking croissant. [Feasting on Art]

• Will Cotton: "I do love sugar. But I used to have other vices too. I think the other vices have just fallen by the wayside, and sugar has stepped up a little bit to take their place." [The 99 Percent]

• "It seems to me that Saltz just took a shot at something new, intrigued by the prospect of quick and unmediated feedback." Sharon Butler on art critics and the Internet. [Two Coats of Paint]

• New York experimental masters Excepter tackle "Little Drummer Boy," "Deck the Halls," and "Carol of the Bells." It sounds even better in the new year. [A Million Keys]

• "The dreamer emerges, not as a collection of biologic urges, but as the mastermind capable of creating such a nuanced, intricate and meaning-laden world." Elif Batuman on "Why Criticism Matters." [New York Times]

• Cracklings, wafer cookies, Daniel Spoerri, and more: With Nicole Caruth and Megan Fizell (of Feasting on Art, mentioned above!), I recently wrote about art involving food and art involving food. [Art21]
  
  
• In anticipation of Joe Bradley's Canada/Gavin Brown doubleheader, a classic review in Frieze (via @gregorg), with commentary by Dan Colen. Conveniently, work by Martin Barré goes on view at Andrew Kreps this Saturday evening.
  

[Top 10 of 2008] #3 - Giorgio Morandi at Lucas Schoormans and The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Giorgio Morandi, Natura Morta, 1960. Photograph courtesy of Lucas Schoormans

There were five shows containing a significant number of Morandi works in New York this year (at Sperone Westwater, The Italian Cultural Institute, and Pace Prints, in addition to the two that I saw and included here). Writing in the wake of November’s disastrous New York auctions, it would be tempting to read that programming as a foreshadowing of the changing concerns and tastes in the art world: a newfound conservatism. As New Yorkers filled the Met show in massive numbers, though, there was at least a reminder that strong art usually attracts an audience.

The message of each show centered on virtuosity: Morandi was a master. The texture of a single stroke defines the edges of entire objects in his paintings, while his watercolors and drawings build up entire settings with just the faintest components of their media: three fields of color, a few careful, unbroken lines. As we saw his objects reappear in paintings and drawings over his decades of work, always in different positions and perspectives, they became like old friends, comfortably familiar but by turns mysterious and unknowable.