Back to Summer 2010 ARTnews Retrospective  

100 Years Ago

Every Summer sees an increase in the number of temporary art exhibitions in the large European cities. . . . The greed for English shillings and American dollars, however, which is so universal on the Continent, has unfortunately begun to effect the art and art student organizations which in most of the European art centers organize and manage these displays—and there are not wanting signs of them degenerating into catch penny affairs—with more attention paid to getting money out of the visiting public than to the artistic event of the displays.
—"'Catch Penny' Art Shows," August 20, 1910

75 Years Ago

At the Reid Lefêvre Galleries in King Street, there is an opportunity of studying Renoir's output from the 'seventies to about 1916. . . . The artist's limitations as well as his genius are clearly revealed. . . . One sees the Renoir who could suggest sun and joyousness and the Renoir who only gives heat instead of warmth, and lack of air when spaciousness is needed. But in spite of inequality, one comes away with an impression of a painter of vision who could paint flowers with the touch of a poet, suggest flesh-tints with an unsurpassed luminosity, and make an idyll from a farm-girl leading home the cattle.
—"Reid Lefêvre Shows Renoir," by L. G. S., July 13, 1935

50 Years Ago

[Francis] Bacon's position among living British artists is peculiar to himself. No longer "young" in conventional terms (he is fifty this year), he has sought none of the normal consolations of seniority. . . . He and his life remain firmly private. Open-handed, noctambular, at ease at both extremes of the social scale, with the temperament of a great gambler and a habit of unfailing, if always observant courtesy, he sometimes seems to stand for an England that has elsewhere gone for ever.
—"Art News from London," by John Russell, Summer 1960

25 Years Ago

Two concurrent exhibitions lately helped to redress the balance and underscored the indisputable fact that [Gerhard] Richter is a master at his craft. Second, and more important, they proved again that Richter achieves mystery as well as mastery. Is he a supremely clever pre-postmodernist? Is he instead an art-making machine, pitiless in his sheer ability to manufacture gorgeously executed, soulless paintings? Or is he far greater than the sum of his parts? The viewer must supply his or her answer to these questions; but both exhibitions served to remind us that Richter's approach, combined with his skill, gives an edge to painting that it has consistently lacked since Pop art.
—New York reviews, by Jane Bell, Summer 1985