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When a call went out online recently for an art world protest strike — “no work, no school, no business” — on Inauguration Day, more than 200 artists, most based in New York, many well known, quickly signed on. In numbers, they represent a mere fraction of the present art world, and there was reason to expect the list would grow. By contrast, in New York in the 1950s, 200 artists pretty much were that world, and one divided into several barely tangent circles.    

Jill Nathanson is a talented painter who makes magic on canvas by using a technique of poured polymer, which forms overlapping layers of translucency that provide unfamiliar albeit fresh gorgeous hues and are delightful to examine and savor. Over the last four decades, she has deepened her study of color dynamics through methodically delving into chance and risk to ultimately create unity. Berry Campbell, New York. (http://www.berrycampbell.com/)    

WALTER DARBY BANNARD WAS BORN TO WIN. He was the perfect American, a taller, more physically imposing but equally charming version of Warren Beatty, smiling and savvy, brilliant but mischievous. He could have been a movie star, a tennis pro, or at the very least a successful banker sporting a navy blazer and Exeter and Princeton degrees. But he wanted none of what the world could offer him.    

The exhibition "Material Witness" speaks to the sheer physical presence of paint itself and how the artist’s application and use of color creates radiant and dynamic effects. In Blinds and Shades, Josh Dayton literally extends the painted surface by attaching sculptural forms to the canvas, while Herman Cherry and John Opper use color to create paintings that seem to vibrate with energy. Willem de Kooning’s ribbon-like strokes, cascading in swathes of vibrant color, attest to the primacy of the material substance in the evolution of painting. Six of the eight paintings in this exhibition are on view for the first time at the Parrish's Water Mill location.    

Bridgehampton artist Eric Dever's painting NSIBTW 50 was acquired for the Parrish Art Museum's permanent collection. He is represented by Berry Campbell gallery in New York.

When word broke on Facebook on October 2 that Walter Darby Bannard had died, I received more than the ordinary number of worried or consolatory emails. This was proof, if I needed any, that he was widely known and loved, not only for his fine painting but also for his teaching, for his role as dauntless defender of modernism in print, and for simply being a very nice guy. More    

The magnificent painter Elisabeth Condon, who in early October met me at her show at Lesley Heller Workspace, did her best to console me when I broke into tears. I had been expressing my hope, shared among all of us who cared about Walter Darby Bannard, that he would be able to attend the opening for his exhibition of recent paintings at Berry Campbell Gallery, eleven days away. Those hopes had been banished that morning. He had succumbed to complications ensuing from treatments for liver cancer. Elisabeth remarked sagely: “He’ll have the last word. That was always his way.”

The role of female artists in the development of Abstract Expressionism has historically been underplayed and the consequent value of their work in the marketplace diminished. But women played a key role in the articulation of the movement: as early as 1942, Lee Krasner’s work was exhibited alongside that of Jackson Pollock, her future husband; Joan Mitchell, Perle Fine, and Mary Abbott were regularly invited to the members-only Eighth Street Club, founded in 1949 by Willem de Kooning, Ad Reinhardt and others; and Elaine de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler (who later married Robert Motherwell) were included in the seminal ‘Ninth Street Exhibition’ alongside Krasner and Mitchell, organised by Leo Castelli in 1951. Women also participated in the museum shows of the day; Grace Hartigan took part in the 1956 MoMA exhibition ‘Twelve Americans’, which also featured paintings by Philip Guston and Franz Kline.    

The exhibition presents selected works from the well-known series of paintings by American painter Jon Schueler, “Women in the Sky,” comprising eighteen oils and eight works on paper on display. Jon Schueler’s work incorporates human form, or its memories and mysteries, as figure has been a major influence in his thoughts which prominently reflected in his works. 

Walter Darby Bannard, a Color Field painter whose elegant, severe abstract paintings of the late 1950s and early ’60s were the springboard for a lifetime’s exploration of color, form and the physicality of paint, died on Sunday in Miami. He was 82.