The Painterly Cravings of Larry Poons

Larry Poons, “Giordano Bruno” (2011) and “Untitled (012D-5)” (2012) (Image courtesy Jason Andrew)

Larry Poons might be considered one of the top painters working today, and he knows it. Over his five-decade career he has painted seminal works that have been shown and owned by an illustrious list of prominent private and museum collections all over the world. Critics and historians have written about his work for decades, with pages upon pages chronicling his modes and methods.

With so much history behind him, and considering that the artist is reaching nearly 80 years old, one might anticipate a lull in his creative output. But Poons remains one of our greatest painters. Like Mario Andretti lives for speed, Poons craves after paint. An exhibition of his most recent work, organized in tandem by the Loretta Howard Gallery and Danese gallery, is chock-full of the best painting on view in New York. Can you tell I’m a fan?

Poons’s work is about color. It’s been about color since his history-making dot paintings of the ’60s. And it’s been about color since his vigorous throw paintings of the ’70s. In the ’80s and ’90s, as surface and texture became prominent in his work, color, while it may seem to have taken a back seat to the physicality of the painting, still remained constant. And in recent years we’ve seen a welcome return to the brush.

“The Flying Blue Cat,” “Tycho Brahe,” and “Barreling” have expansive landscaped horizons and color staccatoed across the canvas in an all-over rhythm. They and the others in the show allude to a narrative but offer no wholly recognizable forms. Maelstroms of line and color tell a story more complicated than your typical “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” But Poons isn’t a history painter by any means. “Spend some time with them,” he tells me. “It’s about the eye; it’s always been about the eye.”