by James Panero

On “Albers and Morandi: Never Finished” at David Zwirner, “Victor Pesce: Still Life” at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, “Emily Mason: Chelsea Paintings” & “Wolf Kahn: The Last Decade 2010–2020” at Miles McEnery Gallery, “Jill Nathanson: Light Phrase” at Berry Campbell, “Jane Freilicher: Parts of a World” at Kasmin Gallery, “Deborah Brown: Things As They Are” at Anna Zorina Gallery, “Tworkov: Towards Nirvana / Works from the 70s” at Van Doren Waxter & “Sharon Butler: Morning in America” at Theodore:Art.

The minimalist 1970s challenged the expressionist 1950s. For Jack Tworkov, at one time a burning young painter of the New York School, the answer was to cool his molten compositions into glass and stone. Now at Van Doren Waxter, “Towards Nirvana / Works from the 70s” collects these prismatic, architectural constructions of black, white, and gray.7 A fine essayist and a chair of Yale’s art department in the 1960s, Tworkov always reflected on art and history and his role within it. This exhibition includes a catalogue essay by the curator Jason Andrew and a sample of Tworkov’s own writing that well represents his broad perspective. It should not have been unexpected that Tworkov, entering the 1970s, would seek a new path. “I am tired of the artist’s agonies,” he remarked in 1974. His answer was to look to systems—the movement of chess pieces or the rules of composition—to distill his abstractions. His wild mark-making became more like hatches, his surfaces like etched planes overlapping and folding in on themselves. The exhibition at Van Doren Waxter reveals the color and heart that still energized these cerebral constructions. A dot of red or dash of yellow electrifies these abstractions far more than some wild expressionist brush.