Yesterday I went to the Met to see Frank Stella's show and was delighted to see a small show of Neo Rauch's work. His work always feels retro but it's done so well that I don't care. I really like looking at the work. And as I have said before I believe German painters to be the most exciting and experimental at this particular time. This show had all of Rauch's usual tricks - I think we all understand - but it's fun to look at nonetheless. Painters of all stripes should not miss the show. I don't mean to copy, but to react against! This is a strong painter, not a great one but a strong one - and in the States we don't have too many like that. Painting for all of its availability is moribund. There aren't too many great ideas running around and very few thinkers. Rauch's work is Postmodern exemplary - full of Surrealist tropes and up-to-date references - I especially like the way he infuses cartoony imagery right into the history painting without any self conciousness - clever.

Stella's show was problematic, but wonderful. Roberta takes a shot across his bow in a recent review - but I find it rare for her to review an experimental painter in a good light. After reading her for a while I've come to understand that she doesn't always find poetry in theoretical experimentation. She prefers a more intuitive expression. Still her review does grudgingly give Frank a few good hits and a couple of outright smacks to the cheek. And she's right. The sculpture, though fun, is not up to the painting. For me I am still in awe of Stella's Von Kleist series. Is it any wonder that these Over-The-Top paintings are named for the works written by the German author. I've written about these works already so I won't bore you.

Finally in today's times there's a wonderful article by Carol Vogel on Sigmar Polke, who is set to make the hero's journey to Venice for the Biennale. One of the throw away lines is "...“American Pop for us was a new world,” he recalled. “It was a time of big change.” Yet the work he produced was quite different from the slick images of, say, Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein. " This regard for POP and the European fascination with its theoretical underpinnings is part of the reason painting survived. As I've written before - during the 70s painting dried up - see High Times Hard Times discussion. But the Europeans - particularly Polke and Richter were discovering new ways to work - it's the reason European painting looks as it does today. Their experimentation created an atmosphere for strong painting in Germany that then produced the new painting centers of Berlin, Cologne & Leipzig. Polke is one of my favorites - an experimental painter who manages to find poetry in the experiment - that is rare.