In his column this week, San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker notes a growth in the work of visual artist Grace Munakata, one that has "manifested in a shift of weight from anecdotal content to formal intensity and surprise." Her painting, "Sleeper," "snags the eye in a tangle of colored marks and shapes, postponing recognition of imagery":
The painting offers "a shakeout of images guided by a title, in place of her earlier work's more legible layering of pattern and anecdote. What an improvement."
Grace Munakata, "Sleeper" (2010) (detail)
This kind of praise echoes the present fashion in poetry, at least in some circles.
