![](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/mckinniss-jco-blumpoe-1-819x1024.jpg)
Photo: Hannah Mjølsnes via Blum & Poe
Blum & Poe are not splitting quietly. They just opened “Pictures Girls Make,” a show of portraiture curated by Alison Gingeras that looks fantastic.
The title comes from Willem de Kooning, a derogatory quip about his wife Elaine’s portrait practice. So of course there’s an excellent, faceless portrait of Frank O’Hara to start the refutation. A rocky Gertrude Abercrombie self-portrait, Beauford Delaney’s glowing yellow painting of an unidentified man, and a spare, muted picture of John Ashbery by Fairfield Porter are just some of the unexpected vintage treats. It’s an unusually literary show.
![](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/sammckinniss-lana-paris-review-benefit-print-751x1024.jpg)
But when Benjamin Godsill and Nate Freeman on Nota Bene were discussing Sam McKinniss’s new print to benefit the Paris Review [9/10/23, around 30:00], Godsill absolutely went off on Sam’s portrait of Joyce Carol Oates, “The greatest artwork I’ve seen this year.”
Literally cracking up in response, Nate goes, “It’s a perfect Sam McKinniss painting, because it’s a painting of a subject, and it’s a painting of so much more than that”
“And it’s a tough picture, but it’s so well done, it is really, absolutely fantastic.”
I have had a no-engagement policy with JCO for my entire tenure on Twitter, but as that world falls apart, I will make an exception offsite, for Sam. Because it does rock rather intensely.
Pictures Girls Make: Portraitures, curated by Alison Gingeras at Blum & Poe LA runs from 9 Sept til 21 October 2023 [blumandpoe]
Does Lana Del Rey read The Paris Review? [theparisreview.org]