Tom Lawson — Website Notes (2026) #

Shared by Sofia Benitez Villanueva via Dropbox, 2026-03-18. Audited against live site (thomaslawson.com) on 2026-03-18.

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[x] Art Newspaper #

Reference item — Ben Luke article (see below). No action needed.

Just came across this piece in Art Newpaper.

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[ ] Art in a Broader Context #

Site audit: Headers still say "Writings" (not "Essay"). REALLIFE part two title not fixed. Captions don't put artist name before title. Norman Lewis entry still missing. URL: https://www.thomaslawson.com/art-in-a-broader-context/

Art in a Broader Context

Fía: "I fixed the typos/content edits you suggested!"

I foreground curating in this section but it also includes education. Maybe say a bit more about that in intro?

Pat Douthewaite

• Work on captions. Change header for reviews, not "writings"

• Missing entry. Norman Lewis survey at CUNY Graduate Center Mall Gallery.

• REALLIFE Magazine presents. (fix title)

• work on captions

• Change "Writings" to "Essay"

Critical Perspectives

Fía: "Does Father and Son have an artist I could list?"

• Walter Robinson is the lead image above, so maybe switch out here, replace with Jack Goldstein.

• Text needs some work

• Captions. Artist name before title

• "Essay" not "writings"

• REALLIFE Magazine presents, part two. (fix title)

• work on captions. Crop David Robbins piece

Livin' in the USA

• Fix captions, artist first, add details if known

• Add Jessica Diamond drawing

Nostalgia as Resistance

• Fix captions. Need photo credits

• Add Jenny Bolande piece, torn billboard image

• "Essay" not "Writings"

Familie Beck

• Not sure if the brochure should be labeled "Writings" ? The brochure is the piece

British Art Show

• Captions need photo credits

• Writings include a review and the typescript of my catalogue essay. Not clear. Maybe look for more reviews?

Hot Coffee

• Wrong title here, obviously

• I think I collected some images of work, will look.

• Captions need work

Shimmer

• Again, I think I have more images of included work.

• Captions need work

• And I am sure there was a brochure with essay

The Experimental Impulse

• Work on captions

• Rethink ordering of images

• Add the text that I wrote

Dissent

• Captions.

• Image used twice?

  Fía: "Yes, is there another one we could use instead?"

ART SCHOOL

• This section needs a rethink. Maybe placed elsewhere? I could write a longer intro and there is a good interview that Sohrab Mohrebi did.

  Fía: "Let's definitely link out to as many relevant resources as possible! For exhibitions, texts, etc."

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[x] First group of captions email #

Site audit: 1977-79 captions now have materials and dimensions. Caption content delivered.

What I was thinking -- maybe in notes for now, later to go in writing about me?

So here is the first set of captions, let me know if this works for you. It's pretty much what you suggested.

And I noticed there is only 1 piece from 1979 in this group. Can we add a couple more images? Or is there a limit to the section?

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[ ] In the Studio 1980-82 #

Site audit: Captions on the live site only show title + year — materials and dimensions from Tom's notes below have NOT been added yet. "HE SHOT (DETAIL)" image still present (Tom says remove it). URL: https://www.thomaslawson.com/inthestudio_1980-1982/

• Add materials/dimensions to all captions (see below)
• Remove "HE SHOT (DETAIL)" image

GREED

Greed, 1980

43"x53" oil and oilstick on canvas, with painted wood frame

Fía: "I formatted these all to be h x w on the website"

HE DIED LIKE

He Died Like his Many Innocent Victims, 1980

43"x53" oil and oilstick on canvas, with painted wood frame

WILD IN THE

Wild in the Streets, 1980

43"x53" oil and oilstick on canvas, with painted wood frame

A NEW BEGINNING

A New Beginning, 1981

4 sections, each 36"x36" oil and oilstick on canvas

BATTERED BODY

Battered Body Found in Freezer, 1981

48"x48" oil and oilstick on canvas

DON"T HIT HER

Don't Hit Her Again, 1981

48"x48" oil and oilstick on canvas

BEATEN

Beaten to Death, 1981

48"x48" oil and oilstick on canvas

SHOT FOR BIKE

Shot for a Bike, 1981

48"x48" oil and oilstick on canvas

BURN BURN

Burn, Baby, Burn, 1982

48"x48" oil and oilstick on canvas

NEW YORK'S

New York's Finest II, 1982

108"x36"x6" oil and oilstick on canvas

THEIR BROKEN

Their Broken Hearts, 1982

61"x72" oil and oilstick on canvas, with painted wood divider

SAVED

Saved, 1982

48"x96" oil and oilstick on canvas

GUILTY

Guilty, 1982

Ink on board

HE SHOT

He Shot his Best Buddy, 1982

48"x 97" oil and oilstick on canvas with painted wood divider

HE SHOT (PENCIL)

Study for He Shot his Best Buddy, 1982

10"x8" graphite on Xerox, on paper

HE SHOT (SCALED)

He Shot his Best Buddy (repeat), 1982

8 processed color Xeroxes on paper, each 10"8"

HE SHOT (DETAIL)

Remove this one <-- Still on site, needs to be removed

REPLACEMENT

Replacement, 1982

10"x8" processed Xerox on paper

SHE SLEW

She Slew Schoolmate, 1982

Fía: "the text on the artwork reads 'She slew her schoolmate'; does it matter?"

8"x10 graphite on processed Xerox on paper

Fía: "dimensions?"

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[ ] In the Studio (overview) #

Site audit: 1983-87 page returns 404. Site shows "2010-2015" instead of "2011-2015". No new groups created (2020-22, 2023-25). Hero image not yet replaced. URL: https://www.thomaslawson.com/in-the-studio/

In the Studio

• Replace hero image, not sure with what yet

1977-79 #

• In the captions add materials and dimensions — DONE on live site
• Add couple of sentences about what I was doing?

  Fía: "sounds great!"

• Reorder images per Tom's requested sequence

1980-82 #

• Add materials and dimensions to captions
• Add one more image to complete the layout?

1983-87 #

• Page returns 404 — needs to be created or URL fixed
• There is nothing from 87 in here, so we should add some, or change header to 86.
• The first painting is mis-dated and out of sequence. It is from 1986, so should move up after Heaven is a Place
• Maybe also add some images from a survey show I did in NY in 86?

1987-1990 #

• more sentences and a lot of work on captions and reshuffling.
• Also a whole show missing, Party's Over. And maybe some more on La Jolla show
• Should we also add some working drawings for public projects that were getting started at this time?

  Fía: "I like this idea!"

1991-93 #

• Same again, and also add something about moving to the CalArts space?
• Drawings from installations at Derry, Madrid, Newcastle

1994-98 #

• We now have better photos of some of these

1999-2006 #

• Switch out some of these map paintings and add some more of the Scottish revolutionary paintings, plus install shots from Chicago, Edinburgh and LAXART

2006-2010 #

• Check dates in relation to last group. It was this group that earned me a Guggenheim so maybe we should add that fact to notes. Also some install shots of show at Participant. Rethink the section somewhat, add a couple of drawings. Also rethink the grouping on opening page.

2011-2015 #

Site audit: Site currently labels this "2010-2015" — needs correction.

• Fix label: should be "2011-2015" (or "2011-2014" per Tom's note)
• This group need re-ordering, and maybe some rescaling? – Walking on Water is really big. And just get them out of the frame with the color chart?
• The first two should be at the end, and maybe there are one or two more.

2015-2016 #

• This is one show, so I should say so, plus some work made at the Rome Academy, and I think I'd add at least one more of them.

2017-2020 #

• I have more to add to this group, and more to say about them

New groups needed #

• 2020-22 — pandemic works
• 2023-25 — self portraits leading to text works, paintings and drawings
• 2026-?

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[ ] In the studio 1977-79 #

Site audit: Captions with materials/dimensions are present (DONE). Image ordering does NOT match Tom's requested sequence below. URL: https://www.thomaslawson.com/inthestudio_1977-1979/

• Add materials and dimensions to captions — DONE
• Reorder images as specified below (#2 next to #1, #3 below #1)

FORMANESQUE

Formanesque, 1977

25 sheets @ 22"X30" (total 110"X150") oilstick and graphite on paper

FIGURES FORMANESQUE

Running Figures, detail from Formanesque, 1977

22"x30" oilstick and graphite on paper

AEROPLANES SEVERAL

Several Aeroplanes, detail from Formanesque, 1977

22"x30" oilstick and graphite on paper

ONE PIPER

Single Piper, 1977

22"x30" oilstick and graphite on paper

HIGHLAND GAMES

Highland Games, 1977

22"X30" oilstick and graphite on paper

LONE PIPER

Lone Piper, 1977

54"x54" oilstick and enamel paint on canvas

BABY PINK ON BLUE

Pink Baby on Blue, 1978

30"x44" oilstick and spray enamel on paper

JUMPING BABY on AQUA

Jumping Baby, 1978

52"X42" oilstick and enamel on canvas

GOLD DOG (diptych)

Good Dog, 1978

Diptych 30"X45" oilstick on paper

Fía: "each panel?"

TWO BOXERS

Mirror Boxers, 1978

Diptych 30"x45" oilstick on paper

Fía: "each panel?"

TINY DOG

Tiny Dog, 1978

Diptych 30"x45" oilstick on paper

Fía: "each panel?"

TWO DOGS Burgundy

Mirror Bassets, 1978

Diptych 30"x45" oilstick on paper

Fía: "each panel?"

GOLD DOG

Gold Dog, 1978

53"43" oilstick and enamel paint on canvas, with painted wooden frame

RED SHOE

Red Shoe, 1979

36"x36" oilstick and enamel paint on canvas

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[ ] Notes #

Site audit: Rabkin Prize is listed (DONE). Chez Max show is listed (partially done — may need press release/install shots). AF Projects is listed with Vimeo link (partially done). Spike essay NOT moved to Bookshelf. 3 drawings/paintings not yet replaced. URL: https://www.thomaslawson.com/notes/

Notes

Do we want a different name for this? The description seems good (although I have to get more active adding and moving items – maybe there should be a schedule? Every 6 months? Every year?)

Fía: "Discuss"

To add:

• Info on Rabkin Prize, link to interview — DONE (listed with Substack link)

• Press release and install shots of Chez Max show — PARTIALLY DONE (listed, may need more)

  Fía: "Should this exhibition have its own page on 'Beyond the Studio', perhaps where the install shots could go?"

• Link to Chex Max discussion once published on EOB

  Fía: "TBD"

• Press release and install shots of AF Projects show — PARTIALLY DONE (listed with Vimeo)

  Fía: "your exhibition page on the gallery website is password-protected: https://www.louise-alexander.com/exhibition/thomas-lawson-attending-to-the-bats"

• One or two recent paintings?

  Fía: "TBC"

• Something about the drawing class?

  Fía: "TBC"

To move:

• Spike essay to Bookshelf — NOT DONE (not on Bookshelf or Notes currently)

  Fía: "Moved to 'considering other artists'--would you suggest a different category?"

• Remove the 3 drawings/paintings and replace

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[x] Second group of captions email #

Site audit: Caption content delivered. Relates to 1980-82 section (see above for outstanding items).

I think this group is pretty self contained. There is one image to delete, which will even things out, and it seems redundant

I'm attaching a maybe better photo of Beaten to Death. And wondering if there is a way to crop some of these images so there is less empty backdrop?

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[x] The joy of sex #

Site audit: Both Joy of Sex works appear on the 1977-79 page with captions. DONE.

The Joy of Sex, 1979

8"x10" ink on paper

Joy of Sex III, 1979

25"x43" oil and enamel paint on canvas

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[x] Ben Luke — We are Living in an Age of Bad Painting #

Reference article — mentions Tom's "Last Exit: Painting" (Artforum, 1981). No action needed beyond noting for context.

Comment | We are living in an age of bad painting—the medium must be challenged to stay interesting

Painting may not be dead, but it may have become too comfortable

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/01/07/comment-we-are-living-in-an-age-of-bad-paintinghas-the-medium-become-too-comfortable

Ben Luke

7 January 2026

"There were people who thought painting was problematic": Christopher Wool's Untitled (2018), was recently on show at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London Photo: Tim Nighswander; © Christopher Wool; courtesy the artist

A closer Luke

Ben Luke, our Contributing Editor and podcast host, weighs in on the pressing issues facing the UK art world and beyond

It is dangerous to use art fairs as a barometer of making and meaning in contemporary art. But walking through Frieze London's carpeted aisles in October, a long-developed hunch was confirmed emphatically: we are amid a deluge of bad painting.

It is not good "bad painting", in the late Francis Picabia sense. It is bad bad painting. Bloated, vapid, performative (not in the good sense) painting. Stultifyingly boring painting. Market-slump painting. "Oh-why-not?" painting.

The exhibition Painting After Painting: a Contemporary Survey from Belgium at the SMAK museum in Ghent between April and November was less disquieting. (Full disclosure: I led a panel at SMAK on the subject of painting with two curators of recent surveys, Lydia Yee and Manuela Ammer.) But while the intellectual framework around the show was robust and thoughtful and the presentation absorbing, with plenty of examples of engaging work, a lot of it still felt thin in subject or wanting in execution.

This is perhaps inevitable in any survey of 74 artists working in a particular medium in a single country. But as a devout, passionate defender of the discipline's unique properties and powers, I can't remember being so often at a loss to find merit in paintings as I have been in the past couple of years.

I wonder: has painting become too comfortable? No one says painting is dead anymore. It never will be, of course. But with no ideological objections it isn't forced to defend itself, to come out fighting. Some of the best painting of the past century was made in times of crisis and reckoning, when artists using paint felt embattled or disenfranchised from the central discourse.

A brush with… Christopher Wool—podcast

Hosted by Ben Luke. Produced by Philippa Kelly and David Clack

I was reminded of this when I interviewed Christopher Wool on the A brush with… podcast in October. We spoke about his reflection that the moment where the Renaissance gave way to the Baroque was comparable to the shift between Modernism and postmodernism that was happening when he emerged as an artist in the late 1970s. Both situations—moments of crisis or upheaval—liberated artists. Wool suggested that "we're experiencing a real lack of that now, or that's my impression, anyway. Those kinds of dialogues are rare now." I asked if he meant a critical dialogue where ideas are on the line. He responded that artists in the late 1970s "really had to deal with some of these issues… you couldn't really ignore them". I asked if artists were literally discussing whether painting was dead in their studios. "There were plenty of people not far from me who really believed painting was problematic and should be avoided in some way," he replied.

'Obscurity and ambiguity'

Wool then mentioned a marvellous piece of critical writing from that time: Thomas Lawson's 'Last Exit: Painting', published in Artforum in October 1981, in which Lawson, himself a painter, argued that painting can be the "unsuspecting vehicle" that camouflages radical ideas. Crucial to painting's potency in opposition to the photographic practices trumpeted by those marking painting's demise, Lawson suggested, was its capacity for obscurity and ambiguity. He saw the work of the Pictures Generation artists, such as Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman, as "straightforwardly declarative". It therefore leaves no room for a factor that I believe remains one of contemporary painting's superpowers, and an animating force for much of the best painting since that period: harnessing what Lawson calls "the growth of a really troubling doubt".

Doubt was a productive force for an artist of terrific importance for Wool in his early years—Philip Guston. Guston's own response to a painting crisis, choosing figuration over abstraction, literally prompted friends to turn their backs on him. I regard Wool's recent paintings in oil as reanimating some of Guston's questions.

It seems no accident that the four painters whose shows I have most admired in recent months—Wool at Gagosian, Kerry James Marshall at the Royal Academy of Arts and Peter Doig at the Serpentine, all in London, and Charline von Heyl at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels—forged their painterly languages at moments of fierce debate about the possibilities, and pitfalls, of the discipline. An anything-goes climate is not healthy for painting. Just because we are past the painting-is-dead moment does not mean the fight for its relevance is over.

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[ ] Beyond the Studio #

Site audit: "Painted Installations" still listed before "Early New York" (not swapped). "Portraits of New York" still plural (should be singular). Portrait of NY still after Memory Lingers Here (wrong order). "Deidre" spelling on site — should be "Deirdre". URLs:

• Overview: https://www.thomaslawson.com/beyond-the-studio/
• Early New York: https://www.thomaslawson.com/beyond-the-studio-early-new-york/
• Temporary Murals: https://www.thomaslawson.com/beyond-the-studio-portraits-of-new-york/
• Theatre, Dance & Fashion: https://www.thomaslawson.com/beyond-the-studio-theatre-dance-fashion/

Beyond the Studio

Lots of issues to fix here

• Switch Painted Installations and Early New York — NOT DONE (Painted Installations still first)

Early New York #

• Fix intro text – this is from Painted Installations — NOT DONE (wrong text still showing)

• Civic Virtues. Wrong text – this describes an install in London

• Need to rewrite and improve captions

• City Hall Park. Wrong text – this describes an install in NY gallery

• Need to rewrite, improve captions, fix title – should read Civic Virtue/Civil Rights — heading exists but text issues remain

Painted Installations #

• Anthony Reynolds - fix captions, remove image from later show at Reynolds

• Party's Over. Reconsider placement of images. Improve captions.

• La Jolla. Rename, Freedom of Choice. Rethink placement of images.

Dark Installations #

• This section seems mostly OK. Captions need work/expansion

Temporary Murals #

• Fix typos in intro.

• Portrait of New York should go before Memory Lingers Here — NOT DONE (still after)

• Portrait of New York. Fix title throughout – not "Portraits" — NOT DONE (still says "Portraits")

• Maybe add some more images

• Add video

Memory Lingers Here #

• Work on captions. Do we need so many images?

  Fía: "I think we can remove 2-3"

Glasgow Projects #

• Mostly OK, check for typos, look over captions

Theatre, Dance and Fashion #

• Fix spelling: "Deirdre" — NOT DONE (site currently says "Deidre")

• Work on captions

• Add video

Slimane Vogue Project #

• Work on captions

• Add an installation shot of Met Opera show?

Till You Drop #

• Add date to intro text. Improve captions

• Add video

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