Peter Plagens’s abstractions celebrate playfulness and reject the idea of impurity while navigating the concept of good-looking art. Plagens has shown with the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York, and was the art critic for Newsweek (1989–2003). He is the author of Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast (1945–1970), Moonlight Blues: An Artist’s Art Criticism, The Art Critic (2012), and Bruce Nauman: The True Artist (2014). Plagens was the subject of a retrospective at the Fisher Museum at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in 2004-2005. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital and the National Arts Journalism Program. He currently writes the bi-weekly art review for The Wall Street Journal. Plagens is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at SFAI during the Fall semester.
Peter Plagens, Untitled, 2014, Mixed media on canvas, 72 x 66 inches, Courtesy of the artist
