To launch the publication of Art in America’s “New Talent” issue, the editors assembled some of the artists selected for 2025 along with two luminaries—Carroll Dunham and Rochelle Feinstein—to talk about the art world’s current swing from figuration to abstraction. A toast was raised to this year’s designated “New Talent” artists—20 names to watch at pivotal points in their career, all to be revealed May 16 on newsstands and online. And the panel discussion, moderated by A.i.A. senior editor Emily Watlington, engaged one of the art world’s most significant stylistic shifts in recent years.
A.i.A. editor-in-chief Sarah Douglas and publisher Erica Lubow Necarsulmer welcomed guests to the ground-floor studio in PMC’s headquarters across from the main branch of the New York Public Library. To mark the occasion, they raised glasses of champagne provided by Ruinart—poured alongside wines from Presqu’ile—and offered a toast to the artists and an audience assembled to acknowledge and appreciate their work.
During the panel discussion, Dunham said of his early years as a painter beginning in the 1970s, “there was never any doubt in my mind that I was being called to work on abstract art when I was young.” But over the years, characters began emerging. “My work made me do it,” he said. “My work seems to want certain things of me.”
Feinstein, an avowed decades-long abstractionist, said, “I remember years ago I was told by a representational painter that I wasn’t part of painting culture.” But she was in search of something on her own. “I was trying to deeply understand geometric painting because that was the least emotional form.” About the pendulum swing between figuration and abstraction—a dynamic explored in a feature by Barry Schwabsky in the new Art in America issue—Feinstein panned back to provide perspective. “A pendulum marks time,” she said. “It’s fluid.”
