“Perhaps the caliber of his work can be gauged by the resistance to it. The centres of fashion and official art, those celebrators of the pseudo-cerebral, have not taken him up. For me, this only confirms his high standing.” Ken Carpenter (1980) A Breadth of Vision …
“The result is a complex, near-fugal relationship of works begun at different dates, as themes are picked up again, restated, rexamined, and altered. But if a clear chronological development is not always manifest, Drapell’s particular character is.” Karen Wilkin (1984) Ten Years 1973-1983
“There is no sense that any of his recent works are disguised landscape references, but rather, that they are totally abstract inventions made potent about deep feelings about nature.” Karen Wilkin (1986) The Recent Work …
“It is a non-traditional abstract, ‘eventful’ beauty, but it nonetheless ‘conveys the impression of something intact, whole, complete or perfect’ … and thus amounts to a ‘restitution of what has been destroyed’.” Donald Kuspit (1996) Excess and Intimacy …
“Drapell … has become a towering figure. … Today he stands as one of the greatest masters of our age.” Kenworth W. Moffett (2004) The Mystical Power of Images
“Wilkin was early to point out that if Drapell invented a technique for dispassionate formal manipulation, he put it in the service of full-blown romanticism, placing himself at odds with his roots in the self-reflexive 1960s” Roald Nasgaard (2007) Exotic Modernism after 1970
“Joseph Drapell’s Shadow Covenant of Silences that Speak …” Pavlina Radia (2010) Feeding The Gods …
“The striateds and the developments that emerged out of them offer clear and compelling confirmation of Drapell’s contribution as a major contemporary abstract painter.” Walter Klepac (2014) The Method of Radical Compression …
“Drapell incorporates personal history—and art history—into the work … it is based on deeper truths, bravely expressed.” Matthew Kyba (2018) Against Art …
“Interestingly, both Duchamp and Drapell’s iconic works do not use human figures as beauty signifiers. Drapell’s Expulsion From Paradise … incorporates the nudes of both sexes … yet the depicted bodies can hardly be called beautiful.” Matthew Kyba (2020) Autobiographical Compression
“Drapell’s inventiveness has challenged me at every turn. After his superb abstract years, he focused his art in the opposite direction: new depictions of landscape, and later of figures.” Ken Carpenter (2022) Re-imagining the Landscape