In 1911 Matisse created “The Red Studio,” a self-enclosed world in his studio, by showing 11 earlier works of art, without the presence of the artist.
David Carrier
David Carrier’s most recent books are Art Writing Online: The State of the Art World and Philosophical Skepticism as the Subject of Art: Maria Bussmann’s Drawings. His book In Caravaggio’s Shadow: Naples as a Work of Art is forthcoming.
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Sean Scully’s Abstract Paintings Have Stories to Tell
Minimalism sought to empty out narrative pictorial content. Scully’s goal has been to put it back.
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An Artist’s Monument to the Monotony of Images
Bayrle creates an art gallery version of computer reproductions of unreality. His art inhabits a world composed of repeated ready-made images.
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What Can We Learn From Italy’s Early Leftist Modernists?
The artists in Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917 faced a real problem: how to represent injustices and project a hopeful vision of what changes were possible?
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Painting that Exhilarates the Eye and Mind
It can be tempting to compare these historical Indian paintings with familiar examples from the Euro-American canon but that would do a disservice to these artworks, which are revelatory on their own.
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How Can Museums Break Away From White Privilege?
Following cogent survey of the modern art museum’s history, The Art Museum in Modern Times turns to a challenging discussion of the present problems of modern museums.
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Philosophy of Aesthetics That’s Actually Fun to Read
Lydia Goehr’s Red Sea–Red Square–Red Thread is so ambitious, so original, so detailed, and so poetic that it transcends mere commentary and becomes itself a distinguished contribution to philosophy.
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Boris Lurie’s Search for Historical Truth in Trauma
What’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to show in art is the experience of what passes beyond all comprehension.
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The Magnificent Abstractions of Alma Thomas
Thomas was a major artist who in her lifetime was unjustly denied the acclaim she merited. This show is a brave beginning.
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The Transcendent Power of Black in Norman Lewis’s Abstractions
For Lewis, a first-generation Abstract Expressionist, working with black seemed to open up his art.
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A Philosopher-Painter for Troubled Times
Judith Bernstein is a great artist whose boldly original paintings forcefully respond to the troubled life of our present culture.
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Rethinking Kandinsky
The problem with many of Kandinsky’s abstractions is that they don’t offer enough immediate visual information to “crack” his expressive code for color and form.