A little detail in an artwork can reveal that sometimes what is right on the surface can change our understanding of the whole.
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.
Posted inOpinion
Why I Won’t Be Visiting the Warhol Show in Saudi Arabia
I couldn’t in good conscience accept an invitation to an exhibition hosted and sponsored by a brutal regime.
Posted inArt
The Church of Secular Art
Bill Viola’s installation at a Naples church misses the spiritual mark.
Posted inBooks
Who Holds the Power in Art?
If art is power, as Farah Nayeri’s Takedown consistently shows, then how can galleries and museums successfully negotiate relationships of power?
Posted inArt
Looking Anew at a Strange Matisse Masterpiece
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.
Posted inArt
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.
Posted inArt
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.
Posted inArt
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?
Posted inArt
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.
Posted inBooks
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.
Posted inBooks
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.
Posted inArt
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.