Books
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?
David Carrier
Art
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.
Art
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.
Art
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.
Art
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?
Art
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.
Books
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.
Books
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.
Art
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.
Art
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.
Art
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.
Art
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.