Art
The Power and Limits of Ai Weiwei's Irreverence
While his political commitment comes through in many works, it’s hard to square talk of “revolution” with Ai Weiwei’s staggering mainstream US success.
Eileen G’Sell
Eileen G’Sell is a poet and culture critic whose work focuses on gender, sexuality, and economic class. She is a 2023 winner of the Rabkin Foundation Prize in arts journalism and teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
Art
Dora Maar, More than a Surrealist Muse
The Centre Pompidou's Dora Maar honors Picasso’s famous muse for the pivotal part she clearly, and often daringly, played in the establishment of the European avant-garde.
Film
Reveling in the Languor of David Hockney’s World
A Bigger Splash, Jack Hazan's 1974 documentary on Hockney's circle, basks in the full-frontal, day-to-day details of their tightly interwoven emotional lives.
Film
Juliette Binoche Offers a Tantalizing Performance in Her Two Latest Films
In both High Life and Non-Fiction, Binoche is a temptress equally tender and intimidating.
Film
The Tender Turns of the Crime Drama Dogman
Balancing verité grit with sometimes-howling humor, Matteo Garrone's new movie is subtler than what viewers might anticipate.
Film
The Origins of the Colombian Drug Trade Told Through an Indigenous Family's Eyes
The female-forward characters and the matrilineal Wayúu tribe the movie orbits have gone surprisingly under-explored by film critics.
Art
Virginia Lee Montgomery's Abject Whimsy
Virginia Lee Montgomery toys with the psychic space in which abjection is gendered, playfully prodding erotic hierarchies.
Art
Kehinde Wiley's Painted Elegies for Ferguson
The subjects of Wiley's Ferguson paintings launch a vibrant dialogue between the canvas of the painting and the canvas of the body.
Film
Two Feminist Directors Who Exposed the Trials of Working Class Women
While the female protagonists in Barbara Loden's Wanda and Susan Seidelman's Smithereens may be lost — and legitimately poor — the one thing they are not is self-pitying.
Art
Mona Hatoum's Psychological Surgery
While artist’s career has consistently invited interpretation based in institutional critique and real-world tumult, it is equally constructive to consider her work from a psychological, rather than political, vantage.
Art
An Afro-Surrealist Project Deifies God-Like Bodies of Color
Damon Davis plumbs the depths of Black history, fantasy, and mythology to create a vision of power and resilience in his St. Louis exhibition.
Film
Agnès Varda's Utopian Musical Homage to Feminism from the 1970s
One Sings, the Other Doesn't, Varda's precious and poignant feminist musical from 1977 has been restored.