An exhibition at the Wellin Museum in upstate New York brings together nine video and moving image works by seven artists born or living in Africa.
Faheem Haider
Faheem Haider is an artist, writer, art critic, and political analyst. He studied at SUNY New Paltz, the London School of Economics, and New York University. Through the journey of his life, living in London, New York, Paris, and Dhaka, he picked up good habits and bad ones. Faheem publishes his work at blackandwhiteandthings.wordpress.com and his writing at anartism.wordpress.com.
Dhaka Art Summit Censors Pro-Tibet Artwork at Chinese Ambassador’s Request
Nangdrol, an 18-year-old Tibetan living in Sichuan Province, China, penned a farewell letter on February 19, 2012.
How Beauty Can Help Us Empathize
This past weekend David Brooks, the conservative columnist at the New York Times left behind his contrarian punditry for a bit and tried his hand at writing on beauty.
Priestesses at Play: Lynda Benglis at Storm King
MOUNTAINVILLE, NY — This year, among the di Suveros, the Serras, and other Modernist guardians, the autumn leaves adorn Lynda Benglis’s large works in cast metal and polyurethane.
Bangladeshi Government Breaches Historic Fort Wall to Make Way for a Parking Lot
The English-language newspaper Dhaka Tribune reported on Friday that part of a 400-year-old wall protecting the historic Lalbagh Qilla has been demolished — and that the Bangladeshi government’s Archaeological Department signed off on the action.
The Strange Union of Contemporary Art and the Hudson River School
HUDSON, NY — River Crossings, the recently opened show up at the historic Thomas Cole House and Olana, Frederic Edwin Church’s architectural ode to Orientalism, over-promises and under-delivers.
Paintings that Get (Kind of) Close to South Africa’s Colonial Aftermath
KINDERHOOK, NY — Meleko Mokgosi’s eponymous solo show, well installed at The School, Jack Shainman gallery’s outpost in Kinderhook, New York, will hit your sweet spot if you’re in the mood to see some colossal paintings in an atrium-like space that can compete with Dia:Beacon (but with paintings).
Politics Camouflaged as Ornamental Abstraction
NEW PALTZ, NEW YORK — I recently saw the group show ostensibly about ornamentation and abstraction at the Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz, and came away thinking I’d just seen a show about politics, hegemony, and the War on Terror.
The Problematic Elegance of Carl Andre
BEACON, NY — Carl Andre’s 50-year, career-spanning retrospective at Dia:Beacon is coming down this weekend. If you think that Modernism is god, that its spawn, Minimalism, is the lord, and that Andre is her messenger, you’d best catch the show before it’s gone.
The Intimate Duality of Human Behavior
HUDSON, New York — Surrounded by Thomas Micchelli’s works in the John Davis Gallery yesterday, with my back to the gallery’s back wall, I became transfixed by two paintings that throbbed with a rich purple that glowed as if lit by the winter dusk.
Behind the Battle to Save a Brutalist Building
MONTGOMERY, NY — Noted Modernist architect Paul Rudolph’s beautiful, historically significant, so-called “Brutalist” Orange County Government Center in Goshen, NY, will be rehabilitated and turned into the seat of government for Orange County once again.
The Hudson Valley Art Scene Does Not Need Saving
Writer and editor James Trainor’s recent essay in Artsy about the Hudson Valley art scene — obnoxiously titled “The Hinterlands: Can artists and dealers change the creative and economic landscape of Upstate New York?” — reads like a call to artist-saviors to move up the Hudson in order to colonize the virgin, green Hinterlands in the name of high culture.