John Yau

Art

Diane Simpson's Sculpture Finds Beauty of a Different Kind

In a world delighted and entertained by displays of material excess, Diane Simpson shows that there is another possibility.

Art

The Ever-Changing Dialogue Between Paint and Body

Through the medium of paint, Nowinski seeks to connect the inner and outer states of her subjects.

Art

The Democracy of Abstraction

Thomas Nozkowski believed that each person’s experience of the everyday was fundamentally unique and set out to honor that in his work.

Art

An Unsentimental Sculptor Confronts Mortality

Daisy Youngblood is a portrait sculptor whose themes include the embracing of one’s mortality.

Art

Philip Guston’s Unblinking Eye

I cannot think of another American artist who went as far as Guston did without a safety net.

Art

Takuji Hamanaka’s Spellbinding Prints

By reinventing the traditional bokashi technique, Hamanaka reminds us that nothing is dead, even when many proclaim otherwise.

Film

Watching TV During the Pandemic

From European detective dramas to art documentaries, Yau reflects on some highlights from a year inside.

Art

An Icon of Unconventional Abstraction

Serge Poliakoff: Gouaches 1938-1969 furthers the case for Poliakoff’s importance and continuing relevance to abstract painting.

Art

Two West Coast Art Communities Outside the Mainstream

One thing seems pretty clear about both groups: they separated themselves from mainstream culture, including the art world. This is practically unheard of today.

Art

Brenda Goodman’s Abstraction and Pain

In her art, Goodman seems to both revisit trauma and heal it. The results are moving and painful.

Books

Invisible Racism in the Old West

In his debut novel, Tom Lin underscores the invisibility of the Chinese to white Americans in late 19th-century United States.

Art

A Poet-Artist Looks to the Stars

Monica Ong is a 21st-century visual poet who extends the reader’s sense of what is possible.