Art
Angel Otero’s Paintings of Absence
Otero’s images of water and disaster mirror the wreckage of Hurricane Maria as well as the devastation of COVID-19.
John Yau
John Yau is an award winning poet, critic, curator, and publisher of Black Square Editions. He has published over 50 books of poetry, fiction, and art criticism.
Art
Alix Bailey’s Unfashionable Pursuit
Painting, as a verb, is a way of living in time, of inhabiting a state of solitude, even when you are with other people.
Art
Stephen Pusey’s Remarkable Calligraphic Abstractions
Pusey’s cursive marks sit in that zone where writing becomes drawing and vice versa.
Art
John Mendelsohn’s Paintings of Radiating and Falling Light
The change in hue and density from painting to painting struck me as simultaneously methodical and intuitive.
Art
Drawings of Migration and Pandemic
In her dozens of pastels on handmade paper, Mie Yim seems to start each one over, never attempting to make a variation on a theme.
Art
Altoon Sultan’s Powerful Challenge
Sultan’s works implicitly reject the corporate scale of the Minimalists in favor of a domestic and intimate space
Art
Martin Puryear’s Open Questions
To focus on Puryear’s devotion to craft and the handmade is valid, but now seems too narrow a view.
Books
Writing from Another World
Eric Baus’s sentences follow the rules of grammar, but something inexplicable happens by the time you reach the end.
Art
The Independent Spirit of Herbert Gentry
Gentry was one of a number of Black artists who had to navigate the art world’s demand to emphasize their racial identity in the “right” way.
Art
Rudy Burckhardt’s Innocent Eye
Burckhardt was never surreptitious; he did not hide his camera, and his subjects often knew they were being photographed.
Art
Some Thoughts About England’s Obsession With Portraits
With the possible exception of Howard Hodgkin, not a single English abstract artist has attained anything comparable to the status achieved by Lucien Freud or David Hockney.
Books
Did You Know That Robert Hershon Is a Major Poet?
I cannot think of another contemporary poet who is willing to expose his vulnerability, worry, and pettiness through the lens of humor.