Art
Traveling to China, Finding the Core of Art
If there is a folly to what Zhang Wei has done, there is also a defiance of the commercial aspect of the art world.
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
Figures in Clay, Embarrassed and Alive
The tension between classicism and chaos is one of the many things that sets Bruce Gagnier’s art apart from figurative sculpture stretching back to Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, and Edgar Degas.
Books
When a Poet Becomes Invisible
Facing her mortality, Mary Ruefle does not ask for pity or sympathy, because death is democratic.
Books
The Rise and Fall of Three Actresses
In Amanda Lee Koe's debut novel, the lives of Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl are intertwined with changes in the world and with one another.
Art
Catching Up with Taiwanese Art
We in America have some idea of what is going in art in China, Japan, and South Korea, but we seem to know almost nothing about contemporary Taiwanese art.
Art
Jess, a West Coast Visionary
It is clear to me now that seeing Jess's art was the beginning of my awareness that there was a multitude of what John Ashbery called “other traditions.”
Art
Seeing American History Through the Art of a Black WWI Soldier
Horace Pippin was a self-taught artist out of necessity, as the society in which he lived had shut most of its doors on him.
Art
Roger Brown’s Innovative Still Lifes
Brown was interested in mishaps and disasters, but above all, he was interested in what it meant to be American.
Art
In Praise of Painting's Ambiguity, Part 3
Jasper Johns breaks down the image of a broken man.
Art
The Disturbing Greatness of Hyman Bloom
Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock considered Hyman Bloom to be America’s first Abstract Expressionist, a label, it should be pointed out, that the artist himself rejected.
Art
In Praise of Painting's Ambiguity, Part 2
Despite all the changes that Jasper Johns’s art has undergone since the mid-1950s, he has repeatedly returned to the theme of brokenness.
Art
Our Love for Fetishes
Sculptor Margaret Wharton and painter Issy Wood are both open to the irrational currents flowing through our lives.