Art
How T.C. Cannon Redefined American Indian Identity
Cannon's art is not about identity politics, but the layers and contradictions of self-representation in a society that valorizes assimilation and whiteness.
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.
Books
The Unreality of Everyday Life
What makes Ha Seong-nan's Flowers of Mold so powerful is her ability to reveal the almost imperceptible slippage between actual events and the protagonists' perceptions.
Art
Dana Powell and the Pleasures of Restraint
Do not mistake small size of Powell’s paintings for modesty; she wants to draw us in, to make works that can sustain close looking.
Art
Out of Vietnam, Drawings of Displacement and Repression
In Hà Ninh Pham’s drawings, a building could be a prison or a torture chamber, but there is nothing about the edifices that might indicate their function.
Art
Mark Greenwold Looks in the Mirror and Does Not Flinch
Greenwold takes us down the rabbit hole into that place where fear and trembling preside.
Art
The Joan Mitchell You’ve Never Seen
Highly analytical, Mitchell was a master of setting off one form or color against another, advancing the idea that a painting can be made of separate but layered and entangled parts.
Books
A Poet Yearning for Knowledge
Ron Padgett’s poems make me gnash my teeth.
Art
Mosaics of Motherboards, Keyboards, and Wire
Ethiopian artist Elias Sime makes wall sculptures from castoff computer parts that evoke the toxic dumping of these materials around the world.
Art
Two Women in a Man’s Art World
You are not likely to find the work of Mimi Gross and Marcia Marcus in the permanent collections of any major New York City museum. I find that both predictable and troubling.
Art
How Do Artists Get Into the Whitney Biennial?
I made a spreadsheet to find out what the participants in the Whitney Biennial have in common.
Art
A Disruptor of Race and Sex
In a time when many artists are content to establish one-to-one correspondences between signifier and signified, sign and meaning, Wardell Milan’s ambiguity is refreshing.
Art
George Miyasaki's Non-Western American Painting
In writing about artists of Asian descent I have repeatedly bumped up against codified prejudices in both the art and literary world.