Art
Flora Crockett Should No Longer Be Written Out of History
The question is: who is Flora Crockett?
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
Roy De Forest’s Search for Paradise Did Not Always Go Well
De Forest is part of a group of artists working in Northern California in the late 1950s who rejected New York and what they regarded as mainstream art and thinking. This group included Joan Brown, Jay De Feo, Bruce Conner, William T. Wiley, Jess, Wally Hedrick, and others.
Art
Florine Stettheimer’s Vision of Equality
Stettheimer was born into a wealthy, financially secure Jewish family, and she never had to work. For some people, her wealth means that she did not suffer enough to be an artist, and therefore her work does not have enough gravity.
Art
Sylvia Plimack Mangold’s Spring and All
I cannot think of another artist devoted to nature who chooses such unlikely, decidedly plain, almost unsightly views, but never makes that act the point of the painting.
Art
Don Voisine Makes Geometry Sexy
Every color in a Voisine painting has its own material identity. Even the narrow bands edging or running through the panel’s border colors convey a distinctive feel to their physicality.
Books
Staying Up with Suzanne Buffam’s A Pillow Book
Buffam’s A Pillow Book is a smart, funny, provocative collection of lists, research into pillows and sleeplessness, and details about all kinds of people, including famous insomniacs.
Art
A Celebration of the Rat Bastards: Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Jean Conner, Jay DeFeo, George Herms, Wally Hedrick, and Others
Shortly after coming to San Francisco, Conner formed what he christened the “Rat Bastard Society.” Conner told the curator Peter Boswell that the name was fitting for “people who were making things with the detritus of society, who themselves were ostracized or alienated from full involvement with s
Books
The Five-Star Delight of Driving Across America with Ron Padgett
At the heart of Padgett’s writing is an innocence: he sees everything — no matter how banal or how curious or strange — with the same attentive, innocent eye.
Art
Peter Dreher Paints a Thousand Skulls
Done over a period of more than forty years, the series now numbers more than five thousand. The paintings present viewers with a visual conundrum: they are exactly the same but each one is unique.
Art
Sonja Sekula’s Time May Have Finally Come
Sekula was part of a number of different overlapping scenes, and she was loved and thought highly of by many. And then nearly everything about her and her work got forgotten.
Art
Thomas Trosch’s Pointed Confections
Trosch has not had a solo show in New York since 2009, which is more than a generation and nearly a lifetime in art-world years.
Art
Nancy Haynes Invites Us to Look Closely
For those who have followed Haynes’ work, her open-ended, experimental approach is not surprising. She is both rigorous and adventuresome without ever claiming these qualities for herself.