Art
The Startling Abstractions of Arpita Singh
For those who know only Singh’s figurative paintings, this exhibition of 33 abstract works will come as a surprise in the very best sense.
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
Caravaggio’s Fascination with Death
The artist's last two paintings are as impetuous, violent, and racked with guilt as Caravaggio was himself.
Art
Will Someone Please Give Ellen Berkenblit a Museum Show Already?
It is as if each of Berkenblit's distinctive works is an isolated, oversized panel from an unknown cartoon strip: we have no idea what happened before or what will happen next.
Art
Storms of Sea, Sky, and Paint
The driving force behind Peder Balke’s painting is his desire to harness paint’s capacious materiality, from impasto to liquidity, to evoke the changing, often tumultuous physicality of his subject matter.
Art
Anne Harvey’s Strange Painting of Tulips
Anne Harvey’s life — the first half of it, at least — reads like a fairy tale.
Art
Flora Crockett Should No Longer Be Written Out of History
The question is: who is Flora Crockett?
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