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
One of the things that I admire about Brenda Goodman is her willingness to push a painting into a territory all its own. She isn’t interested in stylistic consistency or any of the other common denominators that can be used to brand one’s work.
Books
Kenward Elmslie published his poems in Poetry magazine in 1960, and his first book, Pavilions, came out in 1961. Between then and now makes more than fifty years of work. And yet, in some ways, his writing cannot quite be contained by such definitions as “poetry” and “fiction.”
Art
In an era that celebrates celebrity, vulgar loudmouths, puerile provocateurs, selfie-addicts, and excessive materialists, Merlin James prefers subtlety over din, less rather than more.
Art
Imagine the wayward progeny of the textile artist and printmaker Anni Albers and the Mexican geometric artist Gunther Gerzso, experimenting with the wild palette generated by a computer, and you get a glimpse into what Martha Clippinger is up to.
Art
Robert Birmelin’s paintings and drawings of a world going haywire bring together all sorts of visual possibilities, including multiple focal points, compressed juxtapositions of near and far, clearly defined details beside blurred and partially transparent passages.
Art
At one point, while looking at Roy McMakin’s four identical green tables, I had the sudden urge to wipe the dust off one of them, except there wasn’t any dust.
Art
Marco Breuer has been making abstract photographs since the early 1990s. However, in contrast to Aaron Siskind, whose black-and-white photographs of walls were linked to the gestural paintings of the Abstract Expressionists, particularly those of his friend Franz Kline, Breuer works with sheets of c
Art
While writers have drawn a line, so to speak, between Soriano and Sol LeWitt, it seems to me that there are profound differences between their wall drawings. Whereas LeWitt’s self-contained works make no reference to the changes of everyday life, Soriano’s are based on time, light, and shadows cast
Art
In his best works Cordy Ryman makes something visually arresting out of ordinary materials and paint — stuff you can buy in a hardware store.
Art
The art world did not begin to seriously deal with Jack Whitten’s merger of formal inventiveness and emotional content until the past decade, when he entered his seventies.
Art
There is something wonderfully incongruous about what Richard Hull calls his “stolen portraits.”
Art
Whoever thought that Carl Andre’s joyless, hug-the-floor sculpture was the logical culmination of Brancusi got it wrong. This kind of thinking strikes me as macho, competitive, and prescriptive.