Art
Better Late Than Never
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.
John Yau
Art
Weekend Studio Visit: Richard Hull in East Village, Chicago
There is something wonderfully incongruous about what Richard Hull calls his “stolen portraits.”
Art
The Beauty of Absent Bodies
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.
Art
Archaic Futurism
In an interview that appeared in The Brooklyn Rail (May 2014), Joyce Robins explained that the title of her early painting “The Vly” (1975) is the Dutch word for swamp.
Art
Vanity, Thy Name Is Man
CHICAGO — I was hooked by the time I finished reading “Mr. John F. Kennedy and Mr. Kenneth Noland” (2016), a text-filled drawing written in pencil in large and distinct capital letters that reminded me of penmanship practice in elementary school.
Art
Solid and Perilous
Gary Petersen’s skewed geometric paintings call forth analogies to music and architecture, a realm of vertical intervals and diagonal supports spliced into a precarious balance.
Art
Light Shining through Sharp Edges
The Austrian painter Tillman Kaiser does something unexpected and frankly welcome. Rather than accept that painting is used up or on life support, Kaiser opens up the discourse through the use of egg tempera (a medium dating back to Egyptian mummy portraits) on photograms (a 20th-century invention)
Art
A Different History
The title of the painting I had been looking at, “Adam and Eve and the Goats” (2016), surprised me. I had thought it was retelling of a classical myth, a subject that Kyle Staver has explored with verve and humor before.
Art
A Heap of Broken Bodies
I want to start my review of Endymion: Recent Paintings by Clintel Steed at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects/SHFAP with a statement the artist made to Jennifer Samet in an interview that appeared on her blog, "Beer with a Painter."
Books
A Forensic Poet for Our Time
What do you do, if you are a poet who has never “ been comfortable with autobiographical material?” Monica Youn’s poems brim with answers to this question that a younger poet might do well to notice.
Art
A Singular Enterprise
I have been doing my best to follow Marilyn Lerner ever since I reviewed her exhibition at John Good for Artforum (May 1989).
Books
The Good Life
We want things to be simple, but we know they aren’t, probably never were, and chances are will get only more messy with time. What’s a young poet to do, but try and take some control?