Art Review
Man Ray Was So Much More Than a Photographer
From film to painting to sculpture to chess, the Surrealist was an artist-inventor, tinkering away at light and objects and having a good laugh all the while.
Julia Curl
Julia Curl is a PhD student in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, where her research focuses on avant-garde film and photography.
Art
New York Area Shows We Love Right Now
From local concerns in the Bronx to global issues in Queens, plus a trip to see Indigenous art in New Jersey, our favorite art is far-reaching right now.
Art
Five New York City Shows to See Right Now
From historical shows about labor to investigations of color to John Singer Sargent’s renderings of hands, we’re enjoying a variety of art this week.
Art Review
The Trailblazing 20th-Century Photographer History Forgot
Consuelo Kanaga, one of the US’s first female photojournalists, counted Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, and Berenice Abbott as her peers.
Art Review
The Contested History of American Labor
An exhibition shows that our beleaguered present is not apocalyptically singular but the continuation of one long, long fight.
Art
Five New York City Art Shows to See Right Now
From Aaron Gilbert’s take on capitalism to Weegee’s distortions of celebrity culture, these exhibitions all critique or reflect the world around us.
Art Review
Weegee, the Pop Artist That Never Was
By embracing horror through the larger-than-life persona he constructed, the photographer occupies an odd middle ground between the news media and its parody.
Book Review
Science/Fiction Is a Botanical Daydream
This photo history of plants tackles the problem of how to pull ourselves out of the blind, anthropocentric march toward climate disaster.
Art
What Comes After the End?
John Divola asks us: What am I looking at? Is it real? Where does that distinction now lie, given the technology required to make a photograph now?
Books
Danny Lyon Lived His Photography
The photographer's autobiography takes us on a long voyage from East to West and back again without smoothing over the potholes in the road.
Art
How Robert Frank Pushed the Boundaries of Photography
A refreshing retrospective demonstrates that, far from being overshadowed by The Americans, Frank was only getting started with it.
Books
Eileen Agar’s Surrealist Sea
“Surrealism for me draws its inspiration from nature,” writes Eileen Agar in her memoir A Look at My Life.