Books
When a Woman Chooses Art Over All Else
Both Celia Paul and Gwen John oriented their lives around being artists and were diverted by romantic entanglements with famous male artists that reduced them to muses. Was it worth it?
Sophia Stewart
Film
A Bruce Mau Documentary Can’t Explain What the Man Does
MAU is too charmed by its subject to nail down what he has achieved, or why people should even care about him in the first place.
Books
The Complicated Legacy of Modernist Minoru Yamasaki, Architect of World Trade Center
Yamasaki’s most well-known projects — the twin towers and the Pruit-Igoe housing project — were both destroyed on national television.
Art
What Might a New, 21,000-square-foot Art Space Bring to Brooklyn?
With the opening of the new, $40 million structure in East Williamsburg, it poses the question of its role in the local arts community — one of collaboration or conquest?
Books
Enough with the Ableist Worship of Frida Kahlo
Emily Rapp Black’s new book cuts through self-serving interpretations of disabled bodies like Kahlo’s, which have long emphasized the comfort or pleasure of others.
Film
No Wave Musician Lydia Lunch Gets Her Due
Beth B’s biographical documentary The War is Never Over has a DIY sensibility befitting the No Wave performer.
Books
Resonant Adventures in Art and Intimacy From Larissa Pham
A memoir-in-essays, Pop Song is at its most satisfying when the author assembles an arsenal of visual artists to express the ineffable.
Film
A Documentary Rectifies Bill Traylor's Omission From History
Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts works with the scant available details of the artist's life to tell his story.