I recall the 1993-1994 Lucian Freud retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as possibly the dreariest exhibition I’d ever seen there.
Thomas Micchelli
Thomas Micchelli is an artist, writer, and co-editor of Hyperallergic Weekend.
Posted inArt
Cosmic Comic: Frank Stella’s Fine Disregard
The first thing I noticed about Frank Stella’s classic “pinstripe” paintings from the late 1950s-early 1960s — gathered from hither and yon for the splendid exhibition, Frank Stella: Black, Aluminum and Copper Paintings — is how at home they looked in L&M Arts’ stately Upper East Side townhouse. The second thing I noticed is how funny they are.
Posted inArt
Worker Bees of the Art World, Unite
If fairs like Frieze draw art and money into uncomfortably close proximity, all that does is state the obvious. To separate them — to pretend that the former can float free of the latter — might appear to be a clean, ethical stance, but that’s a misperception.
Posted inArt
The End of Performance Art as We Know It
So I clicked on Jillian Steinhauer’s post — “Is Marina Abramović Trying to Create a Performance Art Utopia?” — and the first thing that popped into my head was, “Why does it look like a suburban public library, circa 1962?” What I’m talking about is the architectural rendering from none other than OMA’s leading lights, Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, gracing the head of Steinhauer’s article, which was published by Hyperallergic on Monday.
Posted inArt
What You’d Least Expect on the Lower East Side
The reemergence of Pocket Utopia — not in Bushwick but on the southernmost lip of Manhattan’s Lower East Side — in partnership with the uptown fine prints and drawings dealer C. G. Boerner, might strike some as an offbeat, even aberrant choice. But having gotten to know Austin somewhat after writing about her solo show at Storefront in 2010, it made sense to me that she wouldn’t attempt to repeat herself.
Posted inArt
Free-Floating on the 13th Floor: Caroline Cox at the Clocktower
Moving through Caroline Cox’s immersive installations at the Clocktower, the venerable exhibition space on the 13th floor of a city-owned building in Lower Manhattan, is like peeling free from gravity. Although you don’t literally leave the ground, the sculptures’ pulsing aureoles do their best to convince you otherwise. One moment you’re in the institutional-white hallway of a neglected municipal building and the next you’re among star clusters and jellyfish, crepuscular clouds and aggregating amoebae.
Posted inArt
Are Artists the Best Curators?
The most galvanizing room, hands down, in the current Whitney Biennial is the Forrest Bess micro-retrospective put together by sculptor Robert Gober. And on Tuesday, in what could be a trend, another museum-quality exhibition opened, organized by another sculptor — Matthew Day Jackson’s “Science on the back end” at Hauser & Wirth.
Posted inArt
When Things Go Wrong: Serban Ionescu’s “Secret History”
Serban Ionescu was born in Communist Romania and did not speak until he was six. That’s what it says in Dede Young’s essay for Secret History, his solo show at Bridge Gallery on the Lower East Side.
Posted inArt
Pie in the Sky When You Die: Art, Money and Myth
Once it seemed to matter — the high end, I mean. Art and money, when you put the two words together, would invariably lead to HirstMurakamiKoons unless they were referencing KoonsMurakamiHirst. And the crazy gushes of cash that went their way, and the way they flaunted it, became prime rib for glossy magazines and academic panels alike. But that was so 2007.
Posted inArt
Reverse Angles
On Thursday, a cache of recently discovered photos taken by the great Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) at the 1960 Democratic National Convention was released by The New York Times.
Posted inArt
Scripted Wars, Towers of Power
The United States, under the leadership of George W. Bush, launched its unprovoked, premeditated invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. On November 20, 2004, the Museum of Modern Art opened its 630,000-square-foot Yoshio Taniguchi-designed building.
Posted inArt
Rembrandt’s Brush: A Ghost Story
Rembrandt’s “Portrait of the Artist” (ca. 1663–65) from Kenwood House, London, just landed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a seven-week run.