This week, mass graves for aging turbines, the performer you might’ve missed at the Super Bowl, the Brexit coin’s lack of an Oxford comma, and more.
February 8, 2020
An Evolution of Style in Three Poets
I love discovering new voices, but there’s much to be said for following poets over the course of their careers, watching their styles evolve, their attentions shift.
Raymond Roussel’s Stories Are Based on Complex Word Games
A precursor to literary surrealism, Roussel employed pastiche and mathematics to prioritize form over content.
The Eccentric Genius of Agnès Varda
With her devotion to cats and heart-shaped everything, Varda personified adorably unconventional thinking — without apology or apparent self-consciousness.
The Makings of Madonnas
The peculiarities of pregnancy in art, from corsets to belly pads and hidden bumps.
Jake Berthot’s Nowhere Land
All that I saw were some small and medium-sized paintings, mostly very dark, almost indistinguishable. How could I review this show?
Issei Nishimura’s Soulful, Expressionistic Art
Intense and deeply personal, the Japanese self-taught artist’s work, now in its first-ever New York solo survey, defies easy labels.
The Defiance of the Great Korean Painter, Yun Hyong-keun
After surviving the Japanese occupation, the Korean War, and martial law, not to mention arrest, torture, and a narrow escape from a firing squad, Yun Hyong-keun developed a way of painting in which assertion and self-cancellation have become inextricable.