Art

Seeing Ourselves in a Chimpanzee's Art

Seeing works by Congo the chimp takes us from wild aesthetic conjectures to sobering ethical dilemmas around animal agency, art ownership, and basic rights of living creatures.

Art

Meleko Mokgosi's Discursive Art

Mokgosi is as interested in the discourse around the figures in his paintings as in their representation — not that the two could ever exist separately.

Art

Pastel Then, Pastel Now

The Swiss artist Nicolas Party is both the subject and curator of Pastel, an extraordinary exhibition examining the under-appreciated, fugitive medium and its history.

Art

Painting on a Knife’s Edge

With ATOMIC, her new body of work, Patricia Satterlee pitches us into abstract apparitions of heaven and hell before pulling us back to earth.

Art

Portrait of an Invisible Portraitist

I cannot think of another person who has given us such intimate portraits of everyone from Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, and Jasper Johns to Eartha Kitt, Toni Morrison, and Patti Smith.

Art

Philip Taaffe, Symbolist and Naturalist

Taaffe is able to bring the exterior, visible world as well as the interior imagined world into his paintings. To me, this is what distinguishes him from his contemporaries.

In Brief

Miami Janitors Protest Low Wages With a Parody of the Maurizio Cattelan Banana

At the demonstration, dubbed the “platanito protest,” custodians shared stories of working two jobs and still not being able to afford gifts for relatives during the holiday season.

News

Claiming Months of No Payment, Workers at Mexico's National Institute of Fine Arts Demand Wages

One anonymous employee says it worries him that he has not been paid for six months, despite continuing to do his job and sometimes working late nights.

Art

Probing the Tensions Between the Universal and the Specific in Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls

Then and now, Shange’s work responds to an urgent fever pitch humming beneath the taut surface of pain and respectability. A dazzling revival at the Public Theater reminds us of its timelessness.

Art

Looking Back at Miyazaki’s Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro on Its 40th Anniversary

Released 40 years ago this Sunday, Cagliostro established Miyazaki as a notable talent. Much like his latest film, The Wind Rises, it reflects the director’s changing attitudes towards the animation industry.

Film

A Hidden Life Is a Passionate, Damning Meditation on Faith and Fascism

Terrence Malick’s latest film makes me feel the way church never did, capturing an essence of the divine through aesthetic sublimity.

Interview

Capturing the Syrian War From a Woman's Perspective

For Sama directors Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts talk to Hyperallergic about turning al-Kateab's many hours of personal footage into a documentary.