Art
Required Reading
This week, Peggy Guggenheim's life in Venice, curating Black Radical Women in Brooklyn, talking to art dealers in Santa Fe, the horrible Damien Hirst show, the legacy of Confederate monuments, and more.
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Art
Weekend Words: Letter
"Never write a letter if you can help it, and never destroy one!"
Books
Staying Up with Suzanne Buffam’s A Pillow Book
Buffam’s A Pillow Book is a smart, funny, provocative collection of lists, research into pillows and sleeplessness, and details about all kinds of people, including famous insomniacs.
Art
A Celebration of the Rat Bastards: Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Jean Conner, Jay DeFeo, George Herms, Wally Hedrick, and Others
Shortly after coming to San Francisco, Conner formed what he christened the “Rat Bastard Society.” Conner told the curator Peter Boswell that the name was fitting for “people who were making things with the detritus of society, who themselves were ostracized or alienated from full involvement with s
Art
The State of Self
I still maintain the belief in the possibility of some positive, humanitarian outcomes.
Art
Reimagined Landscapes: Frank Romero's Los Angeles
Born and raised in a middle-class family in Boyle Heights, Romero captured the pulse of Los Angeles through his pictorial and more abstract painting of decorated cars and the vast freeways (portrayed as our cultural shrines) connecting the different parts of the city.
Art
Mercedes Matter’s Awful, Wonderful Itch
Matter was a believer in the possibility of channeling a total, magical presence – even if it meant destroying a work or never completing it.
Art
In Hiroyuki Doi’s Tiny Circles, Expanding Miniature Universes
Doi has written that “using circles to produce images” provided him with “relief from the sadness and grief” he felt following his brother’s death. Since that time, his circle motif has alluded to such themes as “the transmigration of the soul, the cosmos, the coexistence of living creatures, human
Art
On Life and Work: Hannah Black and Petra Buchegger
In Vienna, two shows offer meditations on the body, the earth, labor, and fate.
News
Letters Between Dante Gabriel Rossetti and His Model Fanny Cornforth Are Now Online
The Delaware Art Museum has digitized correspondence between the Pre-Raphaelite painter and his overlooked muse.
Art
Paintings that Praise the Paradises of Bohemia
Thomas Trosch's paintings at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery recall idyllic settings from movie musicals.
Art
Using Google Street View Data to Track Urban Trees
MIT's project Treepedia maps the protective green canopy of trees in cities around the world, and the places where this nature is missing.