Opinion
Required Reading
This week, the dawn of the Anthropocene, the true story of Bob Ross, Stuart Davis, Grangerizing, the future of "the American dream," the Dismal Swamp, and much more.
Latest
Opinion
Weekend Words: Confusion
"The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes. "
Books
Reader’s Diary: Fred Dewey’s ‘From an Apparent Contradiction in Arendt’
Hannah Arendt, an untimely, unassimilable figure, looms ever larger in the life of thought.
Books
The Good Life
We want things to be simple, but we know they aren’t, probably never were, and chances are will get only more messy with time. What’s a young poet to do, but try and take some control?
Art
The Party We Are All Invited To
Jessica Stockholder lives in a contingent domain, which means it is very much like the one where most of us live.
Art
Disconnected Realities: The Art of David Barnett
Perhaps it was the joy of seeing contemporary art that could have fit comfortably within the Dadaglobe Reconstructed exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, that opened my eyes so widely to Barnett's magic.
Music
Prince's 'Sign o’ the Times,' Part II (The Law of Genre)
Since genre is a perceived, externally imposed category rather than an intrinsic musical element, the job of assigning genre usually falls to the critic.
Music
Prince's 'Sign o’ the Times,' Part I (A Solitary Genius)
For an ostensible masterpiece, Prince’s Sign o’ the Times (1987) is suspiciously lacking in overt concept.
Opinion
Monty Python Goes to the Art Museum
Given that so much of Monty Python's humor was predicated on testing and twisting codes of civility and decorum, it's surprising their Flying Circus didn't alight more frequently in that most stuffily decorous setting, the art museum.
Opinion
Discovering a Downtown New York Artist Who Disappeared for 30 Years
I had never heard of Jill Kroesen before a Whitney Museum press release landed in my inbox a few months ago
Opinion
Ellsworth Kelly Explains His Relationship to Abstraction
"I've always lived in the present tense, and I like my paintings to be in the present tense," Ellsworth Kelly begins his interview with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in 2013.
Opinion
When the Performance Artist Mr. Peanut Ran for Mayor in 1974
In 1974, artist Victor Trasov ran for mayor of Vancouver under the guise of his performance art persona, Mr. Peanut.