Comics
Advice for Artists
I'm never ready.
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Art
Cracking Open the Seductive History of Porcelain
MEISSEN, Germany — Of his extensive collection of ceramics, Oscar Wilde once remarked: "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china." What Wilde felt he was increasingly failing to “live up to” was probably the sort of bourgeois respectability that is often symbolized by a set
Art
Sea Monsters and Liquid Geography
WALTHAM, Massachusetts — There are two large buoys hanging in the front windows of the landlocked Rose Art Museum, sitting like beacons behind the glass façade. Drawn in by the swollen structures, I climbed the stairs, past Chris Burden’s "Light of Reason," and into Mark Bradford's imaginary waters.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, the super-rich ruining museums, how an essay saved a Renaissance masterpiece, writing as commodity, stealing from Jasper Johns, social media as self-expression, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Crawl
On Thursday, amNewYork reported that the annual SantaCon charity bar crawl will not be heading for Bushwick this year.
Books
Relentless Complexities: Trevor Winkfield's Art Writing
While visiting Philadelphia a number of years ago, the poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum asked me “Is Trevor Winkfield a real person?”
Art
Gladys Nilsson’s Portraits of Everywoman
There is something wonderfully incongruous and deeply disquieting about Gladys Nilsson’s art, which is primarily done in the medium of watercolor.
Music
Taylor Swift, Picture-Perfect
Taylor Swift has become a megaplatinum superstar largely through the construction of an artificial but rather appealing character. To call her the girl next door would downplay the dizzy self-involvement and feisty autonomy that made her a star in the first place.
Art
Man of Steel: The Welded Transfigurations of Melvin Edwards
Melvin Edwards' welded relief sculptures conjure up human anguish and human advancement often within the same work. His art delivers the mythmaking spirit of abstract sculpture into the domain of identifiable histories. He has built a long, wide-ranging career around that apparent incongruity.
Art
Ursula von Rydingsvard and the Drill Bit’s Caress
In a video produced by Art 21, Ursula von Rydingsvard recalls her childhood in refugee camps after World War II, living in barracks made of “raw wooden floors, raw wooden walls, and raw wooden ceilings.” Her current show at Galerie Lelong, Permeated Shield, is the first solo of her long career with
Art
From Idaho to the Smithsonian, the Journey of James Castle
In 1899, in the remote Idahoan village of Garden Valley, James Castle was born completely deaf. For the rest of his life, he couldn’t hear, speak, read, or write. Our only glimpses into his mind are the drawings and collages he created using scavenged paper and soot mixed with his own spit.
Art
Rebooting the Legacy of a Woman Who Made Video Games for Girls
Theresa Duncan made a series of CD-ROM games in the 1990s aimed at young girls, encouraging imagination and adventure through playfully drawn, dreamlike narratives.