Comics
The Evolution of Imagination
Human imaginations evolved for some very practical reasons.
Latest
Art
The Antichrist of Early-20th-Century Photography
Violence, nudity, and the occult collide in the photographs of William Mortensen, an American photographer who gained prominence in the 1930s and '40s but today largely exists as an obscure name in the medium's history.
Art
Anatomist of Influence: Celebrating a Renaissance Physician's Legacy in Art and Technology
“Raise your hand if you’ve ever been in a cadaver lab,” Riva Lehrer, artist and guest curator for Vesalius 500, asked the audience gathered in the New York Academy of Medicine’s Hosack Hall.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, Picasso Museum problems, Sweden's font, content moderators, Frank Gehry's f-you, John Constable reconsidered, the endangered bookshops of New York, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Weed
On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, High Times Magazine has issued High Times: A 40-Year History of the World’s Most Infamous Magazine, which The New York Times calls "a coffee table book for low, sticky coffee tables."
Music
From Melbourne with Love
Founded by conductor/saxophone whiz Andy Williamson, the Bombay Royale are eleven Australian troublemakers who play their own hammy, modernized style of Bollywood movie music.
Poetry
The Beauty of Christopher Middleton’s Prose
A few years ago, in an essay called “Why I am a Member of the Christopher Middleton Fan Club,” I stated the need for “a selected prose that brings together all the different kinds of writing he has done." Loose Cannons: Selected Prose, which includes an insightful foreword by one of Middleton’s most
Interview
Beer with a Painter: David Humphrey
What I hoped to get from talking to David Humphrey were answers. The images in his paintings are zany, raunchy, and wild: a girl in a lawn chair holding monkeys by their scalps; a woman absent-mindedly marking another woman’s buttocks with daubs of paint; cats sitting beside slices of white bread pa
Art
Matisse’s Garden of Problems: The Cut-Outs at MoMA
The much-heralded exhibition of Matisse cut-outs currently at the Museum of Modern Art was previously at the Tate Modern, with a few less items than here, but it broke all attendance records and was open all night in its final days.
Art
“Tormented by Several Devils”: Théodore Rousseau’s Wild Styles
Consider “Study for The Forest in Winter at Sunset,” a work in oil and charcoal on brown paper by Théodore Rousseau, the 19th-century French painter now under scrutiny at the Morgan Library & Museum. Although it was done between 1845 and 1850, it feels like something Anselm Kiefer might come up with
Art
Where Folk and Fine Art Meet
What did John Frederick Kensett, a 19th-century artist who was part of the Hudson River School, have in common with Thomas Matteson, a blanket chest-maker from Vermont?
News
Frick Garden and Watts Towers Listed Among Most Endangered US Art Landscapes
The Frick Collection's Russell Page–designed garden, planned for destruction as part of the Manhattan museum's expansion project, is one of 11 land-based art pieces announced as under threat this week by the Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF).