Art
Art Rx
To help you revel in your art going this week, the doctor prescribes some sure bets and encourages you to take some chances, from the last opportunity to see the New Museum's NYC 1993 show to an imaginative theatrical museum performance.
Latest
Books
The Hidden Beauty of Disease Under Our Skin
Beneath our sheath of skin is an internal world both vast and complex. While most of us rarely get to see it, these workings of our systems and organs are the daily viewing of pathologists, particularly when it comes to disease. A new book of photography takes us into our own interiors, and shows th
Opinion
The Nazi Ties of Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys is a canonical postwar artist, but was he really as progressive and enlightened as we've come to believe, and as he led us to think? A new biography of the artist, written by German-born Swiss author Hans Peter Riegel, kicks up the age-old debate about the separation of the artist and t
News
Watch Out, Art World: Amazon Is About to Start Selling Art
This day may have been inevitable, but now it's finally here. In its attempt to take over the world — or at least everything that can be bought and sold in the world, Amazon is launching an art gallery.
Art
Did Vermeer's Daughter Paint 20% of His Works?
Imagine for a moment that in the days after Johannes Vermeer’s death in 1675, that his widow Catharina and eldest daughter Maria, sitting in a darkened room of the Vermeer home, conspired to settle their numerous family debts in a secretive way. Owing their baker the largest sum of money, the widow
Art
Why Don't People Get the New Stedelijk?
Dissing the Stedelijk Museum’s new Mels Crouwel–designed wing, New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman off-handedly compared the building to a “ridiculous” bathroom tub that suggested to him the sensation of “hearing Bach played by a man wearing a clown suit.” On the speed-rail ride back to Paris fr
Art
Can Rectal Realism (and Other 1970s Art) Inspire?
Despite my longtime interest in New York art from the 1970s, I somehow never imagined delving into an artistic process called, quite literally, "rectal realism." However, last week, I found myself in a small room at the Gershwin Hotel at "Fresh Faces from the 1970s" a film screening and discussion,
Interview
The Artist-Filled Shadow Army of World War II
There are many reasons that the US and Allied troops won World War II. One of the more obscure ones may be the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, aka the Ghost Army.
Comics
Don't You Understand, I'm an Artist!
Working alone in a studio can do things to your head.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, photos in museums, why art critics matter, a street art site that "steals", the East Village Eye goes online, political economy, a rapper's run in with Marxism on Twitter, what American voters think of hipsters and more …
Opinion
Weekend Words: Meat
If we can now grow a hamburger in a test tube, as the New York Times reported on Tuesday, we will still be able to get to the meat of the matter?
Music
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (May 2013, Part 1)
In part 1 of this month, reviews of She & Him, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Satinder Sartaaj, and Lady Antebellum.