Art
The Connoisseurship of Al Held
Years ago, Al Held invited me to his place in Boiceville, New York, to see two large paintings that he had all but completed. They were immense, brightly colored works in which geometric forms floated, weightless.
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Art
Painting at the Speed of Sight: Franz Kline's Rapid Transit
On leaving the recently closed exhibition, Franz Kline: Coal and Steel at Baruch College's Sidney Mishkin Gallery, I wasn’t thinking of the remarkable range of work on display. Instead, I kept dwelling on a small ink painting doubly named by Kline "Untitled-Locomotive" (ca. 1945-1947). It was one of
Art
Go with the Slow: Ragnar Kjartansson's "The Visitors"
Behind a curtain in the darkened gallery space at Luhring Augustine nine screens, each equipped with its own speaker have been arranged into two somewhat discreet areas. Eight of the screens feature the image of a single musician — a guitarist, pianist, banjo player, cellist, and so forth — and one
Art
Single Point Perspective: The Future of Henri Matisse
I’m rarely taken aback by a Matisse. The reasons admittedly have more to do with personal taste than with aesthetic discernment, in particular an overriding interest in architectonic structure; in the “Matisseite” and “Picassoite” factions dividing Gertrude Stein’s pre-World War I salon, I would hav
Art
New Research Suggests Lack of Brain Filter May Increase Creativity
Quick, think of a new use for a baseball bat. If you thought of something that doesn't involve a swinging action (e.g., smashing things), such as using it as a rolling pin, congratulations, you're a person with excellent creativity. However, you may also have less of a brain "filter" than most.
Art
Saying Goodbye to a Brooklyn DIY Architectural Marvel
Most of the coverage you’ll find about the Broken Angel House, a handmade architectural marvel in Clinton Hill, starts the story in 2006, when there was a small fire that set off all the trouble. That’s the year the tale switches from one about brilliant bohemian artists building their crazy dream h
Opinion
With a New Pope, a New Chance for Openness on Art and History Seems Missed
With Catholicism's long connection with the arts, from Michelangelo making the Sistine Chapel a place of transcendence to the Vatican Museums' huge troves of artifacts and art, it's worth looking at how the incoming pope may feel about contemporary visual culture. Yet while the outgoing Pope Benedic
Opinion
Tell Us Who Your Favorite Artist Is or Lose Your Job
Normally, the stakes to this answer aren't quite so high. The advertising agency CP+B recently administered an "aptitude test" to its art directors that included the question "What is your favorite piece of art?" and "Who is your favorite designer, art director, or artist?" Would your answer stand u
News
CalArts Joins the Free Online Course Experiment
A high profile arts institution recently joined the spiking number of free online classes, with the California Institute of the Arts teaming up with Coursera. The rapidly expanding offerer of MOOCs, or "massive open online courses," is only a year old, but since it started in 2012 it's grown from pa
Comics
What Does God Hate?
Love the tagger, hate the …
Art
How an Architect You've Probably Never Heard of Inspired the Modern Library
While the New York Public Library is reconsidering their architecture through a luminous, yet radical, Norman Foster proposal that would modernize the Schwarzman Building and reconfigure its stacks into reading areas, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is unearthing the architect who popularized those
Art
Magical Realism
CHICAGO — Tricksters is a show of work by Columbia College Chicago photography students, but if you walked in off the street you would never guess that the work was produced by people who were still undergraduates.