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Opinion

David Lynch's Art Doesn't Suck

After Gagosian collected Bob Dylan into his roster of artist for an underwhelming exhibition in his Upper East Side gallery, it's hard to take these celebrity-turned-artists seriously.

Opinion

Cai Guo-Qiang's Explosive West Coast Debut

LOS ANGELES — We were all gathered outside the Museum of Contemporary Art's Geffen Contemporary space near the Arts District, waiting patiently for the show to start. We'd lined up around the block, and I quietly wondered when things would get going and suddenly it seemed like a giant fireball was h

Community

A View from the Easel, Part 11

CHICAGO — The eleventh installment of a series with a look at artist studios in Belgrade, New York City, London, Kansas City and Brooklyn.

Opinion

Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1B

Today, Facebook announced that it has acquired the hugely popular smartphone photo-sharing app, Instagram, and in the process further consolidating its position as the biggest visual archive in the world.

News

Artists You Thought You Knew Go Sci-Fi

A new hologram exhibit at the New Museum features major contemporary artists (including Bruce Nauman, Louise Bourgeois, Eric Orr, Ed Ruscha and James Turrell) and may change your understanding of the medium.

Announcement

[Sponsor] Norte Maar Presents "The Brodmann Areas," April 12–15

Norte Maar invites you to The Brodmann Areas [http://engine.nectarads.com/redirect/0/12452/12490/0/00000000000000000000000000000000/0/0/19152/0], a new collaborative ballet that explores the workings of our minds through dance. The ballet will take place at the Center for Performance Research (361 M

Art

Herzog’s Whitney Biennial Piece Is Not Overrated but Under-Thought

PARIS — In a recent article on AFC, Paddy Johnson argues that Werner Herzog’s piece in this year’s Whitney Biennial is essentially a throwaway. She sees Herzog’s contribution as a quick fix for inclusion that relies mainly on “bells and whistles” rather than substance. But her account is conspicuous

Opinion

Required Reading

This week, the New Aesthetic, the Steins, Creative Time's mission to push culture forward, Yung Jake's Embedded, Eggleston goes from photography to contemporary art, Klaus Biesenbach's tweets, Kickstarter vs NEA, art on The Simpsons and more.

Art

Open Secret

Stanley Whitney is in his mid-sixties. By his own account, he struggled in the studio from the early 70s to the late 80s, “just trying to make work.” The issue was to make something that was his, rather than to make something that was the right or approved of thing to do. Although it is seldom discu

Books

Comic Twist: The New Kramers Ergot Reveals a Turn toward Genre

In July 2004, The New York Times Magazine signaled the advent of the “literary” comic book and described how a significant group of cartoonists — including Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Seth and Marjane Satrapi — had popularized these “comics with a brain.”

Art

Why There Are Great Artists (Part 2)

Before writing about Sylvia Plimack Mangold’s shift from interiors to landscapes, I think it is useful to once again consider the floor paintings, which she worked on for about a decade, beginning in 1967. It is in these paintings that the artist defines an approach to subject matter from which she

Art

How Free Is Free?

Where political repression is not at issue, is it beside the point to talk about artistic freedom?