Art
Praying for Life
Sahelian forms of artistry are a manifestation, or a visual translation, of an overarching ontology. Its plastic language can be understood as the language of a philosophy of the force of life.
Latest
Art
Why Are the Noses Broken on Egyptian Statues?
This essay is an account of truly learning to see what is and is not present in these objects.
Art
From Marking Time: An Excerpt
The book and exhibition center prisons in contemporary art and culture and the robust world of art-making inside US prisons.
Art
Jeffrey Gibson: Culture, Materials, Identity and Trade
Over the last decade Jeffrey Gibson has moved from creating lyrical, abstracted acrylic landscape paintings with beaded and sculpted paint elements to a dizzingly multi-varied practice, which interfaces with the rubrics of fashion, gender, and ethnicity.
Art
Hip-Hop’s Afrofuturistic Hive Mind
Basquiat’s oeuvre can now be said to constitute a Black male wall of fame, one exploding with markers of the fraught conquests, Pyrrhic victories, and traumatic vicissitudes of Black male being-and-nothingness in America.
Art
Notes on Living a Translated Life
From the John Singer Sargent frontal nude painting of McKeller in Boston’s MFA, I’d imagined Thomas as tall and slender. Looking more closely, I can see that even 100 years ago a body like Thomas’s was not accidental.
Art
Sunday Edition, Catalogue Essays: 🗿 From Broken Noses to Hip-Hop’s Afrofuturism 🔮
A selection of some extraordinary essays found in art museum exhibition catalogues across the United States.
Art
Required Reading
This week, Jacob Lawrence's history of the US, interview with the Pence fly, the post-Trump internet, the violence of "dispassionate objectivity," hijacking #ProudBoys, and more.
Books
Marcella Durand's Apocalyptic Pastoral
Durand’s urban environment in The Prospect is a source not of solace but of anxiety.
Interview
Beer with a Painter: Dan Walsh
“Twenty years ago, you wouldn’t be caught dead being called a colorist.”
Art
An Artist Who Lived to Paint
Jon Imber, who succumbed to ALS in 2014, emulated Guston, de Kooning, and others while developing a provocative and personal vision of figure and landscape.
Interview
Artists Quarantine With Their Art Collections
“I can’t return to normal. I can’t watch the same life come back. The reptile must be stopped outright.”