Art
Crying for Ana Mendieta at the Carl Andre Retrospective
I didn’t think I would be able to cry on command.
Ana Mendieta
Art
The Problematic Elegance of Carl Andre
BEACON, NY — Carl Andre’s 50-year, career-spanning retrospective at Dia:Beacon is coming down this weekend. If you think that Modernism is god, that its spawn, Minimalism, is the lord, and that Andre is her messenger, you’d best catch the show before it’s gone.
Art
On Carl Andre and the Question of History
Ironically, Leslie Hewitt’s Monday night lecture on Carl Andre, which examined ways of escaping the hegemony of art and political history, was protested by those who opposed Carl Andre’s place within that history.
Art
Artists Protest Carl Andre Retrospective with Blood Outside of Dia:Chelsea
Of the many things one might expect to see in the industrial chic gallery neighborhood of Chelsea on a Monday evening, chicken blood and guts splayed on the sidewalk is not one of them.
Art
Ana Mendieta's Many Elements
LONDON — If an artist rejects a label, must we respect that? In her short lifetime, Ana Mendieta took pains to point out that she was not a land artist, not a performance artist, not a body artist, not even a feminist as that term might be understood in the United States.
Art
Assessing a Small Show of a Feminist Icon
CHICAGO — In a darkened gallery in the Art Institute of Chicago, a grainy video from decades ago begins. Standing with her face pressed up against a white wall, a woman reaches down and scoops up a handful of red, viscous liquid — presumably blood — from an enamel tray, and in a series of arcing ges
Art
WTF is... Performance Art?
You may have heard that James Franco and Lady Gaga are performance artists, that their careers themselves are art objects built up over a lifetime. You may also believe that your Uncle Bob farting the alphabet is performance art. And maybe it is! Really, it's up to you, there's no quick and easy cha
Art
How Do You Show Performance Art? Ana Mendieta vs Marina Abramović
We're approaching a pivotal point in the progress of performance art in which the once rogue medium is becoming canonized, institutionalized and historicized. If the epic Marina Abramović retrospective at MoMA, The Artist is Present, wasn't enough to convince you that the early group of performance
Art
Which Installation Artists Are Actually Green?
Inspired by the closing of Ai Weiwei's “Sunflower Seeds” installation due to health hazards, I've been writing about how environmental impact is factored in to the evaluation of installation art. Does a work of art have to have a low carbon footprint to be great, or should we completely separate a p