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Museum Galleries So Incredible, It's Hard to Believe They're Gone
There's something about the cluttered aesthetic of the 19th century that is definitely missed even if, sure, context and history could play second chair to spectacle.
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The Pre-Tabloid Art of 19th-Century Crime
People have always loved a good lurid story, the more complicated by family twists and accented by violence the better. Back in the 19th century, thousands of chapbooks were printed in Spain and England that chronicled grisly crimes and romantic intrigue for the public, and since a large part of the
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Le Corbusier's Objects of Poetic Reaction
With his heavy modernist hand and love of concrete, you wouldn't really think of architect Le Corbusier as someone who communed with nature. Yet in the current MoMA exhibition Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes, there is among the architectural drawings and cubic models a small case of natu
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The Hallucinogenic Origins of Art
A paper published in the most recent issue of Adaptive Behavior significantly updates the long-standing thesis that the global prevalence in prehistoric art of "certain types of geometric visual patterns" suggests hallucinogenic inspirations. The University of Tokyo authors — Tom Froese, Alexander W
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The Artist Is Not Present But the Brand Sure Is
CHICAGO — Every performance online and off is essentially about energy. Marina Abramović knows this, and so after her 2010 endurance-based performance at MoMA "The Artist is Present," she disappeared in order to train with shamans in Brazil where she learned more about energy, and took time to heal.
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A Performance Art Adventure on a Monday Night in Brooklyn
On Monday night, I finally made it out to the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival for day (evening, really) 3 of the Super Coda series, an ongoing experimental cabaret curated by Valerie Kuehne. The event took place at Goodbye Blue Monday, a grungy yet homey place that's part bar, part c
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In Pursuit of the Glittering Point
The title of Shanti Grumbine’s current exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery, The Glittering Point, comes from the phrase “glittering generalities,” which, according to the artist, became popular in the mid-nineteenth century. The term describes propaganda that champions vagueness to evoke positive feelings
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When Will There Be a Memorial for NYC's Second African Burial Ground?
It took two centuries for the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan to be remembered, when 18th century bones were found interred in a forgotten cemetery beneath the construction of a new high dollar federal development in 1991. While that long-overlooked cemetery is now remembered with a museum
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Eight Online Series for Your Art-Hungry Eyes
With summer sweltering and those high air conditioning bills to pay, you're melting quickly and not made of money. Why not watch some free online art programming to ease your eyes? Here are eight web series available from your internet device.
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The Art Market Smells Like Money
Last week, Atlantic Media's business publication, Quartz, ran a 2200-word takedown of the art market by Allison Schrager. The story was accompanied by a helpful flowchart illustrating how deeply corrupt the art market is, and carries all the familiar signs of the minimally self-aware bloviation char
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Remaking the City with Architectural Collage
From a standpoint of cohesion, the architecture of the 20th century was a mess. Brutalist monoliths were constructed alongside shimmering aluminum waves, while some architects clung to scraps of classicism like life preservers in a swelling sea of modernism. However, it was this mishmash of styles a
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What Did Jorge Luis Borges See in Xul Solar?
The writer Jorge Luis Borges once referred to his friend the artist Xul Solar as “one of the most singular events of our era.” Those in New York have the opportunity to see an important selection of works by the two friends in an exhibition at the Americas Society. Curated by Gabriela Rangel, the sh