Book Review
Did the Witch Trials Ever Truly Come to an End?
Marion Gibson’s research rigorously traces the legal and human aspects of the trials through today.
Book Review
Book Review
Historical Lessons From Nelson Mandela’s Desk Calendar
Indian artist Jitish Kallat translated an installation based on the South African leader’s daily logs during his incarceration into an intimate book.
Book Review
A Charming Cat-alog of John Craxton’s Kittens
John Craxton would see the animal mid-action and think, that’s another picture. On the occasion of National Cat Day, here are some of his most fantastic felines.
Book Review
The Cross-Pollination Between Prints and Textiles Yields Abundance
An exhibition at the New York Public Library shows that these modes share deep roots.
Book Review
Barbara Brandon-Croft’s Comics Tell It Like It Is
Where I’m Coming From was the first nationally syndicated comics strip by a Black woman cartoonist.
Book Review
Artist Interviews and the Literature of Self-Endorsement
In three recent volumes, artists express nostalgia for the smaller, scrappier New York art world.
Book Review
Artist, Activist, and Ex-Nun Corita Kent Gets a New Monograph
As a nun who embraced both pop culture and contemporary art, Corita Kent refracted the messages of religion through the populist medium of printmaking, leaving a legacy of vibrant art that is just now being fully explored. A new book from Prestel, Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent, published in
Book Review
The Grotesque Beauty of Wangechi Mutu
Culled from old medical illustrations and National Geographic, pornographic, motorcycle, and fashion magazine clippings, Wangechi Mutu's writhing female figures have a dangerous beauty to them, one that's grotesque and alluring all at once. A traveling exhibition — recently closed at Duke's Nasher M
Book Review
Five Decades of Tough Love and Leather
In Nancy Grossman: Tough Life Diary (Prestel, 2012), performer Elizabeth Streb relays an anecdote about artist Nancy Grossman startling her by wearing a monkey fur jacket. It's one of those images that has an unsettling, visceral nature to it, like striding through life in a skin ripped from another
Book Review
Grafting Graffiti Style Onto Skin
Graffiti and tattoos seem like total opposities. One is ephemeral, lasting only until it's painted over by the city or other writers, the other is forever, or at least unless you decide to rip the ink back out of your skin. Yet there's been abundant crossover in the aesthetic style, but what's more
Book Review
An Appreciation for the Often Hilarious, Usually Horrible, World of Bad Graffiti
Who cares about bad graffiti or street art? The spray paint scrawls of ill-chosen tag names ("Piggy Nasty," "Pony Tail," "Tricky Trout, Jr."), reckless vulgarity (penises and boobs drawn on absolutely everything), and sad drawings that barely shape into the animal, face, or whatever they're trying t
Book Review
Irving Harper, a Mid-Century Designer Whose Playful Paper Art Deserves A Look
You've probably seen Irving Harper's work even if you don't know his name. His "Ball Clock" made for the Howard Miller Clock Company is an icon of mid-century Atomic Age design; his Marshmallow Sofa, created in the 1950s/60s for Herman Miller, is a continuously popular and curious piece of furniture