Mattingly makes the case that poetry is precisely what’s missing from mainstream responses to anthropogenic climate change.
Joseph Cornell
Posted inArt
Joseph Cornell’s Boxes Coax, Captivate, and Channel Juan Gris
Viewing one of Cornell’s boxes is an almost heartbreaking encounter with inner vitality and outer limitation; like cages, they display the self-sufficiency of a circumscribed world.
Posted inArt
Blurred Boundaries and Other Connections
A mix of blue-chip names and energetic younger artists on the Lower East Side is further evidence of the increasingly blurred boundaries among Manhattan’s art districts.
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Familiar Names but Unexpected Finds at the ADAA Art Show
There’s often no rhyme or reason to the selection of art in individual booths at fairs — other than, of course, a gallery’s aim to sell well.
Posted inArt
The Art of Accumulation at a New Orleans Shrine to the Plague Saint
The act of accumulating objects is one of our oldest forms of visual expression.
Posted inArt
The Triumph of Revisionism: The Whitney’s American Century
With America Is Hard to See, the exhibition inaugurating its luminous new Renzo Piano building, the Whitney has reclaimed its role among the city’s museums as the engine of the new.
Posted inNews
Getty Unveils Unpublished Cache of Joseph Cornell’s Letters
Joseph Cornell’s curious admirers now have something to get excited about, thanks to the Getty Research Institute’s announcement yesterday that it has acquired a cache of 33 previously unpublished letters between Cornell and one of his first assistants, Susanna De Maria Wilson.
Posted inArt
Artist’s Diaries Since 1865
From Vincent Van Gogh to Joseph Cornell, writing has always been a crucial part of the artist’s life.
Posted inArt
Art That Thinks Inside the Box
What is it about boxes that is so fascinating? I was thinking this as I went into Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art to see Pandora’s Box, a show that displays artist Joseph Cornell’s signature assemblages alongside the works of artists who allegedly were inspired by him or who were in artistic sympathy with him. I can think of historical precedents: medieval reliquaries; Victorian memento mori, which often look strikingly like Cornell’s miniature worlds. But these forebears don’t quite explain the combination of weirdness and visual beauty of something made by Cornell, nor the undoubted fascination with him since his death. His boxes frame the objects in a different way than a conventional picture frame, of course; they concentrate the viewer’s attention; but there’s something else, which finally came to me after I’d seen this show.
Posted inArt
Artist Known for Pulling Scroll Out of Her Vagina Talks Culture, Cats and Road Rage
Tuesday night, I ventured to St. Mark’s Bookshop to see pioneering feminist artist Carolee Schneemann read from her recent book of letters. Schneemann entered the crowded wearing her infamous devil mask.
Posted inArt
Is The Art Show a Senior Citizen’s Swinger’s Club Past its Prime?
The Art Show has been hosted by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) for the last 23 years, reigning supreme as the longest running national art fair. The ADAA consists of 175 galleries but only seventy exhibitors enrolled this year, excluding stunners like Andrea Rosen, Betty Cunningham, PPOW and Gavin Brown. A large majority of the participants are located uptown between 50th Street and 90th Street. The generalized content (“cutting-edge, 21st century works” and “museum quality pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries”) and my fears of dated academia prepped me for the deflated viewing that was The Art Show. The ADAA’s Executive Director spoke to the “calm and intimate atmosphere” of The Art Show. Although the Park Avenue Armory’s soaring “balloon shed” construction is partially responsible, the cavalcade of elderly patrons weren’t exactly rambunctious. The air-kisses exchanged between crotchety senior citizens summoned a swinger’s club way past its prime.
