Bruce Conner (1933–2008) was a protean artist, who achieved something that is unlikely to be equaled anytime soon: he reinvented himself in every medium he took up, while remaining true to his perfectionist impulses.
Paula Cooper Gallery
Robert Grosvenor and the Anonymous Laborer
I don’t know Robert Grosvenor, and I have never heard him give a talk, but years ago he made a huge impression on me.
Best of 2014: Our Top 20 NYC Art Shows That Weren’t in Brooklyn
Let’s face it: there’s Brooklyn, and then there’s the rest of New York City. (Sorry, rest of New York City!)
Moving Targets: The Invisible Hand of Hans Haacke
David H. Koch, the left’s favorite low-hanging fruit, is the subject of Hans Haacke’s latest jeremiad on the state of institutional culture, an installation called “The Business Behind Art Knows the Art of the Koch Brothers” (2014), which takes aim at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s newly unveiled and much-pilloried David H. Koch Plaza.
Reconstructing the Legacy of Surrealism
A Surrealism of hokey séances and dripping clocks has long superseded the movement’s political and conceptual radicality in the contemporary imagination.
The Revolutionary Postcolonial Imagination of Surrealism
In 1945, Andre Breton traveled to the Haitian capital of Port au Prince to deliver a lecture on “Surrealism and Haiti.”
Glimmers Out of Time: Sol LeWitt’s Walls
You’d think that after two weeks in Italy, there’d be no better way to ease into the New York scene than Sol LeWitt’s monumental “Wall Drawing #564: Complex forms with color ink washes superimposed” (1988) at the Paula Cooper Gallery.
FAT Lab’s KATSU Graffities Paula Cooper Gallery (Inadvertently)
F.A.T. Gold, the mini retrospective celebrating art/hacker/open-source activist collective Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab, has been open for about 20 minutes at Eyebeam, and they’re already pissing people off.
Six Things I Learned — and One I Didn’t — from Christian Marclay’s “The Clock”
Last week, I trekked up to Lincoln Center to see part of The Clock, Christian Marclay’s film collage that has had the art world’s knickers in a twist for about a year and a half now.
An Abstract Moment in Chelsea
Checking out the Chelsea gallery scene last week, my results were surprisingly mixed — from overly offbeat summer shows to nonsensical group exhibitions, the galleries just didn’t seem to have it together. But one thread did emerge in my wanderings. I discovered that Chelsea was having a brief love affair with big abstraction, wall-size pieces that dominated their respective art spaces. Works by Sol Lewitt, Keith Haring, Li Songsong and Garth Weiser all packed a refreshing amount of visual punch, brightening a hazy summer day.
Why Are So Many Museums Buying Christian Marclay’s “The Clock”?
The Boston MFA is purchasing Christian Marclay’s epic movie mash-up “The Clock” (2010) (recently on view in NYC) for $250,000. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art bought the piece in April, and there are rumors that MoMA plans to do the same. What’s up with this collecting fad?
Brit Hit 24-Hour Clock Coming to New York City
Christian Marclay’s video piece “The Clock,” shown at London’s White Cube gallery last month, was the runaway hit of the Frieze art fair hullabaloo. From buzz on the blogs to rave reviews in print, Marclay’s piece sounded like a must-see. Now it’s hitting our city, Artinfo reports.