Interview
A Portrait of Ray Johnson in His Own Words
Soberscove Press has released nearly 200 pages of interviews with renowned mail artist Ray Johnson, and a preview excerpt can be found here.
Ray Johnson
Art
The Unknowable Ray Johnson
When Ray Johnson killed himself at the age of 67, the air of mystery surrounding his personality, life, and art only thickened.
Art
The Tactile Temptation of Ray Johnson's Assemblages
Ray Johnson's exhibition at Matthew Marks is proof that the eccentric collage and mail artist's works were never meant for gallery walls.
Art
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.
Books
See the Smithsonian Archive's Collection of Artists' Handwritten Letters
Whatever skeptics may say about the pseudoscience of graphology (handwriting analysis), it’s hard to deny that handwriting expresses feeling and style — especially, in many cases, when it’s the handwriting of an artist. Georgia O’Keeffe’s bold, squiggly lines and lack of punctuation ignored conventi
Art
The Vast Possibilities of Tiny Collage and Assemblage
You might want to bring your reading glasses to The Tiny Picture Show at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, because some of the suckers on view are really tiny.
Art
Cut, Paste, and Blossom
In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art showcased a project by the famed photographer Edward Steichen that featured work not in his expected medium, but Delphiniums he had bred himself at Umpawaug, a farm he owned in Connecticut.
Art
I Is an Other: The Mail Art of Ray Johnson
Ray Johnson disappeared near Sag Harbor just over twenty years ago. But if we refer to the artist by the art, he’s still among us.
Art
Failing Better: Erroneous Art at Lisa Cooley
There’s a bit of curatorial sleight-of-hand in I Dropped the Lemon Tart, the summer show at Lisa Cooley on the Lower East Side. The title refers to a real-life mishap in a restaurant kitchen where imminent culinary fiasco turned into a triumph of pluck and invention.
Art
10 Stellar Culture Documentaries the Oscars Snubbed
Here is my roundup, not only of films from the last year but of the past decade. These are films that you may have missed in theatres, never saw because they got a one week showing in NYC and LA and nowhere else, or that were simply too far below the radar.
Books
Man of Letters: Ray Johnson Art in Motion
While the increased availability of Ray Johnson’s letters, notes, and statements subtilizes our understanding of this legendarily well-connected yet enigmatic artist, his flattened logorrheia is also just fun to read.
Art
Underrecognized, Bowie’s Glam Drives a Retrospective of 1970s Art
BRIGHTON, UK — For several decades now we have been laboring under the impression David Bowie is a pop star. But a new show at Tate Liverpool puts Bowie where he firmly belongs, as a central figure in art. It proves the pioneering musician is also a muse, a performance artist, and a conceptualist al