Art
An Overdue Spotlight on Michelangelo's Tutor
The Frick Collection presents the work of Bertoldo di Giovanni, an understated yet pivotal figure during the Renaissance, long described as a disciple of Donatello and a tutor of Michelangelo.
Review
Art
Julie Mehretu's Sublime Abstractions of History
Packed with traced and freehand marks, Mehretu’s artworks inspire awe of what might be called an informational sublime, a 21st-century twist on the artistic tradition.
Books
A Gripping Memoir Dives Into LA’s Graffiti Subculture of the ’90s
Artist and scholar Stefano Bloch has written a story that is personal, but also a primer on graffiti’s history and artistic and social import.
Books
Rhythm, Divination, and Naming in Jay Wright's Poetry
In Wright's poems the name of the absolute is scrawled in a host of esoteric tongues.
Books
Articulating a New Kind of Class Struggle
Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? illustrates that Capital is actually dead. Something new and much worse, involving what author McKenzie Wark calls "the vector" has usurped it.
Books
The Poet as a Dream Guide
In Joseph Donahue’s Wind Maps I-VII we are led out of sleep by the poet, just as he has been led out of sleep by a dream guide, into a renewal of mythic or storied truth.
Art
The Power and Limits of Ai Weiwei's Irreverence
While his political commitment comes through in many works, it’s hard to square talk of “revolution” with Ai Weiwei’s staggering mainstream US success.
Art
Agnes Denes's Future Imperfect
Spanning half a century, this retrospective reveals Denes's art to be so forward-looking that some of it remains ahead of its time even today.
Art
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Painter of Modern Anxiety
Kirchner was the anti-Matisse.
Art
John Pai’s Complex, Abstract Drawings in Space
John Pai’s steel sculptures, nourished by a community of Korean artists in New York, reflect a sensibility outside the mainstream of American art.
Art
A Dürer Retrospective Celebrates His Remarkable Drawings
A show at Vienna’s Albertina reverses the more commonly held belief in art history that drawings are merely preparatory to paintings.
Art
Artists Find Power in Erasure
In Otherwise Obscured, effacement, redaction, and illegibility are positioned as tactics that artists can employ to combat, highlight, or heal sociopolitical invisibility.