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.
Review
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.
Art
A Photographic Journey Through the Decline of Brick-and-Mortar Retail
Philip Buehler’s photographs are neither a nostalgia fest nor disaster porn, but an unsparing documentation of the decay that marks time and cultural change.
Art
A Worthwhile But Flawed Reconsideration of Orientalist Art
The British Museum's Inspired by the East asks its audience to rehabilitate Orientalist art without ever focusing on what made it problematic in the first place.
Art
How Europe Learned to Draw
Beginning in the 17th century, instructional drawing books democratized the practice of drawing in Europe, allowing aspiring artists to learn at home and at their own pace.
Art
How Europe Learned to Draw
Beginning in the 17th century, instructional drawing books democratized the practice of drawing in Europe, allowing aspiring artists to learn at home and at their own pace.