Books
How Surrealism’s Playful Aesthetic Was Deeply Political
The Surrealists’ insistence on irrationality was not a sport, but an attempt to engage in the political debates of their time.
Review
Music
The Enthralling Drone Music of Pioneer Éliane Radigue
Today 87 years old, Radigue worked within the tradition of La Monte Young and John Cage in the 1960s and ’70s, moving between Paris and New York City.
Film
Contemporary Filmmakers Are Using Fiction to Explore Facts
Several films at the Open City Documentary Festival unseat normal notions of "real" and "fake" in nonfiction.
Books
A Feminist British Illustrator Who Satirized the British Middle Class
Posy Simmonds was known for her particularly wry voice, but Paul Gravett's book gives its namesake short shrift, not placing her clearly enough in the context of other illustrators.
Books
A Graphic Novel Looks at the Limits of Freedom in Revolutionary Cuba
By approaching Castro’s Cuba from the margins, author Anna Veltfort creates a unique lens through which to observe the mechanisms by which a political system acts upon those who live within it.
Art
Listening to Plants
Adrienne Adar's attention to botanical sentience seeks to decenter human perspectives on non-human entities.
Books
The Liberating Power of Conversations About Art
When I got to know Bill Berkson, my life as a writer was completely changed.
Books
Bridget Riley’s Razzle-Dazzle Career
A first-ever biography of the pioneering British modernist charts the creative path of an intense and deeply sensitive painter.
Art
An Artist Looks Hard at Painful Images
Diana Cherbuliez’s Trigger Warning looks at our society, where disasters occur on a regular basis and are fodder for our cultural anxieties and voyeurism.
Art
Testosterone Rules at the Metropolitan Museum's Rock 'N' Roll Show
Will rock music ever be able entirely to extricate itself from a profoundly gendered symbolism?
Art
An Unlikely Matchup of Paper and Steel
An odd pairing of drawings by Eva Hesse and sculptures by John Chamberlain sets up unintended comparisons between two artists who otherwise seem to share only an ingrained rebelliousness.
Art
Figures in Clay, Embarrassed and Alive
The tension between classicism and chaos is one of the many things that sets Bruce Gagnier’s art apart from figurative sculpture stretching back to Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, and Edgar Degas.