Art
The Enduring Influence of Ikat Fabric, from Oscar de la Renta to Contemporary Design
Ikat patterns have become enormously popular in both fashion and interior design. But most consumers seem to be ignorant of the textile’s cultural origins.
Review
Art
Watching a 3D Printer Reinterpret African Tribal Symbols
Matthew Angelo Harrison has designed and built a machine that takes his ongoing work with abstraction in a different direction.
Art
How the Evil "Other" Was Conceptually Constructed Over Centuries
Artists Kader Attia and Jean-Jacques Lebel’s transcultural and transgenerational collaborative exhibition attempts to face down and recover from human evil through the superfluity of artistic imagination.
Art
Filming Native American Performance Through a Decolonized Lens
In her three-channel video "Mother Drum," Dara Friedman avoids many of the problematic patterns non-Native artists often fall into when making art about Native American communities.
Film
A Documentary on Basquiat's Teen Years Tracks a Star's Early Ascent
Sara Driver's new documentary Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat wants to bring the young art star back down to earth, but often can't help positioning hovering him above.
Books
What Blockchain Means for Contemporary Art
Now that the wild speculation on Bitcoin’s value and the explosion of fringe cryptocurrencies has died down, what has been revealed is a contiguous conversation regarding the use of blockchain technology in the work of several artists, designers, and thinkers.
Art
How Ghada Amer Uses Seduction to Expose Sexism
Amer's exhibition at Cheim & Read, featuring images of nude female figures made all the more seductive by her choice of materials, is an iron fist in a velvet glove.
Art
Portraits of Palestinian Life in America
Focusing on a handful of Gazan experiences, Home Away From Home examines how people construct familiar spaces for themselves within distant landscapes and is on view at Aperture.
Art
Reconsidering the Political Detachment of Eggleston's Images
This exhibition of William Eggleston’s color photographs developed from negatives made between 1965 and 1974, reminds me of the tagline from the 1969 film Easy Rider: “A man went looking for America, and couldn’t find it anywhere ... ”
Art
Who Decides What Is Violent in the Museum?
Tone deaf, in a period defined by police brutality and racial discrimination, the MCA in Denver's spring exhibitions meditate on violence through a lens harkening back to Jim Crow.
Art
The Decade that Changed the Art World: Money, Media, and Brands in the 1980s
The primary takeaway of Brand New at the Hirshhorn is its demonstration of how high the stakes of representation became during the 1980s, a decade of proliferating imagery and technology.
Art
Power and Beauty in China as Seen Through the Designs of Robert Wilson
Sensory pleasure inspires this exhibition design, treating the last imperial dynasty of China as a feast instead of a major art movement.