Books
A 19th-Century Guide to Seeing Ghosts Everywhere
The 1864 Spectropia used optical illusions to manifest ghosts in Victorian homes, and was designed to attack the quackery of Spiritualism.
Review
Art
Updating Ukiyo-Prints and Medieval Art with Allusions to Fast Food and US Politics
An exhibition at the Koa Gallery in Honolulu presents a retrospective of Masami Teraoka, whose art has combined critiques of contemporary society with pop culture iconography for over half a century.
Art
The Istanbul Biennial Examines the Tricky Question of What Makes a “Good Neighbor”
Dealing with themes of surveillance, personal and shared space, and what defines home in film, installation, and more.
Art
Chicago’s Plan for Sick Trees: Turn Them into Art
Artists turn trees devastated by a pest into works of public art, calling attention to the problem and creating opportunities for unexpected artistic encounters across the city.
Music
Case Studies in Musical Hooks: Father John Misty, Galantis, Ed Sheeran, Ashik Reza
Craft in itself means nothing unless it reaches total flawlessness.
Art
Three Postwar American Painters Who Were Too European for New York
Long before globalism became a buzzword, Norman Bluhm, San Francis, and Paul Jenkins joined the artists and intellectuals from around the world in postwar Paris.
Art
A Cerebral Portraitist‘s Unaccountable Neglect
In 1960, the art world was not ready to accept Marcia Marcus’s conceptual approach to portraiture.
Books
An Artist Who Fantasized as a Way to Survive
A self-taught draftsman and fantastical storyteller, Renaldo Kuhler’s life and fashion sense were as eccentric as his art.
Art
Dale Chihuly’s Road Not Taken
Chihuly may be a nature sculptor but his shiny maximalist aesthetic is far from naturalistic.
Art
A Painter’s Theater of Destitution
The fifteen realist paintings in Linden Frederick: Night Stories take us on a tour of small-town Maine.
Art
The Politics of Adversity in Pope.L’s Flint Water Project
Flint Water Project politicizes the readymade, positing the bottles as symbols of gross negligence and misconduct on the part of city and state officials, and the dire consequences.
Film
In Ken Burns's Vietnam War Documentary, Claims of Objectivity Obscure Patriotic Bias
By accepting patriotic doctrine even as it claims to present all sides, the epic documentary takes some slippery liberties with truth and history.