Art
Perpetuating the Idea that Modernism Triumphed by Appropriating “Tribal” Art
For all the scholarly expertise employed, an exhibition at Almine Rech Gallery comes off as an exasperating magical negro narrative.
Review
Art
An Artist Serves Up Food for Thought About Excessive Consumption
Raúl Ortega Ayala's new exhibition at Proyectos Monclova includes a buffet based on a historical image of the restaurant atop the World Trade Center and a model of the Tower of Babel sculpted out of lard.
Art
The Outlandish and Beautiful Juxtapositions of Rei Kawakubo
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute dedicates its second solo show of a living designer to Rei Kawakubo, who started her daring clothing label Comme des Garçons in 1973.
Art
Anne Harvey’s Strange Painting of Tulips
Anne Harvey’s life — the first half of it, at least — reads like a fairy tale.
Art
Flora Crockett Should No Longer Be Written Out of History
The question is: who is Flora Crockett?
Art
Roy De Forest’s Search for Paradise Did Not Always Go Well
De Forest is part of a group of artists working in Northern California in the late 1950s who rejected New York and what they regarded as mainstream art and thinking. This group included Joan Brown, Jay De Feo, Bruce Conner, William T. Wiley, Jess, Wally Hedrick, and others.
Art
Going to Hell in Berlin, with Lu Yang
Lu Yang's installations and videos hyperbolize the morass of narcissism, identity-loss, fantasy, and fetish that comprises our relationship to synthetic experience.
Art
An Eye for Words: Concrete Poets at the Getty
Concrete Poetry focuses on the purists of the movement, particularly the Brazilian Augusto de Campos, the Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, and the Austrian poet Ernst Jandl.
Art
Now and Then: The Rediscovery of Flora Mayo
If I could, I would give this layered, richly human (and often tear-inducing) work my own private Golden Lion, inventing a new category: Best and Most Meaningful Work in the Exhibition.
Art
John D. Graham and "Another Way of Making Modern Art”
Digging deeply into his own psyche, Graham was able to cast off the pastiche of styles that had been crowding his mind’s eye, and follow his own peculiar path.
Art
The Competing Politics of the Jamaica Biennial
This year's biennial was a mash-up of claims and interests that played out in four exhibitions grouped under one umbrella.
Books
The Racist Caricatures of African Soldiers that Soothed French Colonial Anxieties
With a Weapon and a Grin, a new book by Stephan Likosky, traces the iconography used to infantilize African soldiers who fought in the French army during World War I.