Art
Feminist Sculptures That Don’t Pull Punches
Zoe Buckman takes issue with the voice of command, teasing out how patriarchal authority permeates our ideas of femininity and the ways we deal with women’s bodies.
Review
Art
Incorporating Photography into Art History, Starting with August Sander
An exhibition at Hauser & Wirth uses the theme of seriality to drag photography out of isolation and into the larger framework of art making.
Art
A Menagerie of Delicate Fabrications and Intimate Drawings Enliven an Apartment Gallery
Aidan Koch’s minimalist storytelling is as soft as it is powerful.
Books
The iTunes Terms and Conditions as an Eclectic Comic
With appropriative text and visuals, the book is full of single-page mash-up vignettes of obtuse techno-speak and familiar graphics.
Art
How Art Secured American Banknotes for 150 Years
The Grolier Club is exploring the overlooked art of American security engraving, in which the strength of an artwork correlates to the security of the banknote or bond it's printed on.
Art
From a Jade Suit to Bronze Dildos, Ancient Tomb Luxuries of the Han Dynasty Elite
Even in death the Han Chinese thought that life continued in its own way so they buried the deceased with luxurious objects that continue to impress.
Art
The Mysterious Experiments of Hercules Segers, a 17th-Century Art Radical
The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the first major retrospective on the radically experimental 17th-century Dutch artist.
Art
Pompeii Before the Point-and-Shoot: The Earliest Photographs of Italy
The first photographic images seen in Italy were botanical prints by Henry Fox Talbot, beginning three decades of experimentation with photography in 19th-century Italy.
Music
Syd’s Pleasure Principle
Syd’s murmurs, exclamations, coos, and exhalations are layered with care and irrepressible delight — all so quietly you could blink and miss it all.
Art
Romare Bearden’s Fevered Dream
Derived from memory, Bearden’s bayou is at once real and mythic, the Black counterpart to William Faulkner’s apocryphal Yoknapatawpha County.
Art
Jeff Donaldson’s Celebration of an Alternative History
Donaldson wanted to replace the history of demeaning stereotypes of Black people that had been presented by white, mainstream culture. By connecting his work to Africa and developing a powerful transnational view, he aimed to develop an alternative history rooted in struggle.
Books
Timothy Hyman's Alternative View of Figurative Painting in Art History
Most of the artists in Hyman’s book, the author claims, are generally excluded from most survey courses and textbooks. Their presence here offers a sharp rebuke to the narrowing of creative possibilities and the disparagement of painting as a vehicle for the expression of modern life and consciousne