Art
Sending Collage Down a Rabbit Hole
If you’re looking for clues to the dizzying imagery of Tim Spelios’s collages, you’re not going to get very far.
Review
Books
The Fantastic Fall of a Boisterous and Beloved Gilded Age Artist
In one of the many licentious anecdotes from Robert Winthrop Chanler: Discovering the Fantastic, the Gilded Age artist throws a party in his Gramercy Park "House of Fantasy" so raucous that his neighbors across the street — who happen to be painter George Bellows and his family — call the cops.
Art
New Horizons in Road Trip Photography
MEMPHIS — The American tradition of road photography has typically captured a certain spirit of adventure, a search for unexpected beauty, oddity, maybe even enlightenment out there in the far corners of the country.
Film
A New Wave of Syrian Films Exposes the Failure of Images
In an increasingly appalling atmosphere of political stagnation, failed negotiations, and yet another ceasefire that won't last, there is at least some good news coming out from Syria these days.
Art
Excavating the Layers Under the Landscape
ARLINGTON, Va. — The landscape paintings that taught me most about the form as a young person were the works of Albert Bierstadt and Bob Ross.
Art
The Photographer Who Shot Truman Capote’s Brooklyn
Before Truman Capote's society girl Holly Golightly appeared in the November 1958 issue of Esquire, the author was in a heated argument with his editor over visuals.
Art
Artists Consider Race in Response to the American Revolution
The curatorial scheme of the Race and Revolution exhibition at Nolan Park on Governors Island is bold and seditious.
Art
Mourners from Around the Globe Gather to Share Our Traditions of Grief
As a New York gravedigger once succinctly put it to me: “We all have dead.” No person is isolated from loss.
Art
Glimpsing the Evolution of Glass Lenses in Three Centuries of Microscopes
CORNING, NY — To closely inspect the evolution of the microscope, the Corning Museum of Glass is highlighting the lens-making behind the optical tool.
Art
The Salvaged Belongings of a 1980s Punk Drummer
MINNEAPOLIS — Nostalgia for the Minneapolis music scene of the 1980s has been at somewhat of a fever pitch of late.
Art
How Daniel Buren's Institutional Critique Became Institutional Chic
PARIS — Lacking any discernible content outside of context, the translucent, cheery façade of Daniel Buren’s "Observatory of Light” (2016) at the Foundation Louis Vuitton is another example of how once-radical conceptual artists have become co-opted and turned into spiffy designer-decorators.
Art
Theaster Gates Contemplates What Creates and Destroys Communities
MILAN — Following the major economic crises in Europe and the US, political art has become increasingly visible in those parts of the world. At the same time, it’s become increasingly difficult to ignore questions about the art’s actual effectiveness.