Art
A Velvet Underground Extravaganza Where Images Drown Out the Music
PARIS — Arty, esoteric, noise music may not be for everyone, but the Velvet Underground arose from just such obscure subgenre territory.
Review
Art
What Abstraction Can Teach Us About Race and the Color Black
Blackness in Abstraction is one of the best opportunities in years to face the riddle of the color black and the phenomenon of blackening.
Art
A Celebration of Women Who Made It to the Top of the Art World
LOS ANGELES — The current show at Sprüth Magers gallery, Eau de Cologne, has a title that might seem like a play on words (that’s what I initially thought), but it is actually quite straightforwardly unironic.
Art
Reviving a Rusted Relic of the World’s Fair in Queens
The New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is currently vacant, a lock on its gate allowing only a glimpse of the decayed interior of Philip Johnson's futuristic "Tent of Tomorrow," designed for the 1964 World's Fair.
Art
The Sculptural, Musical Paintings of Mary Heilmann
LONDON — When I first walked into the Whitechapel Gallery, I thought I was looking at a Barnett Newman zip painting on the far wall.
Art
Conjuring a Piece of the Earth by Its Outline
Upon entering Odetta gallery in Bushwick, one is confronted with an irregular but geometric plywood sculpture that nearly fills the space, hovering within an inch of the floor.
Art
An Uncanny World of Manipulated Animals and Machines
DALLAS, Tex. — In 2007, Italian artist Paola Pivi brazenly preempted her audience’s response to a work by titling it, “If you like it, thank you. If you don’t like it, I am sorry. Enjoy anyway.”
Art
Three Artists Blur the Line Between Art and Play
DETROIT — It's an art world convention for conceptual art to be disruptive, or at least leave the viewer feeling unsettled, somewhat uncomfortable.
Books
Reader’s Diary: Darryl Pinckney's ‘Black Deutschland’
This is not so much a second novel as a mature reimagining of what a youthful first novel might have been.
Art
Is It Possible to See What Is There?
The legendary curator Dorothy Miller first obtained a Richard Hunt sculpture for the Museum of Modern Art in 1957.
Art
Under No Obligation
We should all be inspired by Alma Thomas’s optimism.
Art
In Houston, an Outsider Art Trove Finds a Museum Home
HOUSTON, Texas — In this long, hot summer of violence, election-campaign anxiety, and widespread malaise, seekers of relief might find solace in music, movies or visits to museums — that is, in art in general, not so much for escapism, but for art’s reassuring messages about the endurance of the hum