Art
Paintings We Need
In an era that celebrates celebrity, vulgar loudmouths, puerile provocateurs, selfie-addicts, and excessive materialists, Merlin James prefers subtlety over din, less rather than more.
Review
Books
In a New Photobook, Stirring Memories of Man on the Moon
The Moon 1968-1972, an attractive new book containing photos from NASA’s Apollo Program, which 47 years ago landed the first men on the moon, evokes the rich mixture of emotion, yearning and speculation that have long surrounded Earth’s mysterious companion and neighbor.
Performance
Home Alone, With a Few Pills: Franz Xaver Kroetz's 'Request Concert'
With its task-based script, Request Concert may remind some of Chantal Akerman's 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, tightly shot inside a small apartment. The pairing of everyday housework with suicide might also call to mind Marsha Norman's 1983 play 'Night Mother.
Art
Mary Carlson’s Favorite Demons
What does evil look like?
Art
Kate Levant’s Invisible Systems
Simultaneously sparse and immersive, Valerian Dials for Trembling Hands evokes the stillness of an ocean after a shipwreck or storm.
Art
At a Remote Russian Observatory, Contemporary Art Invokes the Wonder of Stargazing
The Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Science, near the village of Nizhny Arkhyz, is hosting a contemporary art exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of its construction.
Performance
Remembering and Reframing the Legacy of a Choreographer Lost to AIDS
A new dance work based on material by the choreographer John Bernd, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1988 at age 35, is the centerpiece of Danspace Project's annual Platform series.
Art
A Silent Soundwalk, Noisy with Abstract Compositions
Christine Sun Kim revisits Max Neuhaus's "LISTEN" 50 years later, in which the musician took a group of his friends on a sonic journey through the Lower East Side.
Art
An Ambitious Survey of the Titans of Abstract Expressionism
This expansive AbEx show is brash, irreverent, and unconstrained, just like the period it aims to express.
Art
Opening Up to Agnes Martin’s Pure Abstraction
A retrospective of the artist's work at the Guggenheim Museum is worth seeing on more than one occasion, and it will probably appear differently each time.
Art
From Unreadable Books to a Font Called “Font,” Fiona Banner’s Text-periments
If you ever get joy from the written word, you might not like "Buoys Boys," Fiona Banner's pun-themed exhibition by the sea.
Art
The Unsettling Art of Making Hyperrealistic Baby Dolls
A new short documentary shows Kate Charles, a sculptor who crafts elaborate and hyperrealistic babies known as "Reborn Dolls," at work.