Music
Eleven Stories by Brandy Clark
Country singer Brandy Clark’s new album, Big Day in a Small Town, out since June, is rocking loud and jangling pretty, but the temptation to treat her foremost as a lyricist remains.
Review
Art
Clowns Never Get Caught
Political campaigns, like Jasper Johns’s painting, "Flag," are based on dreams.
Art
The Shelf Life of Political Art
Tucked into a side wall at Postmasters Gallery in Tribeca, as part of a handsome group show called Grayscale, there are five new drawings by William Powhida, one of which is titled “Is Donald Trump an Existential Threat? Or Just A Major Asshole…”
Art
Nowhere to Go in a Desert of Images
In Xaviera Simmon’s CODED exhibition, now on view at The Kitchen, there are a lot of intersections between the human, sexualized (and colored) body, and wide, visually monotonous land- and seascapes.
Art
Figures of Steel that Embody Our Fears
Antony Gormley has consistently plied a practice that's about articulations and permutations of the human body, often fabricating his forms in materials that can withstand the vicissitudes of the natural environmental.
Art
All in the Smooth, White, Vacant-Eyed Family of Contemporary Figurative Sculpture
PHILADELPHIA — Once upon a time, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, there lived a family of sculptures. They were all smooth, white, and vacant-eyed.
Art
How Chagall, Sendak, Hockney, and Other Artists Staged the Fantasies of 'The Magic Flute'
As an opera where a colossal snake and enchanted instrument play a pivotal role, perhaps it's no surprise Mozart's The Magic Flute inspired some fantastic set and costume designs since its debut in 1791.
Art
Perverting the Prescriptions of Womanhood
The Woman Destroyed, currently on view at PPOW Gallery, takes as its organizing theme the 1967 Simone de Beauvoir book of the same title, comprised of three stories that explore the personal crises of middle-aged and aging women.
Art
A Hands-On Experience with Harry Bertoia's Sonic Sculptures
After his death in 1978, Harry Bertoia was interred beneath one of his most impressive sonic works: a 2,000-pound, 10-foot-in-diameter silicon bronze gong.
Art
Performances that Probe the Potential of Being
When I was in graduate school, one of the ideas favored by feminist and queer scholars and students of continental philosophy was the notion of "becoming," as conveyed by Gilles Deleuze.
Books
Comics that Bend and Borrow from Reality
Sean Karemaker dispenses with the rigid panel grids and other conventions that most people commonly associate with comics for The Ghosts We Know from Conundrum Press.
Art
Figurative Painting That’s Emphatically Human
New York City galleries are raining down a smattering of group shows that showcase figurative painting.