Art
A Comic Book Character Seeks Sexual Empowerment in Postwar Italy
We’ve entered Valentina’s life so many times.
Review
Books
See the Smithsonian Archive's Collection of Artists' Handwritten Letters
Whatever skeptics may say about the pseudoscience of graphology (handwriting analysis), it’s hard to deny that handwriting expresses feeling and style — especially, in many cases, when it’s the handwriting of an artist. Georgia O’Keeffe’s bold, squiggly lines and lack of punctuation ignored conventi
Art
Extracting a Rainbow of Color from Invasive Plants
Every once in a while I see a show that makes me feel good, even hopeful about this overheated, self-aggrandizing, status-obsessed art scene in New York. Chroma Botanica: Ellie Irons & Linda Stillman was such an exhibition for me.
Art
Gazing at Photographs that Look At and Past Us
SAN FRANCISCO — “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me […] It is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass,” Ralph Ellison’s narrator declares in Invisible Man.
Art
Wrestling with the “Forces of Wickedness” Along 8 Mile Road
DETROIT — Saturday, May 28 was a staggeringly hot day out along 8 Mile Road, where, just before three in the afternoon, a somewhat anomalous crowd of people began to gather.
Art
The Ineffectiveness of Words and Other Boundaries
The recently closed exhibition by Shimon Attie at Jack Shainman gallery is the documentation of a peculiar work made two years ago and installed in contested locations in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
Art
A Touch of Autobiography in Cindy Sherman’s New Classic Hollywood Portraits
The beauty of walking into a Cindy Sherman exhibition is that there is always a new group of women there waiting for you on the wall, asking you to understand and explore their lives.
Books
Reader’s Diary: Catherine Texier’s ‘Russian Lessons’
It’s so hard to read a friend’s book without prejudice.
Art
A Truly Great Artist
At once compassionate and angry, empathetic and satirical, tender and tough, Nicole Eisenman is a storyteller, portraitist, social chronicler, allegorist, fantasist, utopian dreamer and history painter, to name just a handful of her many artistic identities.
Art
Something New Under the Sun
Richard Van Buren studied ceramics at Mexico City College. Later, he moved to San Francisco, where he studied at San Francisco State (1961–64).
Art
Repairing the Damage of Haste: The Still Point and Stir of William Bailey
Minutes before seeing a collection of William Bailey's meditative still-lifes and figure paintings, I heard, yet again, a series of small-minded and reckless comments by Donald Trump.
Music
Fatima al Qadiri's Poetry of Terror and Protest
Fatima Al Qadiri has just released her second full-length album, Brute. A concept album, it is, according to Al Qadiri, a protest album in the lineage of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.”