Performance
Dancing Around the Issue of Surveillance
Audiences entering the black box space of BAM Fisher in Brooklyn for More up a Tree found a transparent room containing a man sprawled on his back, and a woman nervously pacing.
Review
Art
Disco Beads and Abstract Rawhides: Jeffrey Gibson's Untraditional "Nativeness"
Half a century ago, many Native American artists trying to break into the fine art market were told that their oil paintings would never sell because they were not recognizably "Indian" enough.
Books
Digressive Essays Imagine the Inner Worlds of Paintings
When I was a child, I made obsessive drawings of schoolgirls and created elaborate personal histories for each of my characters. Imbuing my silent drawings with stories was a form of entertainment, and is, for me at least, one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing about visual art.
Art
The Fantastic Observations of Martin Wong
Martin Wong’s retrospective Human Instamatic, currently on at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, begins in quaint Humboldt County, California.
Books
A Superior Notebook: Richard Hell’s ‘Massive Pissed Love’
When Richard Hell’s I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp was published two years ago, it got a lot of favorable notice, but I never really thought the book — an account of the writer’s life up to about 1984 — was properly understood.
Art
The Necessary Insolence of Peter Saul
Peter Saul has an uncanny ability to seamlessly combine the hilarious and the hideous to great effect. In the middle of chortling at one of his wacky, indecorous paintings, you are apt to suddenly notice an odd and even disturbing detail.
Performance
Performa 15: Diversity, Latex Fetish Wear, and Puppets (Plus the Renaissance)
Performa 15, the New York performance biennial, in this edition looks to the Renaissance as its "historical research anchor," as the festival's promotional materials put it, though in practice, the historical tie is often so vague as to be meaningless.
Music
Beach House Lullaby
The latest two albums from Beach House, 'Depression Cherry' and 'Thank Your Lucky Stars,' were released this year less than two months apart, and good luck trying to distinguish one from the other.
Art
An Early Thanksgiving: The Wagner Gift to the Whitney
Opening in the shadow of the Paris attacks, the exhibition Collected by Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner represents — as Adam Weinberg, the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, said in his remarks at the press preview — “a celebration of what matters in life.”
Film
The Refined Sloppiness of a No Wave Cinema Gem
Eric Mitchell once described his 1978 No Wave film Kidnapped as “a 1960s underground movie happening today.”
Art
Made in Cuba but Exhibited in LA
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — As US–Cuba relations begin to thaw, a pop-up art show continues the decades-long work of cultural diplomacy by Cuban artists.
Books
The Radiance of the French Renaissance in Miniature
While the grandest glories of the French Renaissance were the elaborate castles circling Paris and adorning the Loire Valley, down in Central France a much smaller art form flourished.