Books
The Melancholy Art of Japanese Floral Arrangements
Ikebana, which translates to "living flowers," is the Japanese art of floral arrangement that dates back to the 16th century.
Review
Performance
A Play Takes Buckminster Fuller’s Fantastic Ideas to Task
The designs and theories of Buckminster Fuller may seem like quaint retrofuturism today, but there was a time when his utopian ideas seemed to hold the key to peaceful and sustainable human existence on earth — at least he thought so.
Art
Pausing to Consider How Plants React to Humans
CHICAGO — A poison ivy leaf is scary, if not panic-inducing.
Art
Modeling Life, Death, and Eternity in the Ancient Americas
Miniature mummies carved from wood and carefully wrapped in tiny shrouds overlook a model of a Chimú palace, one of the small-scale representations of a lost precolonial world in Design for Eternity: Architectural Models from the Ancient Americas.
Art
X Marks the Spot: E. J. McAdams’s Sculptural Nature Writing
Taking its title from a line in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, E.J. McAdams’ site-specific installation, “Trees Are Alphabets,” consists of salvaged sawed-off tree branches, most about seven or eight feet long, sculpturally arranged on the terrace of The Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Art
Slip, Sliding Away with John Walker
What do Richard Diebenkorn and John Walker have in common? When they sink their teeth into something, they aren’t likely to let it go.
Art
Class Disjunctions: Dutch Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Even to the trained eye, there is something unrelenting about most seventeenth-century Dutch art.
Art
Mapping the Body: Mark Bradford’s New Work
Three years ago I wrote a review titled “Is Mark Bradford the Best Painter in America?” It wasn’t an altogether serious question, but it wasn’t facetious either.
Art
At Performa, Two Poets Make Online Language Flexible and Freeing
Poetry readings aren't popular, or easy.
Art
Making Space for Painting in Mexico City, Where Conceptual Art Reigns
MEXICO CITY — In places like Mexico City, where conceptual art with an overt socio-political agenda currently dominates, media such as sculpture, drawing, and painting go completely unnoticed, seen as vain expressions belonging to an expired avant-garde.
Art
Inside Richard Diebenkorn's Revelatory Sketchbooks
STANFORD, Calif. — A small gallery at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center is currently offering a deeply personal glimpse into the life and work of Bay Area artist Richard Diebenkorn.
Art
At the Venice Biennale, the Philippine Pavilion Favors Beauty Over Ugly Truths
VENICE — “People say I’m extravagant because I want to be surrounded by beauty. But tell me, who wants to be surrounded by garbage?” infamously asked “Iron Butterfly” Imelda Marcos in the eponymous 2003 documentary Imelda.