Art
Goya and Dix Just Needed a Rainbow
The problem with a show in Venice on war is the insistence that there had to be a bit of hope too — and the hopeful element of this show is feeble, if not schmalzy.
Review
Art
When Will Women Artists Be Equal?
After decades of work, expectations for women artists to prioritize family — or male peers — remains the prevailing norm rather than the exception.
Film
Nigeria’s Youth Fight for a Better Future
Alain Kassanda’s Coconut Head Generation is a testament to how young people find themselves through each other no matter the place, times, or means.
Art
Marie Watt Creates Care Through Collage
At the core, all of Watt’s work shows a devotion to care and closeness, a desire to make tangible the layers of relations that bind and make us.
Art
Pratt’s MFA Photographers Indict the “Perfect Body”
Chloe Scout Nix and Lena Smart challenge the distorted body images that prevail in mainstream media.
Books
Snapshots of Everyday Palestinian Life Before the Nakba
Archival photography in Against Erasure ranges from uprisings to olive tree cultivation and an open-air cinema.
Art
Painting at the Periphery of Language
Mary Lum is interested in the deeply rooted human desire to make meaning out of everything, while recognizing that language is a slippery phenomenon.
Art
UCLA’s MFAs Take On Power Structures
While some of the works lack the finesse of more seasoned veterans, these artists have cultivated firm, incisive critiques of the powers that be.
Art
The Quiet Urgency of Barbara Takenaga’s Paintings
Her paintings are searching for materially rooted forms while simultaneously reaching for something unfixed and uncontainable.
Art
Willem de Kooning’s Italy
Paintings from the late 1950s and on prove that de Kooning had sat at the feet of, and learnt much from, such old Italian masters as Titian and Tintoretto.
Art
A Rock and a Fry Pan Walked Into a Gallery
In addition to being some combination of formally delectable, politically astute, and historically poignant, five solo shows currently in Chicago are hilarious.
Books
How Big Cats Once Symbolized France’s Colonialist Ambitions
Myth and Menagerie urges us to view lions as sentient beings and not as timeless, passive objects of representation for 19th-century French artists.