Art
Traditional Craft Meets Conflict in Afghan War Rugs
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — War and conflict have long had a role in the production of art.
Review
Books
A Poetic Record of Creations Lost, Missing, or Destroyed
Rarely has a book been so dizzyingly impenetrable while being, at the same time, so eminently readable. Les Unités perdus (The lost unities), by the French poet Henri Lefebvre, manages to both live up to this paradox and flourish within its idiosyncratic ramparts.
Art
Thomas Nozkowski’s Magical Mystery Tour
Simply titled Thomas Nozkowski, this is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at Pace Gallery since 2008, when he first joined the gallery, and this time he has pulled out all the stops.
Art
Instant Illuminations: Elaine de Kooning’s Early Portraiture
With her passion for people, de Kooning was by inclination a portraitist. But she was equally drawn to experimental art forms as the Abstract Expressionist movement unfolded before her eyes, inside her very home.
Art
Clearing the Slate: MoMA’s Contemporary Reboot
A few months after having been roundly trounced for The Forever Now: Painting in an Atemporal World, its attempt to assess the current state of painting, the Museum of Modern Art opened a reinstallation of its contemporary collection on the same day as its Björk fiasco.
Art
50 Years of Self-Representation in Saudi Women's Art
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s relatively young history (the kingdom was established in 1932) is filled with gaps due to poor documentation and preservation efforts, especially when it comes to the many contributions of Saudi women.
Art
On Kawara's Polite Conceptualism
As my entry into the art world took place just a few years after the Museum of Modern Art’s 1970 Information show, I’ve grown increasingly conscious of an unexpected turn in the positions of several hard-line members of the once aggressively anti-aesthetic conceptual camp.
Art
An Overly Optimistic Take on Our Post-Human Existence
In the years when I taught an undergraduate art history survey course, I would invariably encounter a student who wanted to know how ancient builders could have produced structures of such precision as the Giza pyramids without the aid of laser devices.
Books
A Comic Draws on the Dark Side of Hollywood's Golden Age
When the double-sized first issue of The Fade Out surfaced last summer — an ongoing comic noir set in 1940s Los Angeles — a share of the print run featured a limited-edition cover (commonly called a "variant" cover).
Books
A Graphic Novel Portrait of Slavery in Brazil
The history of black slavery in Brazil has largely been told from the perspective of the colonizers, not the enslaved.
Art
Lost in the Darkness of Baroque Paintings
PARIS — In these paintings, you’ll find wine and drunken excess, along with all the accompanying decadent behavior: insult, turbulence, transgression, sacrilege, and provocation.
Art
The Last Rooms Immigrants See Before Being Deported
LONDON — At the heart of artist, writer, and technologist James Bridle’s project is the notion that the images that we are not shown are just as carefully selected as the ones we are: in this day and age, visual concealment is tactical, not accidental.