Books
How Hungary's Painted Homes Rebelled Against the Socialist System
As a reaction to the bleak uniformity of suburban housing in post-war Hungary, many homeowners painted their houses in vibrant designs.
Review
Books
A New Guide to New York's Subterranean Art
There are over 250 art projects lodged in the transit infrastructure of New York City. Some are garish or grand mosaics that cover whole subway tunnels, others you might walk by for years without recognition. A new book compiles them in a guide to city's subterranean galleries.
Art
Contemporary Fresco That’s Off the Wall
It isn’t often one comes across fresco paintings in art galleries, the last time I remember seeing a sizable number was the “Rooms” section of the Francesco Clemente retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1999.
Art
Dozier Bell: Descending, Lifting, Rising, Swells
In a statement about her life and work written a few years back, Dozier Bell started off by highlighting her roots in Maine, which stretch back seven generations, and the role they play in the way she perceives the world.
Art
Explosive Drawing: Susan King’s Mash-ups, Strange Landscapes, and Other Worlds
Very few creations are as hard to pin down as those produced by the most original self-taught artists, who primarily make their art for themselves rather than for the market or the public.
Art
Gods and Monsters: Cubism at the Met
“To a new world of gods and monsters” is the promethean pledge from one mad scientist to another in James Whale’s classic Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but it’s easy to imagine the same toast echoing from a Montmartre studio in 1909 as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque raise a glass to the fractured
Art
Get Your Fix of a Sinister Post-Human Future
Artist Saya Woolfalk has created a little utopian hive of serenity in the large front gallery of the Smack Mellon in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
Performance
Domestic Workers Air Their Dirty Laundry Onstage
Laudicieia Calixto and Rita Oliveira enter the space of the Abrons Arts Center’s Experimental Theater and find themselves in a somewhat familiar scene: a slightly cluttered apartment, littered with fancy gowns, full-length mirror, desk, phone, assorted wigs.
Art
Mixing Classical and Gay Male Teen Desire
LONDON — In the Natural History, Pliny the Elder discusses the origins of sculpture by telling the story of Butades of Corinth, the first Greek modeler of clay.
Books
The Graphics of the Great War in France
More than any conflict before it, World War I was a visual battle. Propaganda proliferated across the fronts, and magazines, newspapers, photography, early films, and even fashion and children's books were involved in a rally of imagery on a large scale.
Art
Repainting the Readymade
Marcel Duchamp’s original iteration of “Fountain” was lost shortly after its making. The first “Fountain” survives only as a photograph taken by Alfred Steiglitz in 1917, which was followed by a series of replicas.
Books
New York's Beloved, Independent, Union-Busting Bookstore
On the Books, written and drawn by Greg Farrell and released by Microcosm Publishing, is a firsthand comics account of contract negotiations at the Strand in 2012 — or, as the book's subtitle puts it, "A Graphic Tale of Working Woes at NYC's Strand Bookstore."