Art
From Surface to Air at Two Bushwick Galleries
The soapbox derby is fine-tuned American nostalgia (or was it tradition?), a rugged pursuit combining patrilineal bonding with the values of shopworn ingenuity and competition.
Review
Art
Before the Studios Open: Friday Night Shows at Bushwick Open Studios
Opening night of the 2014 Bushwick Open Studios took place on a cool May night, and thousands of people were bouncing between art spaces, bars, restaurants, and private studios to meet friends, share stories, and talk about how much the neighborhood has changed.
Music
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (May 2014, Part 2)
In part 2 of this month, reviews of Drive-By-Truckers, The Hold Steady, and Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars.
Art
Quattrocento on the Bowery: The Collaborative Art of George Schneeman
Perhaps the most prolific exemplar of free-spirited collaboration from the New York art scene of the 1960s was the painter George Schneeman, the unofficial artist-in-residence of the Poetry Project at St. Marks Church from its earliest days.
Art
Nothing as It Seems: John Avelluto’s Unrelenting Emptiness
John Avelluto’s artworks — we’ll call them paintings for the sake of convenience — take trompe l’oeil places it was never meant to go. By turns exercises in mind-boggling craft and mind-twisting formalism, they repeatedly abrade the boundary between the hyperreal and the micro-minimal with their tou
Art
Disco-era Bushwick
In the late 1970s and early 80s, Meryl Meisler, then a young photographer and self-described club kid, began documenting the bacchanalian nightlife of the city’s most notorious downtown clubs. In the early 80s, as a New York public school teacher, she also started photographing the near-total devast
Art
The Story of 13 Artists Who Sat Down at a Communal Table
One of the group shows I was most anticipating during the 2014 Bushwick Open Studios was Communal Table, a group show curated by artist Björn Meyer-Ebrecht, and last night I attended the early opening to discover that it was most certainly worth the wait.
Performance
The Shape of Opera to Come
LOS ANGELES — In an age when stories are regarded as “impressions” and TMZ serves a source of reportage, how does a four-hour 18th-century comedic opera manage to be relevant and interesting? The Los Angeles Philharmonic has reinvigorated the genre by inviting luminaries in architecture and fashion
Art
It’s a Bitchy World
LOS ANGELES — The self-titled exhibition and zine release Bitches Rule, Cycle 3 is nestled in the back of & Pens Press, an art bookstore in Culver City set to become a roving/pop-up shop and online gallery come June 2.
Books
What It Is to Be Cool in America
What is cool and why do Americans care so much? That's the hinge on which the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has fixed American Cool — an exhibition of portraiture that opened in February — and its accompanying catalogue.
Art
Blood, Guts, and Splattered Gore: Hermann Nitsch Hits Hong Kong
HONG KONG — Hermann Nitsch, one of the founders of the visceral Viennese "Aktionismus," or Actionism, of the 1960s, has resurfaced with a retrospective of his work at the CIA (Culture Industries Association) gallery, located in the gritty and remote industrial Kwai Hing neighborhood, as if to counte
Art
Finding Inspiration in the End of the World
PARIS — Maybe someday a meteor will hit our fair planet, the solar system will enter an electromagnetic field, or the art market for Andy Warhols will collapse and trigger a domino line of economic downfall. However it goes, the world as we know it will someday end, and for Hiroshi Sugimoto there is