Books
Photographing Ancient Organisms Before They Disappear
Brooklyn-based photographer Rachel Sussman spent nearly a decade tracking down the elders of our world, where life is measured in centuries instead of years.
Review
Art
New Video Series Humorously Probes Art's Corruption
An Australian street artist seems an unlikely figure to reprise Robert Hughes's market-averse brand of video art criticism.
Performance
Watching Your Digital Self Perform with Glass Ghost
After money, space is often the tallest hurdle for artists in New York. Performance Space 122's RAMP is a new residency program offering emerging New York City-based artists a performance venue to develop a piece with supporting tech assistance and premiere it to an audience.
Art
Woman of Mystery: Finding Vivian Maier
Today, the name "Vivian Maier" is far from unknown. People around the world have seen and read about Maier's photographs, taken in New York, Chicago, and countless other places during the second half of the 20th century.
Books
Duh, It’s Postmodern Poetry
Jon Rutzmoser’s thin book of poetry packed with thick descriptions of dicks, dire and dramatic Oedipal complexes, heavy-petting psychoanalytic theory references, and Disneyland descriptors made me laugh, pissed me off, had me rolling my eyes, and had me wondering what it means to write poetry today.
Art
Artaud and Van Gogh Against Society
PARIS — In 1947, at the urging of Paris gallery owner Pierre Loeb, anguished French poet, actor, philosopher, madman, genius, playwright, and director Antonin Artaud fêted Vincent Van Gogh in a bizarre but exquisite text that rails against universal imbecility.
Music
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (March 2014, Part 2)
In part 2 of this month, reviews of Toni Braxton & Babyface, Foster the People, Schoolboy Q, and Real Estate.
Art
Gary Stephan Talks to Rene Magritte and Kazimir Malevich
On the face of it, Gary Stephan’s paintings seem straightforward and austere. Done in acrylic, their viscosities of paint, range from striated, semi-transparent brushstrokes laid down with the same consistency as they span the canvas, to watery, semi-transparent irregular shapes, to solid geometric
Art
Poliakoff and the Russian Connection
The retrospective of Russian-born painter Serge Poliakoff, which just closed at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, was both a welcome surprise and something of an anachronism. One would be hard pressed to find clues in the current international art scene, or even in the secondary market,
Art
Andreas Slominski’s Wonderfully Ugly Handbags
Andreas Slominski’s exhibition at Metro Pictures, which closes today, is the perfect riposte to those enthralled with the expensive baubles of Jeff Koons, or with designer fashions, reality TV, and the gaseous personalities populating these self-inflated, narcissistic times.
Art
Connecting Across Time: Piero at the Met
This is the last weekend to catch Piero della Francesca: Personal Encounters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a selection of four devotional pictures never before seen in the United States.
Art
A Poem-Length Glitchy Game about the Loss of Memory
In Alz, you wander as a blank-faced man through a landscape of trees and skyscrapers that stutter and glitch as a strange black box follows. It's an incredibly short experience, a poem-length immersion in the world of someone caught in the confusion of memory loss.