Art
Staying in Love on the Lower East Side
Making boldface generalities is of course a recipe for disaster, but for many artists the long hours and repetitive demands of making something by hand is part of the parcel.
Review
Art
History’s Puppeteer: Wael Shawky at the Serpentine Gallery
LONDON — There’s been quite a buzz around Wael Shawky lately. Since graduating with his MFA in 2001, the Egyptian artist has gone on to rack up an impressive number of accolades. Riding on this surge of enthusiasm, London’s Serpentine Gallery has deemed it time that Shawky receive his first major pr
Music
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (January 2014, Part 2)
In part 2 of this month, reviews of Beyoncé, Blood Orange, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Waxahatchee.
Art
A History Waiting To Be Written: Ed Clark’s High-Spirited, Abstract Paintings
David Hammons’ thoughtful curation of the exhibition, 'Ed Clark: Big Bang', currently at the Tilton Gallery helps establish a much needed context for an important artist of the New York School, who, now in his late 80s, continues to make boldly exuberant paintings.
Art
As Above, So Below: The Aerial Revelations of Yvonne Jacquette
Reflecting on urban spaces, Italo Calvino writes, "Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears [...] the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” Yvonne Jacquette: The High Life, currently at DC Moore G
Art
Collecting Themselves: The Archives of Afrika Bambaataa and Bob Mizer
Last summer, at The Afrika Bambaataa Master of Records Vinyl Archive at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New Yorkers had the unprecedented opportunity to participate in the cataloging of one of the world’s most historically significant record archives. Currently on view at 80WSE Gallery, the exhibition DEV
Art
Final Ascent: Joseph Beuys and the Languages of Art
Mention Joseph Beuys’ name and the usual iconic gestures come to mind. But if you dig beneath the surface, even a little, you’ll discover how ultimately alien his art really is.
Art
In Paris, Punk's Curatorial Redemption
PARIS — Unlike the widely ridiculed Costume Institute show PUNK: Chaos to Couture, a show that examined punk’s impact on high fashion from the movement’s birth in the 1970s through its enduring influence today, Europunk: An artistic revolution, recently closed at Cité de la Musique, was rigorously p
Art
Welcome to Mike Kelley University
The Mike Kelley retrospective at MoMA PS1 is, in a word, large. One might expect as much, given that it is a retrospective, but this one is uniquely big: it marks the first time the entire museum has ever been given over to one artist.
Books
Poetry for 49 Days of Grief
There are surprisingly few poetry collections built around the experience of loss. One of them, published just last year, is Time of Grief: Mourning Poems, selected by poet and New Directions editor Jeffrey Yang.
Art
'Joseph Beuys: Process 1971–1985’ at Rooster Gallery
"Socio-economic illumination, enabled by the evolutionary process of thought, was Beuys’ end-goal," writes Kara L. Rooney in her substantial catalogue essay for Joseph Beuys: Process 1971–1985, the small but ambitious show she's curated at the similarly disposed Rooster Gallery on Orchard Street.
Art
Exploring the Formal Qualities of Hair
CHICAGO — Monica Rezman makes drawings and paintings of hair. She used to work in the fashion industry, and when she came over to the slower visual world of drawing and painting, she spent a while making careful transcriptions of unraveled wigs that resulted in abstract linear patterns.