Art
One part a literary subgenre of sci-fi, pioneered by the likes of Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler, and one part cross-cultural, interdisciplinary aesthetic movement, Afrofuturism — a term coined by cultural critic Mark Dery in his 1994 essay "Black to the Future"— can be tricky to describe.
Art
To experience “Frolic Architecture” is to enter into a world that feels both familiar and bizarre. The piece, a collaboration between composer David Grubbs and poet Susan Howe is a delicate sound collage, rich with layers, solemn, and mildly, comfortably disjointed.
Art
MIAMI BEACH — Parsing contemporary art's inscrutable pecking order of markets and sensibilities is already a miserable endeavor, but the stakes inch ever higher in Miami, where the tantalizing gruel of celebrity gets spread preciously thin.
Art
MIAMI BEACH — It was refreshing to wander around a Miami fair that doesn't appear to have a fear of pretty things. In the design world, unlike the art world, beauty isn't considered a dirty word, so, wandering through the aisles of the 2013 Design Miami fair, I could see an obvious affection for bea
Art
Edinburgh-based artist Jessica Harrison transforms the collectible ceramic ladies that populate grandmothers' china cabinets into spectacles of gore.
Art
MIAMI BEACH — Walking into Context, Art Miami’s sister fair devoted to emerging artists and contemporary work, the overarching trend was immediately clear: surrealism, absurdity, art that’s slightly unhinged.
Art
MIAMI BEACH — In the cycles of art fairs, there are some that are going up and others that are on a slow decline to what seems like oblivion. In the former category is Untitled, which debuted last year and has since generated a lot of buzz because of its South Beach beachfront location (which was co
Art
MIAMI BEACH — Amidst the overabundance, overproduction, and overstimulation of the spectacle that is the Miami art fairs, it becomes progressively harder by the day to recollect what I have seen or even what I have liked. And yet, the thing about authenticity is that it can persist, despite an envir
Art
LONDON — At a press view on the Southbank, Dayanita Singh warned the assembled crowd that she gets a twinge whenever referred to as a photographer. And yet her photographs proliferate throughout the Hayward Gallery, where her exhibition Go Away Closer is installed, with many more on display than a c
Art
What does it mean when you hook up your work to that of a late modernist giant working in a reductive vein – Ad Reinhardt, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, or Donald Judd, for example – like a caboose?
Books
Lucian Freud, as presented in the gossipy new biography, Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Grieg, lived for 88 years entirely guilt-free, which is a remarkable bit of pathology in itself, but especially so for the grandson of the man who tagged guilt as the glue holding civilization together.
Art
MIAMI — The first ever Brazil Art Fair in Miami got off to a rough start: it didn't open on time. When I visited two days later, the fair still felt tentative, a bit uncertain, rough around the edges.