Music
Space-themed music experiences were having something of a moment last week. While Oktophonie at the Park Avenue Armory brought the stark coldness of the world beyond our earth in minimal electronica, over at the Brooklyn Academy of Music there was Planetarium, a collaboration between Sufjan Stevens,
Art
BRIGHTON, UK — Swapping out pieces in a game of chess is only a smart move provided you hold the most on the board, or at least the strongest position. But a new show at the Barbican in London suggests chess could be a “metaphor of exchange” between the artists it lines up. According to the theory,
Art
If, like Woody Guthrie lamented, you've got no home and are just roaming around, you still need a place to shelter from the storms of spring, the scorching summer heat, the autumn winds, and the chill of winter. In the Applied Design exhibition that recently opened at the Museum of Modern Art, a gia
Books
It’s hard to tell how many young Americans know the name John Dewey today. Those who attended New York City’s New School might know of him as a co-founder and one of the minds behind the progressive agenda that formed the intellectual and social foundation of the school’s early years. Others might r
Books
The German fantasist Paul Scheerbart's greatest novel, Lesabéndio, was first published in 1913, the year that Expressionism began to flower in Berlin. The novel, both deriving from and contributing to this Zeitgeist, opens with a highly Expressionist scene: "The sky was violet, and the stars were gr
Art
There is still a story to be told about Philip Guston (1913–1980) and Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), who met at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles in 1929, and were expelled the following year for handing out a broadside that ridiculed the English faculty for their conservatism. Pollock was later
Music
Every year, the Village Voice holds an annual poll, inviting nearly every critic in the biz to vote on the best albums and singles of the given year. Because of its size, it’s generally the best way to measure yearly progress in pop music: the numbers actually mean something. The thing is huge; 493
Art
The final installment of Julian Schnabel 1978–1981, the rotating exhibition of four of the artist’s early works, has arrived with "Abstract Painting on Blue Velvet" (1980). If you’re seeking closure, however, I doubt that you will find it here.
Art
What is the fate of a library book that never gets checked out? Does it stay in the library anyway, holding fast in its place, waiting for someone to borrow it? Or does it eventually get cast off, donated to a thrift or used bookstore or incorporated into the collection of a place like Brooklyn's Re
Music
One person's final frontier is another's impersonal void, or at least those are the two experiences of space you're likely to have at Oktophonie at the Park Avenue Armory. On the first of its performance run that started this week, the crowd, some grudgingly, took off their shoes and put on white "c
Art
New York’s East 53rd Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues, is full of nondescript Manhattan skyscrapers. In the courtyard of one of these clinically clean buildings, however, there are five crumbling, old slabs of concrete covered in graffiti. It’s hard to believe that these blocks, so out of p
Art
Internet art thrives in its native medium — over the past few years, there have been a significant number of online-only galleries, including Bubblebyte, Fach&Asendorf, and Klaus Gallery, that focused exclusively on showing the work of digital artists online. Physical spaces that make the necessary