Art
Every year, the Armory Show art fair chooses an area of the globe to zoom in on for its Focus section, a curated selection of mostly emerging galleries that often includes some of the fair’s chief highlights and surprises. For 2013, the Armory’s Focus section takes on its own home base, the United S
Art
KOCHI, India — I finally made the trip to Kerala, on India’s southern tip, not because tourism websites insist upon it as God’s own country, but because the first ever biennale hosted in India is taking place there at Kochi (or Cochin), a city that was once a thriving spice port. Bringing together a
Art
There's something about entering a school that always gives a feeling of déjà vu, with the pastel-hued hallways and orderly lines of desks likes ghosts of the past. That's something that makes the SPRING/BREAK Art Show's return to the Old School on Mott Street something of a challenge, in that the c
Art
The intensified activism of the 1960s fueled by the Vietnam War and struggles over class inequality, women's rights, and black liberation drove the rapid growth of the underground press. Between 1965 and 1969, the five indie counterculture newspapers scattered across the United States multiplied to
Performance
Despite the setting — a small stage filled with nine dancers — there was a feeling of separateness and sadness. The Vangeline Theater, a Butoh dance group, celebrated its 10th anniversary on February 1 and 2 at the Triskelion Arts Aldous Theater; both nights were sold out, with more people waiting i
Music
Since January I’ve been squeezing an extra review into each catalogue, and, nearing the end of February, it finally cost me a deadline. I’m pretty satisfied with the way things turned out, though. As of this post since March last year, I’ve reviewed 100 2012 albums, not bad. High points here are a C
Art
Surreal. It’s one of those words like insane or awesome that’s taken a beating from aggressive misuse. I’ve heard the term applied to both a bus driver wearing a funny hat and the sight of the second plane hitting the tower. “It was so surreal,” that long e sung out like an animal’s cry of distress,
Art
How much more powerful to say “drawing surrealism” than something like “surrealist drawings.” It gets the action into the art, which is, often, exactly where it is. Unweighted by color, untrammeled by, oh you know, something like the history of painting and how the surrealists (in whatever grouping
Book Review
Who cares about bad graffiti or street art? The spray paint scrawls of ill-chosen tag names ("Piggy Nasty," "Pony Tail," "Tricky Trout, Jr."), reckless vulgarity (penises and boobs drawn on absolutely everything), and sad drawings that barely shape into the animal, face, or whatever they're trying t
Art
CHICAGO — Sometimes it almost seems that at any time of the year, at some place in the world, there is a show of Picasso’s work on display somewhere.
Art
Whether you like it or not, the digital invasion of Google Glasses is on its way, bringing the alternate world of augmented reality with it. As the late sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, who I really wish was here to react to the rapidly cyborg-like technology advances, forebodes in his 1978 essay "How
Art
Ai Weiwei's survey at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC ended this past Sunday, and on that last day clusters of visitors gathered around each piece with camera phones out in documentation, especially at the end piece "Cube Light." The highly photogenic glimmering box of glass crystals from his