Art
Seeing Green for the First Time
Billy Sullivan is doing something magical with green. The number his recent paintings pull off with a grassy, mossy, lush hue make for a required trip to the Nicole Klagsbrun gallery.
Review
Art
Out of Time: A Look Back at Cindy Sherman at MoMA
LOS ANGELES — Cindy Sherman has been plagued by that one-hit wonder malaise that strikes so many musicians who deliver delightfully wonderful first albums only to follow-up with disappointing sophomore efforts as their careers predictably fade away. They leave behind only memories of that one hit, t
Art
The Subtle Disappointment of Robert Irwin
Robert Irwin has been a favorite of mine for some time now. His work helped to pioneer the 1960s California Light and Space movement, and it is often beautiful to experience in person. Having never seen his well-known window installation "1° 2° 3° 4°," which was originally installed at the Museum of
Art
The Ambition and Arrogance of Exploration
Recalling the age of the gentleman explorer in a place that still guards its worn relics, Mark Dion's Phantoms of the Clark Expedition is an examination of the ambitions of early 20th century expeditions, as well as their arrogance.
Books
The Fear of Making Art
When Amazon recommends literary selections I might be interested in, I usually do a quick scan of the offerings, decide I can’t afford to splurge on assorted art books and delete the email. But once in a while something catches my eye. Not too long ago, among the artist bios, museum catalogs and cri
Art
A Story of Love, Plants and Death
Based on Alejandro Zambra's masterful novella, the film Bonsái is a story of love, plants, death and the literature that seamlessly links them all. Bonsái premiered at Cannes to favorable reviews and took the top prize at the Miami Film Festival earlier this year. Directed by the Chilean Cristián Ji
Books
Sleeper Awake: Michael O’Brien’s “Avenue”
Poems often groan beneath their encumbrances: weighty metaphors, top-heavy conceits. Which is why I like it when Michael O’Brien, in his most recent book Avenue (FloodEditions), writes of a poem being merely “certain words in / a certain order.” This stripped-down formulation courts a charge of bana
Art
The Soulful Insolence of Sven Lukin
I have been a Sven Lukin fan since 1970, when I first saw "Untitled" (1969) in one of the concourses running under the Empire State Plaza in Albany. Made for, and located in, a long recessed area — and playfully hovering between flatness and volume, the pictorial and the sculptural — Lukin’s "Untitl
Performance
Happily Tangled Webs
On my way to the Joyce SoHo last Wednesday, while thinking about David Gordon’s 50th anniversary — and realizing that, while he has been making work for five decades, I would be seeing it live for the first time that night — I got to wondering: What does Gordon, renowned for resisting any sort of ti
Art
Oh Sue, If Only I Could Love You More
Sue Coe has called the art world “a zipped-up body bag of what they call culture.” Thinking about the troubling and troubled work of this extravagantly gifted artist, I found myself circling back to that statement, which is from a 1996 profile written by Steven Heller for Eye Magazine.
Art
The Soundscape of LA Via GPS
LOS ANGELES — For LA's drivers, the city passes by in a blur, a city protected by glass and one's own soundtrack. Every experienced Angeleno has a driving mix, a series of podcasts, and, of course, favorite radio stations, to keep them occupied while scooting (or crawling) around town. LA is often a
Art
Bringing a Burst of Color to an Urban Intersection
CHICAGO — “Color Jam,” a public art piece by Jessica Stockholder, was completed on Tuesday in the downtown Loop section of Chicago.