Art
Omar Ba Paints the Pride and Pain of the Colonized
The artist’s solo US museum debut at the Baltimore Museum of Art is a contemptuous, at times satirical, take on oppression that gives way to a new history.
Reviews
Art
Every Digital Artwork Starts With a Sketch
Simulation Sketchbook takes as its starting point the reality that digital artists, like all artists, sketch out their work as well.
Art
The Turner Prize Wrestles With an Identity Crisis
How does a selective competition fit with the contemporary art world’s aspirations toward greater inclusivity?
Art
Truth-Telling Confronts the Colonial Gaze
In this online exhibition, Indigenous artists reclaim realities long denied them by US and Canadian federal governments — including moments of collective reverie.
Books
Is Making Art a Way of Telling People to Go Away Forever?
In her novel Tell Me I’m an Artist, Chelsea Martin questions whether art offers a refuge from the world.
Art
War, Bloodshed, and the German Grotesque
The works that best exemplify a uniquely German grotesque in Reexamining the Grotesque are those that reflect the war and Weimar years.
Art
Institutional Critique That Makes You Laugh and Cry
Miguel Calderón examines class, violence, and corruption in Mexican society with macabre, irreverent humor.
Art
Hans Hartung, No Matter What They Say
Hartung’s work most likely didn’t go over well in the heyday of conceptualism, earth art, and the literal use of materials.
Art
Art Between Land and Self
How do we consider land-inspired art in an age when huge swaths of our shared world are being clear cut, mined, drilled, and desertified?
Film
The Buddhist Monk Who Brought Mindfulness to the West
A documentary trilogy follows the life of Thich Nhat Hanh, who expounded the principles of engaged Buddhism.
Art
Cézanne Saw the Nobility of an Apple
The French painter felt he had to rise to the challenge of one question above all things else: What exactly is it to be a modern artist?
Art
Susan Philipsz Evokes the Holocaust Through Absence
Philipsz's haunting sound and video artworks serve as a poignant witness to the lives and artistry of victims of the Holocaust.