Books
Who Holds the Power in Art?
If art is power, as Farah Nayeri's Takedown consistently shows, then how can galleries and museums successfully negotiate relationships of power?
Reviews
Books
N.V. Parekh and the Rise of Studio Photography in East Africa
Isolde Brielmaier’s book I Am Sparkling illustrates how Parekh’s studio became a place for sitters to assert their agency in a changing world.
Art
Two Sparse Brooklyn Exhibitions Probe the Elemental Forces of Life
Things have their own power and agency in the artist’s installation and humans are part of a complex world of life forms and materials.
Books
Amusing Stories About the Muses of Art
Ruth Millington tells the story of the women (and nine men) who have been portrayed in various paintings considered “masterpieces.”
Art
The Many Faces of Ukrainian Photography Today
In Ukrainian Photography Today the now and then come into intimate contact to reveal a story about one’s roots and uprootedness.
Art
Reclining Men Reading Radical Books
Artist Pachi Muruchu merges his radical beliefs and resistance to colonialism with a complex sense of color and the moods it can conjure and inflect.
Art
Sally Gabori's Cartography of Aboriginal Displacement
During her last decade of life Gabori created abstract, large-scale paintings that map her emotional memory of her ancestral home.
Art
Why Are You Drawing Faces Like That?
With deep-set eyes and sealed lips, an ovular, narrow face is pervasive in James Gilbert’s work.
Film
Claire Denis's New Film Is Stronger on Steam Than Story
Just as sex with a revolutionary does not make one revolutionary, a penchant for setting films in developing countries does not make Denis a resident expert.
Art
A Miniature View of Modernism's Masters
Though smaller in size than the artists’ usual works, the works in Modernism in Miniature gain their heft from their big-name creators.
Art
Barbara Sullivan's Contemporary Art of Fresco Painting
Sullivan's frescos are original and surprising but also wry and even feisty; she both embraces and enhances the clunkiness of the medium, animating her subjects.
Art
Dead People Prefer Photography, Apparently
Shannon Taggart’s book SÈANCE pictures the supernatural occurrences in the lives of Spiritualists, seekers, mediums, and other occult practitioners.