Art
Psychedelic and Sardonic, Janiva Ellis’s Paintings Offer Visions of a Divided Nation
With RATS, Ellis explores the twisted realities of American life.
Reviews
Books
Rachel Cusk Intertwines Art with Healthy Skepticism
A fiercely odd, even unfashionably allegorical book, Second Place would be disappointing if it weren’t so bafflingly good.
Art
Julie Mehretu Reminds Us That Borders Are Meant to Be Trespassed
Mehretu’s remarkable mid-career survey blazes through the Whitney Museum of Art, illuminating over two decades of her extensive practice.
Art
Jessica Vaughn’s Cathartic Critiques of Office Culture
In Vaughn’s hands, “success” takes shape as a parade of etiquette, competition, and power.
Books
Resonant Adventures in Art and Intimacy From Larissa Pham
A memoir-in-essays, Pop Song is at its most satisfying when the author assembles an arsenal of visual artists to express the ineffable.
Art
Fred Eversley's Joyful Light
Eversley’s parabolic sculptures draw us into a self-aware and ever-shifting encounter with space and perceptual phenomena.
Art
Katherine Bradford's Joy and Grief
In her “Mother Paintings,” Bradford’s observations of life in a pandemic have merged with her interior world.
Art
John Lees’s All-Too-Human Paintings
By repeatedly returning to the same motif, Lees attempts the impossible, which is to freeze a particular object, individual, or moment in time.
Art
Echoes of Buddhist “Emptiness” in Contemporary Chinese Art
The four artists in the exhibition “Silent Thunder” display varying degrees of engagement with Buddhism — as a faith, an aesthetic choice, a school of philosophy, or a social phenomenon.
Art
Bearing Witness to Breonna Taylor’s Life and Death
There are many in Kentucky who wish to get beyond the Breonna Taylor tragedy, but Amy Sherald’s magnetic portrait of Taylor insists otherwise.
Books
A Year of Struggle in Words and Images
Manjit Thapp’s first full-length graphic novel, Feelings, charts a young woman’s emotional journey through South Asia’s six-season calendar.
Film
Liborio Affirms the Force of Mythology and Collective Faith
An immersive dive into communal myth-making, Nino Martínez Sosa’s film brings a Dominican spiritual leader to back to life.