Art
David Hockney Celebrates His Renaissance Inspirations
The core message of visual analysis and close looking in Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look is an apt mantra for the National Gallery's history.
Reviews
Art
When Hope Is Not Enough for Art
The Harrisons' Survival Piece #5: Portable Orchard at The Whitney is a calm and orderly response to the dystopian possibilities of climate upheaval.
Art
What Are the Politics of Color in Art?
A Treatise on Color: Vols. I–IV examines notions of value and emotional resonance to interrogate the influence of hue in its exploration of color.
Art
Simone Leigh’s Monuments to the Black Femme
Leigh’s survey split between two Los Angeles venues demonstrates the futility in prescribing a definitive role to the Black feminine in a postcolonial world.
Books
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Never-Ending Quest for Beauty
Natalie Dykstra meticulously combs through archival material to fashion a biography of the inimitable, complex arts patron, who ordered her private letters to be destroyed after her death.
Film
The Slipperiness of COVID-Era Cultural Memory
Director Lou Ye follows a film crew in Wuhan who decides to revive a project abandoned 10 years prior, only to be placed under lockdown during shooting.
Film
The Indie Roots of Confessional Film
In the late 1980s and '90s, a wave of independent directors turned cameras on themselves, utilizing documentary as a mode of confession and self-reflection.
Books
A Sympathetic if Incomplete Portrait of Alberto Giacometti
Though it glosses over his misogyny, Michael Peppiatt’s biography reflects Giacometti’s uncanny ability to capture the energy of ancient art in a modern format.
Art
Riva Lehrer’s Portraits Bring Out the Beauty in Difference
The artist has long been fighting for people with disabilities or marginalized identities, with sincerity, courage, and fierce love for the monsters in us all.
Art
The Artistic Allure of Olympic Athletes
Paris 1924: Sport, Art and the Body sets its focus on issues that emerge from athletes being displayed as heroic on the world’s stage.
Books
Charting a Better World Through Malcolm X’s New York
A new essay collection contextualizes the activist’s life through the physical spaces that nurtured him, like Yuri Kochiyama’s apartment-turned-community center.
Art
Women Artists Take Over Tate Britain
What’s clear in Now You See Us is that the artists were excluded from the canon because of sociopolitical factors, not artistic merit.