Art
Remedios Varo Thrives at the Edges of Perception
Varo’s drawings crack the cold flawlessness of her paintings, and it’s exciting to see the looser, simpler skeletons underneath the surface.
Reviews
Art
A Japanese Painter’s Cosmic Love Letters to Hawaiʻi
After moving to Honolulu in his early 70s, the Gen'ichirō Inokuma drew inspiration from the rainbows, night sky, and other natural phenomena of his new home.
Art
Why Are Hiroshige’s Woodblock Prints Still So Moving?
The artist subverts the status system of 19th-century Japan, foreshadowing the impact of modernization and industrialization.
Film
Man Ray’s Beguiling and Bemusing Filmscapes
Man Ray’s Return to Reason film series anticipated the extent to which the motion picture would inform how we curate and call up memory.
Art
The Monstrous Femininity of Maureen St. Vincent
The artist’s aquatic pastels represent women who cannot be domesticated or controlled.
Books
How the Black Meme Turns a Trope Into a Trap
Legacy Russell’s Black Meme argues that owning, replicating, and remediating Black material is a theft rooted in historical frameworks of subordination.
Art
In Weaving Abstraction, Textiles Travel Through Space and Time
The Met show pays tribute to the designs and technical innovations of long-ago weavers and the 20th-century artists who took inspiration from them.
Art
The Musical Science of Melvin Way’s Enigmatic Art
Way’s drawings are not messages to be decoded but instead are renderings of our yearning to comprehend.
Art
The Critique-Profiteering Work of MSCHF
Combining the provocative spirit of internet trolling, clickbait scamming, and MTV’s Punk’d, the collective satirizes consumerism while making bank.
Film
A Japanese Reality Show’s Dark Legacy
Livestreaming, confessional monologues, and subjects’ willingness to let mass audiences surveil them all started here.
Art
The Alienated Aesthetics of USC’s Student Exhibition
Across multiple media, USC art students’ works paired meditations on discomfort, isolation, and technology with an impressive aesthetic rigor.
Art
Pratt MFA Photographers Turn Landscapes into Critiques of Power
The students put their own spins on landscape photography to coax out questions of race, power, sexuality, and sustainability.