Art
Proposing Painting as a Form of Refusal
Blake Rayne’s first midcareer survey is full of linguistic disruptions and quiet repetitions, bringing to mind Bartleby the scrivener’s disarming resistance.
Reviews
Art
A Haunting Game of Survival Set During the 2014 Israel–Gaza Conflict
Liyla and the Shadows of War is a game set during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, in which you attempt to protect a young girl through the raging battle.
Film
From a Suicidal Sheriff to a Scrappy Sandpiper, a Look at the 2017 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
The five films nominated for this year's Academy Award for the best animated short film use a range of animation and storytelling styles to shuttle characters and viewers across time and space.
Art
A Portrait of a Predator
A video work about avian predators and their prey blends documentary and fictional narrative of the life of a bouncer in Mexico City.
Books
From Seminal Fluid to Sassy Scribbles: The "Non-Art" Works of Marcel Duchamp
Even after digesting this considerable amount of ostensibly transitory disclosure, Duchamp remains an unadulterated, irreverent enigma.
Art
The Transporting, Tactile Pleasures of Porcelain
An exhibition at the Frick features pieces from its collection of Royal Meissen porcelain curated by artist Arlene Shechet, as well as works she made while in residence at the historic manufactory.
Art
Celebrating Intersectionality in the Futuristic Netflix Series 'Sense8'
As anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and isolationist policies sweep a growing number of nations, Sense8 takes us into a microcosm of a world these policies react against.
Books
Reader’s Diary: The Potential Novel of a Conceivable Algeria
The 1950s through the mid-1970s were the great era of the unreadable novel. Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma was one of the first and most remarkable of these.
Music
Reestablished Forms: King, M.I.A., Young Thug, Sheer Mag
Erotic sagas are always political. This applies to the four albums reviewed below, several political despite themselves, each of which messes with established forms while representing desire.
Art
Jack Whitten’s Walls
Jack Whitten is the most relentless experimenter with materials in a generation of abstract artists who have yet to receive their due, perhaps because no one has come up with a catchy and marketable name for them, like the “Minimalists” or “The Pictures Generation.”
Art
Déjà Vu: Mark Williams’s Positive Echo
Mark Williams paints within the tradition of geometric abstraction and considers Agnes Martin, El Lissitsky, and Kazimir Malevich among his “art ancestors.”
Art
“Art” at the Science Museum: 'Da Vinci — The Genius' in Boston
In this age of fake news and climate change denial, we should be seeking to educate the public on scientific method rather than promulgating faulty science in the name of infotainment.