Art
Democracy, Art, and the Frustrations of Populism
Art exhibitions concerned with politics are very much of the moment.
Reviews
Art
Artist Duo TOILETPAPER’s Kitschy Department Store Wipeout
PARIS — Jaded neo-pop (one is tempted to say “poop” here) is on view in the Galeries Lafayette’s très kitsch exhibition TP–RAMA, the latest from art-commerce duo of Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, aka TOILETPAPER.
Books
Reader’s Diary: Robert Glück’s ‘Communal Nude’
Some of Robert Glück’s essays came my way in the 1980s via such publications as Poetics Journal.
Art
The Two Faces of Grace Jane
Margot Bergman paints boldly simplified portraits of women on top of found paintings, which she salvages from flea markets.
Art
Upbeat and Edgy
With the rise of artists desperate to align themselves with one compromised avant-garde tradition or another, it is useful to remember that Stuart Davis never fit in.
Books
Squaring the Circle
John Peck is the author of ten volumes of poetry, a psychoanalyst, translator of Euripides and C. G. Jung’s The Red Book, a poet under-appreciated by or unfamiliar to most, yet long and deeply admired by a cadre of serious poets and critics on both sides of the Atlantic.
Music
Eleven Stories by Brandy Clark
Country singer Brandy Clark’s new album, Big Day in a Small Town, out since June, is rocking loud and jangling pretty, but the temptation to treat her foremost as a lyricist remains.
Art
Clowns Never Get Caught
Political campaigns, like Jasper Johns’s painting, "Flag," are based on dreams.
Art
The Shelf Life of Political Art
Tucked into a side wall at Postmasters Gallery in Tribeca, as part of a handsome group show called Grayscale, there are five new drawings by William Powhida, one of which is titled “Is Donald Trump an Existential Threat? Or Just A Major Asshole…”
Art
Nowhere to Go in a Desert of Images
In Xaviera Simmon’s CODED exhibition, now on view at The Kitchen, there are a lot of intersections between the human, sexualized (and colored) body, and wide, visually monotonous land- and seascapes.
Art
Figures of Steel that Embody Our Fears
Antony Gormley has consistently plied a practice that's about articulations and permutations of the human body, often fabricating his forms in materials that can withstand the vicissitudes of the natural environmental.
Art
All in the Smooth, White, Vacant-Eyed Family of Contemporary Figurative Sculpture
PHILADELPHIA — Once upon a time, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, there lived a family of sculptures. They were all smooth, white, and vacant-eyed.