Art
Was John Singer Sargent an Insufferable Snob?
Sargent’s sitters were all rich enough to employ him — the nouveau riches or (less often) the aristocratic, though it hardly matters.
Reviews
Books
A True and Exact History of Queer Indigenous Sovereignty
Miss Chief, artist Kent Monkman’s alter ego, narrates the story of Turtle Island not as a settler allegory but from the perspective of the land itself.
Art
Painting the History of India’s Anti-Caste Movement
Upending narrow framings, Vikrant Bhise renders the grassroots and captures the ongoing struggle to end casteism.
Art
Paintings That Capture the Full Force of Nature
There’s nothing still in Melinda Braathen’s still lifes, which are lush and alive, growing, pulsing, vibrating.
Art
50 Paintings Invites Viewers to Think Like an Artist
With its hands-off approach, the Milwaukee Art Museum's survey is a reprieve — an intimate place to wallow in mark-making.
Art
Half a Century Before Midjourney, There Was AARON
Harold Cohen’s plotters and software programs both clarify and complicate the historical narrative around AI and art.
Art
Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi’s Storied Art Collaboration
Las Vegas Ikebana chronicles both the character and persistence of decades of work produced by the two artists.
Art
Frank Auerbach Wrests Light From the Darkness
We can almost breathe the atmosphere of the sad London of the 1950s in Auerbach’s suite of charcoal portraits from the 1950s and 1960s.
Art
Georges Adéagbo Channels a Humanized Abraham Lincoln
Adéagbo teases out the exploitative and exhibitionist currents in aesthetic traditions, yet his world-making reclaims the emancipatory values of creative expression.
Art
Sarah Grilo’s Prescient Abstraction
By laying numbers, words, and phrases onto otherwise abstract imagery, the late Argentinian artist prophesized the dread-inducing news alerts of our time.
Art
Miranda Forrester’s Soft Portraits of Black Queer Women
Faceless women and interiors on transparent plastic highlight the nuanced identity politics of Black female and queer spaces.
Books
Envisioning Kashmir’s Future Through Paint and Verse
Irish poet Gabriel Rosenstock responded to Kashmiri artist Masood Hussain’s watercolors of his homeland, crafting an intimate portrait of the occupied region’s past and future.