Art
Built-In Fracture: Donald Baechler in the 1980s
In the thoroughly absorbing exhibition Donald Baechler: Early Work 1980 to 1984 at Cheim & Read, there are two works, both from 1982, in which the artist appears to be unlearning how to draw.
Reviews
Art
The Idealism of Early Soviet Russia in Pictures
The Jewish Museum’s The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film examines the beginnings of Soviet Russia, positing that the period from 1921 to 1932 was one of avant-garde artistic experimentation, a time when photographers and filmmakers (many of them Jewish) imagined their c
Art
A Digital Museum That Can Be Viewed IRL
Like a digital snake eating its tail, digital art now has a (digital) museum it can call home.
Art
Circuses, Rallies, and Soldiers: Photographs of Early-20th-Century American Clans
In over 100 vintage photographs, Hunt’s Three Ring Circus: American Groups Before 1950 explores how individuals in the early 20th century assembled into groups, linked together by experiences as official as military service or loose as a shared appreciation for the accordion.
Art
Amid Political Turbulence in Istanbul, Artists Seek Grace
ISTANBUL — The group exhibition sets out to investigate whether it is possible to construct a new world from within this one, beyond the constraints of political history.
Film
The Living Metal Scraps and Dancing Dolls of the Quay Brothers
When you watch a film by Stephen and Timothy Quay, those twin princes of darkness, you enter a shadow world.
Art
A Washington, DC, Nonprofit Reflects on 40 Years of Championing Local Artists
WASHINGTON, DC — ’Tis the season to celebrate, and the Washington Project for the Arts has much to toast.
Art
Portraits that Attempt to Untangle Power
Painter Margaret Bowland is wrestling with the difficult, unwieldy affairs of human social interaction: economic power, police power, physical power, that ability to influence that is inescapable.
Music
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Bach but Were Afraid to Ask Marina Abramović
We are too distracted, too stressed out to listen to music properly. That’s the idea behind Goldberg, the music concert/installation/participatory performance art piece currently at the Park Avenue Armory.
Art
The Enveloping Darkness of John Singer Sargent’s Prints and Drawings
Rare examples of John Singer Sargent's printmaking are on temporary view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, demonstrating his interest in the expressive shapes of the human body and lithography's potential to show these figures in darkness and light.
Art
A Tenderhearted and Satirical Journey into Online Fetish Culture
In Both Sides of the Mirror, a show of video pieces and photographs at C33 Gallery, Marlo Koch presents the results of exposing herself to the world of mainly-male desire in ways that are amused, satirical, and ultimately tenderhearted.
Art
Seeing the World Through the Eyes of a Mantis Shrimp
CHICAGO — Quickly darting up a cement cast of artist Jack Schneider’s left arm, Cthulhu, a brightly colored mantis shrimp, snatches a clam before retreating below a rock in a 75-gallon, acrylic tank.