Books
The ABC of Art Criticism: Some Recent How To's
It has often been said that writing about art is like dancing about architecture. Nearly as often, it has also then been said: But I’m going to do it anyway.
Reviews
Art
A Redesign of Chess that Sets Us Up to Lose
In 1924, competitive chess players in Paris founded the World Chess Federation, the first international governing chess organization.
Art
An Abandoned Department Store Stocks Up on Art
TOLEDO, Ohio — Rocco DePietro and Gloria Pritschet characterize the massive group show they curated for Gallery Project, Wish List, as a contemporary statement of cultural desire.
Art
Mourning the Death of Art on the River Styx
PARIS — If you already know that the wizard of entertainment has been swimming in the heart of art, a small boat excursion in the dark sounds more like summertime diversion than enlightening art. And indeed it is.
Performance
A Puppet and a Performer Bring "The Waste Land" to Life
At this year's New York International Fringe Festival, artist Daniel Domig and actor Christopher Domig have collaborated on The Waste Land, an installation in which the latter quixotically plays with objects and rolls around in sawdust while reciting T.S. Eliot's poem of the same name.
Art
When the Whole World Spoke Pop
MINNEAPOLIS — We do not know what we do not know. That is precisely what the Walker Art Center’s exhibition International Pop makes clear — how much, heretofore, we did not know about the scope and practice of Pop art.
Art
Hollywood, Texas: The Movie Myths of Hubbard/Birchler
HOUSTON — The exhibition’s name – Sound Speed Marker – gets at the essence of Austin-based artist-duo Hubbard/Birchler’s work. As moving-image artists, Dubliner Teresa Hubbard and the Swiss Alexander Birchler make self-reflexive film: film about the elements of film.
Music
Kacey Musgraves, Ouroboros
“I ain’t pageant material,” declares country songbird Kacey Musgraves on the title track to her new album, but the song’s too pretty, too demure, too well-mannered.
Art
I Is an Other: The Mail Art of Ray Johnson
Ray Johnson disappeared near Sag Harbor just over twenty years ago. But if we refer to the artist by the art, he’s still among us.
Art
Going Meta: Art after the Death of Art
Terminology is slippery, and using it as the premise for an exhibition can be slipperier still. But the concept underlying Metamodern, a group show at Denny Gallery on the Lower East Side, actually holds the potential to enrich an already strong array of works with a few additional, if speculative,
Art
Jesus Looks Like a Lady: A Female Baroque Artist’s Mystical Vision
LISBON — Even as she was the subject of the exhibition The Sacred and the Profane in 1997 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, I had never heard of the Counter-Reformation Baroque (and Bodegón) painter Josefa de Óbidos (1630–1684), before a trip to Lisbon.
Art
A Not-Quite-Great Documentary About the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time
"I think I can paint anything," says Wolfgang Beltracchi, the infamous German art forger, in Arne Birkenstock's documentary Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery.