Books
Tracing Devendra Banhart's Visual and Musical Sensibility Through Drawing
While Devendra Banhart was making his folk-rock music, he was also producing a large body of visual art that for the first time is brought together in book form.
Reviews
Art
Queering Contemporary Portraiture with 19th-Century Photo Techniques
Robyn Renee Hasty is an artist who is drawn to the challenges presented by obsolete technologies.
Performance
Confronting Our Apathy Anew with Samuel Beckett
On paper, Happy Days looks pretty unappealing.
Art
A Poetic Response to Kim Gordon’s Art Using Only Sonic Youth Lyrics
Editor's note: Kim Gordon, one of the co-founders of the indie rock band Sonic Youth, currently has an art exhibition on view at 303 Gallery. The following is a response to the show composed entirely of lyrics from Sonic Youth’s influential 1988 album, Daydream Nation.
Art
Every Five Years, Ragnar Kjartansson Asks His Mother to Spit on Him
REYKJAVÍK, Iceland — “I was told to spit on my own beloved son over and over ... Everything went according to plan — I spat and spat,” so goes the essay for Ragnar Kjartansson’s exhibition Me and My Mother.
Art
The Little-Known Engineer Who Made the First Abstract Paintings in the US
MUSKEGON, Mich. — What’s especially significant about Manierre Dawson is that he made his breakthrough to non-objective imagery prior to any exposure to modernist art.
Art
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Offer Dueling Accounts of Detroit's Industrial Glory
DETROIT — The Detroit Institute of Arts’s major exhibition Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit closes on Sunday. This show was in the works for a decade, long before the city’s bankruptcy and the grand bargain, which shifted the ownership of the art from the city to the museum.
Art
The Postminimal Zen of Boxed-Up Noguchis
If you visit the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City this summer, someone at the front desk will let you know that the institution is currently undergoing renovation and they regret that all the art in the garden is temporarily off view.
Art
From Cum Shots to Orgasmic GIFs, a Playful Take on Virtual Sex
Faith Holland’s show TECHNOPHILIA at Transfer Gallery left me wanting more, kind of like I imagine a good dick pic would.
Books
Where Primordial Lava Flows into Ice
Iceland, more than most places on the planet, frequently reveals the cataclysmic activity below its crust through volcanoes, fissures, and geothermal pools.
Art
Commemorating the Civil War with Brooklyn's Buried Dead
For 13 years, volunteers at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery scoured its archives for internments related to the US Civil War, whether soldier or civilian.
Art
China’s Young Postmodern, Post-Mao Artists
LOS ANGELES — Jin Shan was 12 when the student-led Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 rocked China, eliciting a brutal and unprecedented military response.