Art
Wooden Sculptures that Tempt Touch
HONG KONG — In the book accompanying her late husband’s retrospective, Tong Chiu Wai-yee says: “When people talk about Tong King-sum, they focus on his flawed body alongside his artistic achievement."
Reviews
Books
Finding a Haven for Taboo Fantasies in Erotica
Reviewing erotica is a difficult task, and maybe a futile one.
Performance
Stravinsky's Satiric Opera with Muddy Morals
Clouds, shadows, and other mirrors of the soul have long led protagonists into temptation in order to deliver audiences from evil.
Art
Yinka Shonibare MBE Manifests the Ghost of Manhattan's Oldest House
In Colonial Arrangements, a site-specific exhibition in partnership with the Historic House Trust, UK-born Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE conjures Eliza Jumel's specter with headless mannequins clothed in Dutch wax fabric.
Art
How a Queer Asian Artist Infiltrated the New York Scene Through Dress-Up and Self-Portraiture
As an Asian boy growing up middle-class in America, I was taught assimilation was key.
Art
US History, Queer Life, and Witchcraft: How AA Bronson, Somehow, Comes Together
LONDON — Hexenmeister, AA Bronson’s first solo show at Maureen Paley, calls to mind his recent House of Shame at the Gwangju Biennial, featuring Bronson’s particular combination of queer themes and shamanic practices.
Art
The Myths of Kurt Cobain Resurface in a New Documentary
The death of Kurt Cobain in early April of 1994 shocked almost nobody who knew him and almost everybody who didn’t.
Art
A Light Heart Through Heavy Times: Ed Sanders’ Glyphic Works
In early 1966, following a New Years’ gig by his folk-rock band, the Fugs, the poet Ed Sanders woke up to find that his Peace Eye Bookstore, then on East 10th Street, had been raided by the NYPD.
Art
The Triumph of Revisionism: The Whitney’s American Century
With America Is Hard to See, the exhibition inaugurating its luminous new Renzo Piano building, the Whitney has reclaimed its role among the city’s museums as the engine of the new.
Art
Judging Galleries by Their Pens: Chelsea Edition
Join me as I wander the streets of Chelsea and bring you the first in an as-yet-only-theoretical series of gallery pen reviews.
Art
Seeing Fractured Explosions in Fragmented Mirrors
SAN FRANCISCO — The past year has seen many powerful, violent images.
Books
Grayson Perry's Art World 101
Grayson Perry's Playing to the Gallery is presented as a beginner’s guide to the machinations of the art world, though it also holds a mirror up to the so-called “certainty freaks” — members of the art world who have an axe to grind or are stubbornly set in their beliefs.