Art
Greer Lankton's Dolls Don't Play
I've never seen a spoiler alert for an art show, but I learned two unexpected facts as I perused the Greer Lankton exhibition at Participant Inc.
Reviews
Books
Does It Suck? Another Look at 'Showgirls'
Long brushed off as a horrendous excuse for a film, Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas’s epic flop Showgirls may have more than meets the eye. Or, at least, its vulgar superficiality may be worth critical re-evaluation
Art
Making Michelangelo Contemporary
The near-mythic name of Michelangelo conjures many things: the divine, swirling figures of the Sistine Chapel ceiling; the almost-touching hands of human and divine; Charlton Heston’s grimacing mug; a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Art
Landscapes of Pain and Pigment
You would never call Mark Hogancamp and Bosco Sodi landscape artists, but their concurrent exhibitions at Pioneer Works underline an improbable parallel between these two artists whose works are in many ways worlds apart.
Art
Art Museum Oddity Betrays the Bowie-Curious
CHICAGO — This is not really a review of the exhibition David Bowie Is.
Art
Celebrating Supercute: Hello Kitty Gets a Retrospective
LOS ANGELES — The retrospective: it's standard fare in the museum world, a survey of an artist's work over some stretch of her career. In Los Angeles, however, I'm not sure if there's such a thing as "standard fare."
Art
The Fragments and Facsimiles of Nina Beier
LONDON — When you enter the first room of Nina Beier’s solo exhibition at David Roberts Art Foundation (DRAF), you encounter "Scheme" (2014), an enigmatic stack of green crates with vegetables scattered on the floor.
Art
Sea Monsters and Liquid Geography
WALTHAM, Massachusetts — There are two large buoys hanging in the front windows of the landlocked Rose Art Museum, sitting like beacons behind the glass façade. Drawn in by the swollen structures, I climbed the stairs, past Chris Burden’s "Light of Reason," and into Mark Bradford's imaginary waters.
Books
Relentless Complexities: Trevor Winkfield's Art Writing
While visiting Philadelphia a number of years ago, the poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum asked me “Is Trevor Winkfield a real person?”
Music
Taylor Swift, Picture-Perfect
Taylor Swift has become a megaplatinum superstar largely through the construction of an artificial but rather appealing character. To call her the girl next door would downplay the dizzy self-involvement and feisty autonomy that made her a star in the first place.
Art
Man of Steel: The Welded Transfigurations of Melvin Edwards
Melvin Edwards' welded relief sculptures conjure up human anguish and human advancement often within the same work. His art delivers the mythmaking spirit of abstract sculpture into the domain of identifiable histories. He has built a long, wide-ranging career around that apparent incongruity.
Art
Ursula von Rydingsvard and the Drill Bit’s Caress
In a video produced by Art 21, Ursula von Rydingsvard recalls her childhood in refugee camps after World War II, living in barracks made of “raw wooden floors, raw wooden walls, and raw wooden ceilings.” Her current show at Galerie Lelong, Permeated Shield, is the first solo of her long career with