Art
Repainting the Readymade
Marcel Duchamp’s original iteration of “Fountain” was lost shortly after its making. The first “Fountain” survives only as a photograph taken by Alfred Steiglitz in 1917, which was followed by a series of replicas.
Reviews
Books
New York's Beloved, Independent, Union-Busting Bookstore
On the Books, written and drawn by Greg Farrell and released by Microcosm Publishing, is a firsthand comics account of contract negotiations at the Strand in 2012 — or, as the book's subtitle puts it, "A Graphic Tale of Working Woes at NYC's Strand Bookstore."
Books
Taxidermy Sculptors Strut Their Stuff
Robert Marbury's Taxidermy Art could easily be divided into a couple of books, both larger than this volume. Integrated, as they are here, these subjects make for a disjointed but nevertheless visually and intellectually stimulating read.
Art
Flipping the Hierarchy of Needs
What does the work of Will Cotton, Mary Mattingly, and Stephanie Imbeau have in common? Not much, I figured, when taking the G train to Long Island City, where Dorsky Gallery is hosting Homeland [In]Security: Vanishing Dreams.
Art
A Museum Where the Paintings Look Back
National Gallery, which premiered last month at the New York Film Festival, is the most recent of Frederick Wiseman’s 40-plus documentaries that feature single institutions.
Art
The Sad Story of Jumbo the Elephant
MEDFORD, Mass. — Poor Jumbo. In P.T. Barnum’s hands he became the most famous African elephant in the world — lure to throngs of circus visitors and unknowing shill for countless products. His outsized fame, undimmed by his premature demise, has much to tell us about the rise of a celebrity-driven e
Art
Telling the History of the First "Illegals" in the United States
Chinese American consciously simulates the American immigrant’s journey: hope, dehumanization, mixed blessings; individual narratives that together paint the greater arc of America.
Performance
Child's Play: 600 Highwaymen Perform Employee of the Year
Perhaps there are a few whose steely hearts do not melt at the sight of a child in a tutu performing her first solo or, as the curtain rises, a lone grade-schooler pretending to be a tree. But 600 Highwaymen (writer/directors Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone) figures no one can resist five pre
Art
The Uses of Pleasure: Michelle Grabner at James Cohan
What most struck me about the now notorious Michelle Grabner review in the October 24th edition of The New York Times was that it was, unusually, surrounded by reviews of other painters.
Art
Painter, Interrupted: Losing Egon Schiele
Despite its inclusion of more than 130 works on paper and canvas, the ravishing retrospective Egon Schiele: Portraits, occupying the third floor of New York’s Neue Galerie, leaves you hungry. Not for more art, because there’s plenty of that, but for something else, something to make whole an ineffab
Books
Spotting Style in a More Bike-Friendly New York
When I became a bike rider back in the late 1970s, the very notion of New York Bike Style — now the title of a book by Sam Polcer (Prestel, 2014) — seemed like a contradiction in terms.
Art
Paul McCarthy's Raunchy Chocolate Fairytale
PARIS — I admit that I was nearly fed up with Paul McCarthy’s pretentious zombie provocation — and its sudden removal.