Marco Breuer is best known for the photographs that he makes without using a camera. (He does other sorts of photography, but this body of work is largely what we know about his endeavors). Rather than pointing at a moment that is gone, and wresting fixity from flux, as photographs are said to do, Breuer acknowledges the triumph of instability, with its attendant manifestations of destruction and demise.
Reviews
Posted inPerformance
Dancing with Jack
Jack Ferver and Marc Swanson met in 2008. Both grew up in rural America, both are queer, both have created imaginary worlds. Two Alike, which premiered at The Kitchen last weekend, is their first collaboration, in which Swanson provides the setting for Ferver’s dreams and nightmares.
Posted inArt
Cosmic Comic: Frank Stella’s Fine Disregard
The first thing I noticed about Frank Stella’s classic “pinstripe” paintings from the late 1950s-early 1960s — gathered from hither and yon for the splendid exhibition, Frank Stella: Black, Aluminum and Copper Paintings — is how at home they looked in L&M Arts’ stately Upper East Side townhouse. The second thing I noticed is how funny they are.
Posted inArt
New York’s First Elevator-sized Museum
Tucked away on Cortlandt Alley, a small side street that is itself tucked away between Tribeca and Chinatown, there’s a small, glowing, storefront space. It gleams pristinely like a cross between a brand-new grocery store and an art gallery, but the objects on display aren’t for sale. In fact, this is Manhattan’s latest self-ascribed museum — titled, simply, the Museum.
Posted inArt
A Very Gendered India
There are just a few days left to be immersed in the world of bioethics and cow-headed goddesses created by French artist Prune Nourry at the Invisible Dog Art Center, and the experience is something not to be missed.
Posted inArt
The Painting That Launched a Thousand Lawsuits
Andrew Shea’s blistering new documentary, Portrait of Wally, untangles the complicated historical, legal and moral threads surrounding Egon Schiele’s painting “Portrait of Wally” (1912), which pitted the art world against heirs of the painting’s pre-World War II owners and the US government.
Posted inPerformance
Ancient Greece Meets Contemporary New York
Readings are a staple of every literary calendar. Author Paul Rome has taken this bit of weeknight ritual and rebuilt it as equal parts performance and literature. To do so, he’s performed a simple trick: Rome writes to read.
Posted inArt
Minotaurs and Mistresses: Picasso at the British Museum
CHICAGO — It’s on days like this that I wish I still lived in London. If you do, or you’re visiting between May and September, make sure the British Museum is on your to-do list: they are mounting a rare show devoted entirely to Picasso’s “Vollard” suite, a set of 100 etchings that Picasso made in the 1930s.
Posted inArt
Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll at a San Francisco Art Fair
SAN FRANCISCO — A flurry of art fairs took place in San Francisco this past weekend, including ArtPadSF, which is the smaller yet debonair competitor to the much larger artMRKT San Francisco and SF Fine Art Fair.
Posted inArt
Gay Life Portrayed in Traditional Chinese Paper-cuts
LOS ANGELES — Being different is never easy, more so when you live in an infamously restrictive and conservative Communist Chinese society. Born in a farming village of the Shaanxi province, Xiyadie (a nom de plume meaning “Butterfuly in Siberia”) turns traditional paper-cut art into colorful, risqué pieces dealing with gay love and life.
Posted inBooks
Picture This: Sunandini Banerjee and the Book Illustrator’s Art
How do adjacent drawings or photos affect our reading experience as readers? What happens in the mind as we process both words and images? How do both tell a story together?
Posted inArt
A Truly Subversive Artist Is Not Necessarily Someone Who Is Theatrical or Gimmicky
If there is one constant about Thomas Nozkowski that I would single out, it is his lifelong insistence on subverting conventions. In 1974 he began painting on canvas board measuring 16 by 20 inches. (Let’s be clear here — Bill Jensen never painted on this small a surface because it had no historical precedence). He used an inexpensive, mass-produced product, the same kind that comes in “paint by number” kits and carries associations with “Sunday painters.” No wonder his defiance went largely unnoticed, particularly when the ’80s rolled around.
