Art
For the Love of Paint: Leon Kossoff Digs Deep
Leon Kossoff’s paintings can be counted among the vanishing breed of artworks whose comprehension is entirely dependent upon being in its physical presence.
Reviews
Art
The Many Faces of Eleanor Antin
Let me introduce you to a few of the many selves of Eleanor Antin, as they are represented in the show Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s “Selves,” currently on view at the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University.
Art
Peter Doig's Restless City
I have always thought it unfair that Peter Doig is chiefly known for the headlines associated with the sale of his “White Canoe” painting by Charles Saatchi at auction in 2007 for £5.7 million ($9.31M). This made him Europe’s most expensive living painter and the acknowledgement was accompanied by a
Art
The Ins and Outs of Contemporary Mexican Art, in Texas
FORT WORTH, Texas — It often seems like the world is made up of pairs: Christo and Jean Claude, Hall and Oates, peanut butter and jelly. Yet some things that seem like they'd fit well together have not cohabitated as one would assume. Take contemporary Mexican art and the state of Texas.
Performance
The Politics of Parody: Free Cooper Union at e-flux
For a few hours last Sunday, e-flux’s Chinatown offices were bathed in red light as Free Cooper Union held an interpretive reading of the 41-page trustee meeting transcript first leaked to the Village Voice over the summer.
Books
From Lucky Magazine to Lyrical Sonnets
CHICAGO — Simone de Beauvoir once said, "Buying is a profound pleasure." To shop, to consume, to purchase a new look even if it's temporary — an air of satisfaction accompanies that moment of credit card swiping, or handing over that stack of Ben Franklins.
Art
The Days of Future Past: Afrofuturism and Black Memory
When you walk into the main gallery of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s current exhibition The Shadows Took Shape, which explores contemporary art through the lens of Afrofuturist aesthetics, one of the first pieces to catch the eye is a glittering procession of black astronauts fanned across a faded l
Art
Memories of China: Yang Fudong's Nostalgic Disillusionment
BERKELEY, Calif. — Yang Fudong is known to chronicle contemporary China’s affluent and disaffected urban youth in atmospheric works that evoke Shanghai cinema of the 1930s golden age.
Performance
Surrealism's Fistfights and Adversarial Culture
An evening Dada revue organized by Tristan Tzara, July 6, 1923's Soirée du Coeur à Barbe (Night of the Bearded Heart) was the site of an infamous altercation between Tzara's associates and Surrealist don André Breton at the Théâtre Michel in Paris.
Performance
A Visual Concert of Gestures
Audience members for Tori Wrånes’s "Yes Nix" performance had to sidestep the artist, who was lying on the floor at the entrance to SIR Stage 37, as they walked in. Her feet were tied in rope, which was strung up to a running track in the ceiling. It was the most confrontational part of the 30-some-m
Art
The Radical Boundaries of African-American Performance
“Be African-American. Be very African American.” Thus reads a typed instruction on an otherwise blank piece of paper sent by veteran performance artist William Pope.L to Clifford Owens as part of Anthology, the latter’s crowd-sourced performance project staged last year at MoMA PS1.
Performance
A Play Without Actors, Only Light and Sound
The idea of a play with no people on stage isn't new. That is, after all, what the phantasmagoria stage shows of the 18th and 19th centuries were all about, where projections of light with sound conjured a theatrical spectacle of phantoms. In Dutch artist Gabriel Lester’s Super Sargasso Sea (phantom