Books
One mind-stumping sensation a reader is likely to glean from Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2013) is that the poems wrote themselves, and that he just happened to be in the room when they showed up. There is even a substantial section in Collected Poems that Padgett
Art
In the summer of 1969, Peter Young left New York – and his studio on the Bowery – and set off for the American West, where he drifted around for nearly two years before settling down in Bisbee, Arizona, where he still resides.
Performance
Marianne Vitale’s “The Missing Book of Spurs,” her commission for Performa 13, features half-naked women in corsets, a man in assless chaps, and “natives” in outfits inspired by traditional Native American clothing; it features blocks of wood, a wooden sculpture that looks like a torpedo, and a larg
Music
In part 1 of this month, reviews of Iceage, Parquet Courts, Sleigh Bells, and Mikal Cronin.
Art
SUMMIT, NJ — Extended technique is a term normally applied to musical performance, but Migratory Marks, a show of seven wall works by seven artists, offers a thoughtful accounting of where extended techniques have pushed the boundary of what can be called a drawing, if there is in fact such a bounda
Art
CHICAGO — Paul D'Amato’s large-scale photographs in his exhibition We Shall at the DePaul Art Museum offer a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people and urban landscapes on Chicago's West Side.
Art
PORTLAND, Oregon —Portland’s literary prowess is well known. Home to the truly amazing Powell’s bookstore, a number of high caliber small presses, and host to many readings, the city is a great place for people who love words. I traveled there early this month to check out another kink in this pheno
Art
We know how a handful of painters — Pollock, de Kooning, and company — wrested modernism from the Old World to create a new kind of art, one unmediated, enveloping, and completely frank in its making. Less well-known is the story of how another group of painters, a half-generation later, pursued wit
Art
Stereoscopic, or 3D, vision is a technique usually associated these days with blockbuster movies. But, using a simple stereo camera, Carlton Bright rollerbladed around Williamsburg from 2003 to 2013 documenting a series of “modules” or “vignettes” about the neighborhood he loves and calls home.
Art
Scott Reeder is something of an enigma. His newest exhibition at Lisa Cooley Gallery, People Call Me Scott, is too. The work on view appears disjointed at first glance, which is relatively typical of the artist, who's currently putting the finishing touches on his first feature-length film, Moon Dus
Art
LONDON — If an artist rejects a label, must we respect that? In her short lifetime, Ana Mendieta took pains to point out that she was not a land artist, not a performance artist, not a body artist, not even a feminist as that term might be understood in the United States.
Art
CHICAGO — If Jean Genet shit out the text from his book The Thief's Journal, which he wrote on toilet paper while in prison, and cheerleaders barfed up blood and guts in high school, they might combined look like the conceptual results of Oakland-based Jason Benson's PH://Dungeon_Mix_[vol.1]://The_H