At first glance, the exterior of Wisdom Testicles, a collection of collaborative works on paper by three artistic schoolmates, looks to be a relatively unassuming artist book. Setting aside its confusing title for a moment, it has the well-crafted and unique appearance of a handmade book. Smallish in size and easy to page through, Coptic bound with an open spine, it has raw, unfinished covers made of gray speckled bookboard. The cover of the book, however, on which a anatomical looking drawing of male genitalia has been printed, is provocative enough to immediately dispel any preconceived notions about the book’s modest appearance. The non sequitur nature of the title and cover succeeds in catching your attention, raising a certain amount of curiosity about what lies between the covers.
Reviews
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Environment and Object and Their Role in Recent African Art
Despite being the exhibition catalogue of an exhibition that originated at The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Environment and Object: Recent African Art is seen by its’ editors as an independent document.
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Out of the Blue: Philip Glass, Robert Wilson and “Einstein on the Beach”
Of all the celebrations honoring Philip Glass on his 75th birthday, the exhibition Robert Wilson/Philip Glass: Einstein on the Beach at the Morgan Library & Museum is probably the most modest, but it is one of the most magical. It is also arguably the most in keeping with the stripped-down aesthetic that gave birth to Glass’ musical minimalism and Wilson’s experiments in durational theater.
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112 Greene Street: The Soho that Used to Be
“It is rather inspiring,” writes Peter Schjeldahl in the New York Times, “that in an hour of political crisis this art (despite its makers’ eschewal of revolutionary postures) has arisen to make possible a project like 112 Greene Street.” The year is 1970. The place is Soho, until recently known as the South Houston Industrial District. Here an unemployed artist can buy a six-story cast-iron ex-rag-picking warehouse, and huge chunks of sheet-zinc cornice can lie abandoned on the sidewalk at a demolition site until another artist bribes the garbage men to drive them to his studio.
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Flying Blind: de Kooning’s “Closed-Eye” Drawings
There are 24 charcoal drawings now on display at the Museum of Modern Art that Willem de Kooning did with his eyes closed. This was not an uncommon thing for de Kooning, who often liked to close his eyes, or avert his eyes, or use them to watch TV while he drew. This may sound like a gimmick, or some kind of dada or surrealist gambit, or an act of desperation from an artist running on fumes. But it was none of these.
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Visiting the Reykjavik Art Museum’s Hafnarhus
REYKJAVIK, Iceland — There are three main buildings that comprise the Reykjavik Art Museum but because of my limited time in the Icelandic capital, I chose to visit Hafnarhu, as it houses the most contemporary selection of all three. The building from the outside is rather bland, except for the awning, which shoots out over the main entrance. It is covered with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous transformed into a type of artist’s manifesto — what better way to begin a museum visit? Inside however was a modern interior with cool steel walls and a great selection of contemporary art.
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A Loose History of Misbehaving
Curated by Scott Hug, B-Out at Andrew Edlin Gallery, weaves together over 100 artists into an imaginative installation that illustrates a partial and subjective history of what it means to create outside the norm.
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The Sounds of Murder
The congregating of crows to mourn is part of the inspiration beind the flock of black box speakers in “The Murder of Crows,” a disorienting sound installation by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller in the Park Avenue Armory.
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The Modernity of Giovanni Battista Moroni (1524–1578)
There are four portraits by Giovanni Battista Moroni (1524–1578) currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum, and each of them is a gem. Two are included in Bellini, Titian, and Lotto: Northern Italian Paintings from the Accademia Carrarra, Bergamo (May 15–September 3), an exhibition of fifteen modestly sized paintings, including “Orpheus and Eurydice” (ca. 1510–1512), the smallest Titian (1485/90–1570) I have ever seen, and, as they say, a youthful effort.
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Stopping Time: The Quay Brothers at MoMA
Stephen and Timothy Quay became filmmakers entirely by accident. As Stephen recounted during the remarks that concluded the press preview for the artists’ retrospective, which opens tomorrow at the Museum of Modern Art, they were on their way to Amsterdam to take jobs as illustrators when fate intervened in the form of a schoolmate, Keith Griffiths.
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Rediscovering a Moment in San Francisco’s Past
Earlier this spring, the de Young Museum exhibited recently uncovered work by photographer Arthur Tress. In 2009, while sorting through the belongings of his recently deceased sister, Tress found a number of prints and more than nine hundred negatives he had taken on a 1964 trip to San Francisco. In those pictures, the young Tress captured the collision of two major events taking place in San Francisco — the Republican National Convention and the influx of a large number of Beatles fans prior to the launch of the band’s first North American tour.
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Why Weren’t You in Wassaic This Weekend?
It was in 2008 that the first Wassaic Project Summer Festival was staged in the old mill by the railroad tracks in the hamlet of Wassaic, New York. Since that debut, each year has attracted more and more visitors for the three-day event, as well as increased engagement with the local community that has seen this once condemned but historic structure transform into a contemporary arts magnet.
