Art
I always consider it fortunate that at institutions like the Metropolitan Museum, exhibitions continue to argue eloquently that art has evolved along manifold trajectories before postmodern discourses recognized it as so. In that vein, one of the highlights of the fall museum season, Designing Natur
Books
We know that the equation between word and thing can no longer be taken for granted, and that words are made up of both syllables and sounds. Does this mean a poet — one who uses transparent language and writes in an autobiographical mode — is incapable of exploring the conditions of meaning? By tra
Art
I was lucky enough to see Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting at the San Jose Museum of Art (February 27–July 4, 2010) and write about it for The Brooklyn Rail (July–August 2010). As with that exhibition, many of the works now on view at the Aquavella Galleries’ posh, mirrored townhouse on Manhatta
Art
You’d never find Pablo Picasso or Jackson Pollock relegated to the corridors of the Museum of Modern Art. Rarely do artists deemed essential to MoMA’s historical narrative rub elbows with the throngs swarming the escalators and passageways in endless transit from galleries to café to restroom and ba
Art
Six days before all hell broke loose, I rode the subway uptown to attend the press preview of Edvard Munch: The Scream at the Museum of Modern Art. As the preview drew to a close and the already crowded room swelled with paying customers, I asked Ann Temkin, the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Cu
Art
I was at Catching the Light, Lois Dodd’s retrospective at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the August day I got the news that critic Robert Hughes had passed away at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, New York. For many, myself included, Hughes’s prose did for art criticism what Shakespeare did fo
Art
Wrapping the tip of Roosevelt Island that points out to the sea, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park is a realm of stillness and meditation unlike anything else in the city. Designed as a memorial to the 32nd president, it is now just as much a call to remember its architect: the late lover
Art
Expectation and experience seldom end up at the same destination, especially when you walk down a subway platform and see a sign that reads “To Breuckelen” and realize — no, no, the MTA hasn’t sold the L line back to the Dutch to save money; rather, you are seeing a sign hung by artist Daniel Bejar
Art
For anyone who has been following painting in New York since the beginning of the 21st century, it is not surprising that the mid-career survey devoted to Wade Guyton is currently the main attraction at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It is also not surprising that the show has been very well re
Music
This month, reviews of Twin Shadow, Bob Dylan,The Rough Guide to Highlife, Istanbul 70, The Sheepdogs, Orient Noir, Deadmau5, and Jens Lekman.
Art
One of the standouts of the new exhibition Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich at the Morgan Library and Museum – if not the standout – is Michelangelo’s “St. Peter (after Massaccio) with Arm Studies.” (And for an exhibition bristling with stunners by Matthias Grünewald, Andrea Mant
Art
It’s not very often that one can report that a triptych by an orangutan isn’t the best thing in a show, but it’s not very often that one has the opportunity to take stock of Rosemarie Trockel’s art. The triptych is a brushy abstraction by a simian named Tilda, and it is hanging on the second floor o