Art
The Unbearable Triteness of Being: Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus”
When it comes to movies, I am a devoted and unapologetic monster-buff. Rare is the film that I feel can’t be improved by the abrupt introduction of a mutant dog or sneering zombie.
Reviews
Art
Documenta 13’s Art Laboratory
There’s been much talk in the art world during the past decade about the rise of the curator as artist, a figure who in her or his most overweening moments seeks to render artist and artwork secondary to the vision — or, at worst, predetermined program — for a particular exhibition. MFAs in curatori
Art
Tacit Approval: Tacita Dean’s “Five Americans”
After last week’s post on Phyllida Barlow’s solo turn on the fourth floor of the New Museum, it seemed apropos to mention the exhibition one flight down, which is devoted to one of her better-known students from London’s Slade School, Tacita Dean: Five Americans.
Art
The Art-Fair-ification of the Art World
The town of Basel, located on a bendy segment of the River Rhein, is where France, Germany and Switzerland meet. Basel is not the place to go if you are on a budget; if you have to ask the price of a wiener and a pint, you probably can’t afford it. Each year in June the art world power elite comes t
Art
A Riddle Couched in the Language of Pop
LOS ANGELES — Things are not what they seem in Culver City’s Carmichael Gallery. At first glance, the inscrutable smiles in Beijing-based artist Yue Minjun’s self-portraits express mirth or merriment.
Art
Lumen Festival: Scenes from the Salt
By midnight, we all had salt in our shoes: men and women were rolling down the 10-foot-high salt pyramids, artists were walking back to the ferry after a day's worth of preparation and performance and John Bonafede had finished his piece "Color Cycle 2," after biking in place for six straight hours.
Performance
John Waters Does Vegas?
While skimming through my Facebook news feed last week, I noticed that Murray Hill had posted a picture of himself with Patti Lupone in her dressing room, following a performance of her show Far Away Places, which ran for a couple of nights at the new lounge/cabaret space 54 Below, near Times Square
Art
WTF Is Up With Marina Abramović: The Movie? A Review
Hyperallergic writers and siblings Brendan and Marisa Carroll recently went to see Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, a documentary about the performance artist’s Museum of Modern Art retrospective. The museum retrospective included photos, videos and re-creations of Abramović’s performances f
Art
Lumen Festival Offers Another World on Staten Island
As the sun was setting on Saturday, the hills of salt outside the run-down factory buildings at Lumen 2012 looked otherworldly. The one-night video and performance art festival was staged in the vacant spaces of the old Atlantic Salt Company on Staten Island, where 150,000 tons of salt that had gone
Books
With a Wild Wahoo!
There’s nothing like an ambitious anthology for redistricting your inner map of poetic possibility. They don’t come along every day, but we’ve had more than our usual share over the last few years. Such books operate on different scales, of course: There’s the kind of anthology that crystallizes a h
Art
A Wanderer Among The Rubble (Part 2)
Gabriel Solomon Brodie grew up in a tenement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. That he became an artist who achieved what he did in a relatively short period — his career spans around twenty-five years — is a testament to his ferocious persistence. Wanting desperately to get himself out of his impover
Music
Fagen's Critical Catalogue (June 2012)
This month, reviews of Plug, Silversun Pickups, Issa Juma & Super Wankiya Stars, Allo Darlin', Yuna, Amadou & Mariam, Odd Future and Beach House.