PARIS — In a search for art that reacts to the inequalities of globalization, must art lose touch with the sort of grace that exceeds the hand, a grace that couldn’t be anything but artificial and technological?
Robert Rauschenberg
Posted inArt
US Museums Acquire Nine Works by Robert Rauschenberg
Nine major works by Pop Art legend Robert Rauschenberg entered the collections of six major museums in the United States this month.
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It’s a Man’s World: Inside a Postwar Art Time Capsule
There may be some great-looking specimens of postwar art in Re-View: Onnasch Collection — an exhibition that turns Hauser & Wirth’s cavernous Chelsea outpost into a mini-museum offering the kind of intimate experiences that have been all but lost in New York’s uptown behemoths — but the show also arrives with some huge caveats.
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Two Photographers Emerge from the Shadows with Over 400 Artist Portraits
Few people may know the names of Shunk-Kender, but the pair of photographers behind that hyphenated moniker have captured many of the most famous images of post-war modern and contemporary art in Paris and New York and together they documented many ephemeral events that would’ve been lost to history if it were not for their work.
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Next Stop, Reality: A Sixties Radicalism Revisited
Radio Waves: New York “Nouveau Réalisme” and Rauschenberg at Sperone Westwater is a long-overdue exhibition revolving around the enigmatic Swiss artist Jean Tinguely.
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Robert Rauschenberg and Photography
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of photography throughout Rauschenberg’s career.
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Art in the Outer Limits: A Look at NASA’s Space Art Program
A sampling of the over 2,000 artworks that are part of the NASA Art Program were recently uploaded to NASA’s Flickrstream, and give an insight into the breadth of work that has come out of this rare merger between a government agency and art.
Posted inBooks
Reading the “Nothings that Are”: Craig Dworkin’s “No Medium”
“In No Medium Craig Dworkin looks at works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent … point[ing] to a new understanding of media.” So goes the back cover copy of the author’s new book, which was released in March by MIT Press. This paratextual statement, while certainly catchy, is a bit misleading regarding Dworkin’s argument as well as the actual nature of his objects of study (some of the treated works, such as John Cage’s 4 ’33” and Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings, are well known while many others are not); and it risks obscuring, to some extent, the host of wonderful subtleties, the wily interpretive moves and maneuvers that can be found within the book itself.
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Booze, Food, Balloon Dogs, and Performance at Frieze New York
Frieze New York is an undeniably nice fair. Even if you generally hate art fairs, or sympathize with the union workers, or a devotee of the Armory Show, you have to admit that Frieze does it right: the spacious, light-filled tent, the excellent food options, the weekend-getaway feel as you board the ferry to Randall’s Island.
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Everything Old Is New Again: Native Americans and the New York School
“The Old Becomes The New,” at Wilmer Jennings Gallery, tackles a particularly overlooked aspect of Native American artistic development – the fertile exchange that took place between the New York abstract expressionists and Native artists.
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Duchamp’s Endgame, in Chess and Art
BRIGHTON, UK — Swapping out pieces in a game of chess is only a smart move provided you hold the most on the board, or at least the strongest position. But a new show at the Barbican in London suggests chess could be a “metaphor of exchange” between the artists it lines up. According to the theory, Duchamp swaps ideas with acolytes: John Cage, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg. And yet the Frenchman, superb chess player that he was, came out conceptually on top by the time of his death in 1968.
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Less Is More at the Armory Show Modern
Let’s face it: navigating Armory Week and all its various satellites is a bitch. With so much art to see and endless booths to maneuver, it’s all very daunting. But we love it. Well, at least I love it.
Spontaneity and taxis are the two things I rely on the most. Spontaneity, because one should always open to possibilities, no matter what the schedule might dictate. Taxis, because who in their right mind wants to walk the five long-ass blocks to Pier 92, where the Armory Show’s Modern section was housed, from the subway (with a headwind off the Hudson River that somehow affects travel in both directions)?
