Art
Nina Chanel Abney Paints on the Edge of Violence
Abney locates much of her work on the recognition that abuse and violence are an integral part of the everyday consciousness of people of color.
Weekend
Art
Laura Owens and the Death of the Auteur
Owens’s mid-career works feel completely sterile, mainstream, and middlebrow — with just enough insider info to flatter the viewer who knows something about Roland Barthes.
Art
Nothing Is As It Was
I live in a state in the heart of the heart of the country.
Books
The Making of a Modernist in the First-Ever Biography of Alexander Calder
Jed Perl makes the case that Calder was both an avant-gardist and a populist.
Art
The Violent Forms of Alexander Calder And Cady Noland
The dialogue among four works — two by each artist — suggests a dissonant string quartet as each piece asserts its distinctive timbre and range.
Art
Lisa Sigal’s Cardboard Utopia
In Sigal’s work, seemingly solid things fall apart, dissolve or otherwise evanesce, and fugitive forms gain substance.
Art
Judith Bernstein's Horror Show
There may be no artist in America better equipped to express the perversity of the Trump administration than Bernstein.
Art
Required Reading
This week, Pantone announces the color of 2018, origins of art merch, creating the modern museum blockbuster, how board games promoted Christianity and capitalism, and more.
Books
On Impious Poetry and Poetic Faith
Navid Kermani puts his finger on what’s divisive in poetry and culture.
Art
Stage Struck: Marc Chagall's Theatrical Designs
Chagall's dynamic costumes and experimental sets inspire a reconsideration of his entire body of work.
Art
Four Bay Area Iconoclasts and Eccentrics
For New Yorkers, the artists Jean Conner, Wally Hedrick, Deborah Remington, Franklin Williams range from little-known and neglected to unknown altogether.
Art
Totems for a Religion of One
Michelle Segre’s rejection of commodity fetishism and a society that worships shiny surfaces is to be admired because she does it with such verve.