Art
Weekend Words: Chess
"Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another."
Weekend
Music
Jens Lekman Cheers Up
All sad singer-songwriters are alike, but Jens Lekman is an exception.
Art
Pattern Recognition: Merion Estes Brings New Life to an Old World
Merion Estes has developed works on paper and fabric that incorporate beautifully abstract images along with references principally to Japanese and Chinese art, but the art of other countries is evident as well.
Performance
Revising on the Fly: Adjua Greaves in Performance
In my many years of attending poetry readings, I’ve never encountered a performance technique quite like Greaves’ revisions.
Books
Alan Felsenthal Emerges from His Song Cave and Sings to Us
In all of his poems, you feel Felsenthal finding his way from word to word and from line to line: he is not trying to tell a story or replay an anecdote so much as go where the words and phrases, sounds and meanings, lead him.
Art
Peter Acheson’s Argument with Painting
Instead of thinking of Acheson’s works as paintings, I have come to think of them as battered talismans, unfinished letters, and broken odes to his heroes, many of whom are artists.
Art
All Ideas Are Not Equal
What does it mean to depict anything? Is a point of view implied by straightforward depiction? Does it amount to (oh, shit) an endorsement?
Art
The Sweet Life: Carlo Dolci at the Davis Museum, Wellesley
Dolci (1616-1686), like Michelangelo and Botticelli 150 years before him, worked in Florence in the employ of the Medici family.
Art
Gina Ruggeri’s “Maneuver X”
Beginning around 2012, Ruggeri’s work underwent a shift, then an overhaul, then something like a transformation.
Art
In Texas, Valton Tyler’s Unusual Art Conjures Up an Extraordinary World
Tyler not only believes that his art-making prowess is a gift from God, and that he is merely the vehicle through which such a divine gift must be dutifully expressed, but he also regards his drawn or painted “shapes” as somehow alive.
Art
Painting on Message at the 2017 Whitney Biennial
This year, the Whitney Biennial includes plenty of painting. And — for the most part — the painting is on message. It’s eccentric figuration with political content.
Art
Required Reading
This week, don't ask Quora for art advice, Banksy's gentrification project, an architect claims plagiarism, fall of Standing Rock, Africa's fascist history, and more.