Opinion
Weekend Words: Dry
In response to a prolonged dry spell, the state of California has instituted mandatory water restrictions, bringing to mind the line from Chinatown (1974): "Middle of a drought, the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A."
Weekend
Art
Brenda Goodman’s Recent Paintings
I want to believe that this is the beginning of the art world’s real and enduring appreciation of Brenda Goodman’s hard won achievement.
Art
Imagining the Ordinary: Heatherwick Studio at the Hammer Museum
With its new show, Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, portrays itself as a kind of exploratory museum.
Art
Recurring Waves of Arrival: Elaine de Kooning’s Portraits, from Loft Dwellers to JFK
I felt as if I were actually seeing that elusive moment in her perception when the person standing or sitting before her passed from patchwork anonymity into an emergent distinctiveness.
Art
Back to the Future with Steve DiBenedetto
Steve DiBenedetto’s current exhibition, Mile High Psychiatry, at Derek Eller marks a breakthrough for a painter who is best known for his encrusted surfaces jam-packed with helicopters, octopi and neural networks.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, sound art theory, Yemen's embattled museums, troubled arts philanthropy in Toronto, British Surrealist Leonora Carrington, Russian internet trolls, galactic Easter eggs, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Egg
It's Easter, have an egg.
Poetry
The Poet with a Razor in His Vest: Amiri Baraka's Selected Poems
When a publication of a large selection of poems by Amiri Baraka, who died this past year, was announced, I immediately determined to review it.
Art
Thomas Nozkowski’s Magical Mystery Tour
Simply titled Thomas Nozkowski, this is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at Pace Gallery since 2008, when he first joined the gallery, and this time he has pulled out all the stops.
Art
Breaking Camp: John Waters After Divine
Shown as part of Beverly Hills John, his third show at the Marianne Boesky gallery, John Waters’s video Kiddie Flamingos made us chuckle, which is rare for a Chelsea gallery work. But then, his gallery art has always been funny.
Art
Instant Illuminations: Elaine de Kooning’s Early Portraiture
With her passion for people, de Kooning was by inclination a portraitist. But she was equally drawn to experimental art forms as the Abstract Expressionist movement unfolded before her eyes, inside her very home.
Art
Clearing the Slate: MoMA’s Contemporary Reboot
A few months after having been roundly trounced for The Forever Now: Painting in an Atemporal World, its attempt to assess the current state of painting, the Museum of Modern Art opened a reinstallation of its contemporary collection on the same day as its Björk fiasco.