Art
Master of Many
There used to be a time when curators could slap a label on a group of artists, claiming the work to be central, progressive, and an important part of their narrative of art history.
Weekend
Performance
The Wild Wild Fests: New York's Gathering of the Theatrical Tribes
The roster of simultaneous festivals that regularly occur in January in New York can be overwhelming.
Poetry
House of Cards: The Poetry of Lev Rubinstein
Russian poet Lev Rubinstein (b. 1947) is generally described as a conceptualist artist, and is associated, as a founding member, with the group called the Moscow Conceptualists.
Interview
Beer with a Painter: Terry Winters
“Let’s just delete all of that and start over again,” Terry Winters said to me, laughing, mid-way through our conversation.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, learning from Skymall's surrealism, Berlin's memorials, Orientalism in Montreal, BIG in DC, Renzo Piano in Paris, Japanese memes mocking ISIS, the influence of Joseph Beuys on Abramović, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Predict
If you want to work out the kinks in predicting the weather, the Old Farmer's Almanac offers a number of folk remedies you can try.
Art
Jeff Koons: Shiny on the Outside, Hollow on the Inside, Part 2
I wrote most of the first two sections of this essay (Part 1) in March 2011, but never submitted it anywhere. I think I lost interest in the subject. I thought I wrote it well before the negative critiques would surely come rolling in, even before Koons’s retrospective at the Whitney in 2014.
Art
An Extraordinary Studio Artist in a Post-Studio Era
As I have written previously, there is a lot of very good painting going on these days. It is just that you are not likely to see much of it at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at least in recent memory.
Music
Azealia Banks Jumps Up and Down
A sizzling keyboard riff slides out of nowhere and bounces around for a few seconds before a metallic snare drum comes in and a woman starts rapping.
Art
Enigmas of the Visible: Paintings by Anne Tabachnick
We usually describe seeing an object by using the past tense: "I saw." The emphasis on its foreclosed quality can make us forget how open-ended seeing is. The dynamism of a seen object is every bit as charged as our bodies' initial physiological responses to it.
Art
Jeff Koons: Shiny on the Outside, Hollow on the Inside, Part 1
Shiny on the outside, hollow on the inside. That is how the work of the American artist, Jeff Koons, has been generally described and received, not only by those who are less than affectionate toward it but also by those who like it.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, artists and drones, archiving the web, Russian art manifestos, the lies of American Sniper, modern life, and more.