Music
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (August 2014, Part 1)
It has come to my attention that the radio edit of Future's "Move That Dope" has been christened "Move That Doh" in a classic censorship joke.
Weekend
Art
A Supports/Surfaces Moment: Contradictions, Paradoxes and Other Ironies
For those who have been watching the critical misfortunes of Supports/Surfaces on the New York art scene over the years, it is a welcome surprise that, after decades of relative indifference, the movement finally seems to be getting some deserved attention.
Art
A Zoom with a View: Tullio Crali’s Death Loop
The affection, if not outright idolatry, the Futurists held for machines and speed initially focused on automobiles and locomotives, but in the early 1930s artists like Tullio Crali, Gerardo Dottori, Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni), and Giacomo Balla turned their attentions skyward to produce glorifying im
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, photography's truth, the media's numbness to torture, the clock of the Met Museum, mass art, a photo no one would publish, mistakes in Medieval English architecture, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Flag
This week it was revealed that the masterminds behind the mysterious appearance of a white flag atop the Brooklyn Bridge on July 22nd were artists after all.
Art
Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons and the Culture of Hyperbole
Recently, I read a statement by Kenneth Turan, film critic for the LA Times, that struck a chord. As a poet and art critic, it is impossible to ignore the reams of exaggeration I am bombarded with on a daily basis, from blurbs attesting to the gorgeous mastery to be found in a young poet’s first boo
Art
A Fundamental Rupture: 'Itself Not So' at Lisa Cooley
An intriguing concept: how to create an art exhibition about the inability to communicate? That is what curator Rachel Valinsky has set out to do in Itself Not So, the current group show at Lisa Cooley on the Lower East Side, and for the most part, the selection she has made neatly vaults past the i
Art
More Now than Then: When Art Reaches Back
The current group show at Canada, Anthropocene, casts a very wide net. The term, which means “new human,” is the name for the current geological period, which began with the transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture, leading to the foundation of formal societies.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, museums of the mind, Google captured in photos, a leaked document by Manifesta 10 curator Kasper König, 30 years of cell phone design, Sonny Rollins spoof goes wrong, online curators, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Walk
This week, the Guardian reported that Dallas, which “shares with Detroit the honor of being one of the two most car-dependent major metropolitan areas in the US” may be losing its affection for the automobile.
Art
Weekend Studio Visit: Marilyn Lerner in Chelsea, New York
I first went to Marilyn Lerner’s studio shortly after I reviewed her show at John Good for Artforum (May, 1989), and have gone periodically ever since.
Books
Modernism Without Irony: The Paintings of Gary Wragg
In 1978, the esteemed British curator Bryan Robertson saw fit to compare the promise of painter Gary Wragg’s emergent career with that of the young Jackson Pollock. It is a comparison lent some weight by the fact that Robertson had written a monograph and organized a major exhibition devoted to Poll