Opinion
Required Reading
This week, a chilling performance in Shanghai, the sale of the Washington Post, history of London coffeehouses, privacy and art, TED Talk as propaganda, and more.
Weekend
Opinion
Weekend Words: Sound
Yesterday, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, opened Soundings: A Contemporary Score, the museum's first major exhibition of sound art. But will it answer the question, "If a piece of art falls in the forest and no one hears it, is it still art?"
Art
The Inimitable and Influential Art of Catherine Murphy
I have been following Catherine Murphy since 1980, when I first saw her work at Xavier Fourcade. My interests are purely selfish: she is uncompromising in ways that I admire, which is to say she is not dogmatic. Always in hot pursuit of what she sees — subjects so commonplace and underfoot that othe
Music
Margins of Error: Chelsea Light Moving
From the mid-’80s to the late ’00s, every few years Sonic Youth would come out with an excellent album. Their consistency and reliability are very nearly unmatched by anybody else in music: they have fifteen in total, well over half of which are worth owning. For their many fans, it became normal to
Interview
On Emerson, Process, and the Room within a Room: A Conversation with Karinne Keithley Syers
Watching Karinne Keithley Syers dance is like watching someone tell a ghost story with her hands and eyes. One hand obscures her vision while the other guides her body through unknown territory. Where she is, or how she arrived there, feels less pertinent than her strong sense of self-awareness and
Art
Conspicuously Absent: When Art Goes Undercover
Even in today’s anything-goes environment, it’s not all that common to encounter a work of art that hews so closely to the mundane that it risks not being recognized as art at all. Let alone two or three in a single show. But that’s the case with Conspicuous Unusable, a group exhibition at Miguel Ab
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, art forgeries, Frere-Jones on Jay Z's crappy album, food criticism drama, sound art resonates, the woman who was raped by Roman Polanski speaks, Boston's only graffiti park, Freudian analysis of sexting, 3D printing renaissance, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Enemy
This week Bradley Manning was acquitted of charges of aiding the enemy. But in the immortal words of the prophet Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Art
Studio Visit: Richard Walker in Glasgow, Scotland
GLASGOW — My first encounter with the Scottish artist Richard Walker was when I went to his exhibition House Paintings at the Alexandre Gallery (November 29, 2012 – January 5, 2013). Measuring around 15 x 20 inches, and done on panels, Walker’s paintings were observations of a darkened room at night
Art
Languages of Devotion: Basil King's Life in Art
One day in 1965, as he was walking by St. Mark's Church in New York’s East Village, Basil King came to a dreadful realization. "You're a painter," he told himself, "who's never been." The verdict, which he relates in Learning to Draw / A History (Skylight Press, 2011), was, of course, wrongheaded. K
Poetry
Long on Ambition: The Public Poem in Books from Rachel Levitsky and Andrew Zawacki
According to Mark Edmundson’s uncritically nostalgic and, by now, notorious article “Poetry Slam: Or, The Decline of American Verse,” which was published in the July 2013 issue of Harper’s, “[o]ur most highly regarded poets—the gang now in their fifties, sixties, and beyond” (such as Sharon Olds, Ro
Art
Rock Hard: LaToya Ruby Frazier’s Photo Excavations
LaToya Ruby Frazier’s elegiac installation at the Brooklyn Museum is entering its final week, and if you haven’t already, it’s time to make the acquaintance of this dauntless artist.