Opinion
Required Reading
This week, anger at MoMA's plan to destroy the American Folk Art Museum building, art market tidbits, the Digital Library of America, academia's servants, foundational principles, and more.
Weekend
Opinion
Weekend Words: Gamble
In a case of metaphor becoming reality, on Tuesday Hyperallergic passed along the news that Helly Nahmad Gallery on the Upper East Side had been busted by the Feds for running “high-stakes poker games involving Wall Street financiers, Hollywood celebrities and professional athletes."
Art
Tilting at Windmills: Joe Zucker as Don Quixote
Joe Zucker is the most inventive artist of his generation, which includes Elizabeth Murray, Mel Bochner, Joan Snyder and his longtime friend, Chuck Close, and perhaps the most misunderstood. One reason for the confusion is that reviewers have often focused on Zucker’s inventiveness with materials an
Music
Fagen's Critical Catalogue (April 2013, Part 1)
I've talked about Michael Tatum before, but that Kitty song compels me to cite this marvelous Tatum sentence, about Skrillex: "…any hairstyle that resembles a palomino's hindquarters when viewed from an elevated height commits cosmetological crimes so outrageously grotesque they could send Korn's Jo
Art
The Writing on the Wall, the Paintings in the Basement
It’s not uncommon for artists to fall short of their own expectations, only for the public to find delight in the charged gap between the aspiration and the goal.
Interview
Standing on the Edge of Space: Painting as Noun and Verb
Oil on canvas. Evolving motifs. Line embedded in color. Compositions suspended between chaos and stability.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Garlic
Weekend Words was saddened this week by the news of the death of filmmaker Les Blank. While his best-known movie is probably Burden of Dreams (1982), a behind-the-scenes look at the epic struggles undertaken by visionary German director Werner Herzog in the making of Fitzcarraldo, for the most part
Art
Color Visions: The Sanford Wurmfeld Experience
For many, Sanford Wurmfeld: Color Visions 1966 – 2013 at the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery (February 15–April 30, 2013) will be an introduction to an artist, who, according to the art historian William C. Agee, “may well be the best little-known painter in New York today.” There are many reaso
Art
Single Point Perspective: Luigi Ghirri’s Sunsets Stripped
You walk to the end of the pier, drive to the canyon's edge, or stroll down to the beach. Shading your eyes, you peer out across the water or valley to watch the bright disc slide like a gold coin into the horizon’s slot. Appreciative murmurs are heard as the sky darkens. Another end of day.
Art
The Object Is Not an Object: Cubism, Photons and Two by Fours
This week’s news of a major gift of Cubist works — possibly the most important in the world — from Leonard Lauder to the Metropolitan Museum of Art marks a landmark event for New York’s cultural heritage, but it also redirects our attention, however fleeting, on what the movement was about and what
Art
Alien Skins: Experimental Italian Painting of the 1960s
Sometimes the quietest and most unassuming exhibitions turn out to be the most fascinating, if not the strangest. Tucked away on the third floor of Sperone Westwater’s Bowery building, there’s a show titled Post-War Italian Art: Accardi, Dorazio, Fontana, Schifano. That’s it. No jazzy tagline like “
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, the economic imperative for investing in art, dogs in pantyhose, the Renoir thief, sexism in architecture, street art in Palestine, GIF search engines, and more.