Artist Gary Stephan, whose new drawings will be exhibited this fall at Devening Projects + Editions in Chicago, is doing the best work of his life.
Weekend
Posted inArt
Pie in the Sky When You Die: Art, Money and Myth
Once it seemed to matter — the high end, I mean. Art and money, when you put the two words together, would invariably lead to HirstMurakamiKoons unless they were referencing KoonsMurakamiHirst. And the crazy gushes of cash that went their way, and the way they flaunted it, became prime rib for glossy magazines and academic panels alike. But that was so 2007.
Posted inArt
No More Garden Variety Avant-Garde Has-Beens
Before focusing on Kathy Bradford’s exhibition of new paintings at the Edward Thorp Gallery, I want to mention Eric Fischl’s recent paintings and the second coming of the Titanic, both oddly relevant for their irrelevance.
Posted inArt
Reverse Angles
On Thursday, a cache of recently discovered photos taken by the great Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) at the 1960 Democratic National Convention was released by The New York Times.
Posted inMusic
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (Apr 2012)
This week, reviews of Die Antwoord, Sleigh Bells, Gotye, Karantamba, Frankie Rose, Fun., Todd Snider, Cloud Nothings and more.
Posted inArt
Scripted Wars, Towers of Power
The United States, under the leadership of George W. Bush, launched its unprovoked, premeditated invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. On November 20, 2004, the Museum of Modern Art opened its 630,000-square-foot Yoshio Taniguchi-designed building.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week, reflections on the death of Thomas Kinkade, the real-life location of The Simpsons‘s Springfield, Ai Weiwei sues Chinese tax collectors, Beijing’s “rat tribe,” Snarkitecture, a Keith Haring mural is threatened in Paris, a look at Exit art, the average age of social media users and cats imitating famous paintings.
Posted inArt
Why There Are Great Artists (Part 3)
The rigorous parameters that Sylvia Plimack Mangold established in her earlier bodies of work (the floor paintings and the landscapes framed by “tape”) continue to inform her paintings of individual trees (specifically the maple, elm, locust, and pink oak), which have been focus of her attention since the early 1980s. Year after year, in different seasons and subtly changing light, the artist has returned to the same handful of subjects seen from the same tightly cropped viewpoint.
Posted inBooks
Tuning In: Devin Johnston’s Verse Seeks to Fill the Nothing with Song
The title of Devin Johnston’s fourth book of poems, Traveler, might suggest that the work will offer some series of narratives about moving from place to place. To be sure, the poems are generated by specific sites, from the Scottish Highlands to the American midlands. Yet, what characterizes these poems is an imagistic intensity and precision that evokes the process of engaged concentration, particularly in regard to the natural world.
Posted inBooks
The Verse That Could Happen: National Poetry Month to the Rescue?
A couple of months back I was sitting in an East Village dive bar enjoying, oh, I don’t know, my third or fourth whiskey (it was Tuesday, after all), when I noticed a very attractive girl next to me committing what appeared to be lines of verse onto a yellow notepad. Hang on, I thought: a fetching young poet sitting next to me in some blighted Manhattan grotto? What movie are you in, buddy? I stole a second glance. True enough, there was her pen scribbling curtly on the paper, and there were the one or two-word stanzas — illegible, from where I sat — filling up the left-hand side of the page in cursive, like the lines of an EKG.
Posted inArt
Rembrandt’s Brush: A Ghost Story
Rembrandt’s “Portrait of the Artist” (ca. 1663–65) from Kenwood House, London, just landed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a seven-week run.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week, the New Aesthetic, the Steins, Creative Time’s mission to push culture forward, Yung Jake’s Embedded, Eggleston goes from photography to contemporary art, Klaus Biesenbach’s tweets, Kickstarter vs NEA, art on The Simpsons and more.