Thanks, I’m Just Looking
The New York art fairs, the worst of the Venice Biennale, Taryn Simon’s incomplete detective story, and Damien Hirst’s gay hole.
The following exchange between a curator and me takes place during the press preview for the Armory Show.
Me: “You look great!”
Curator: “Thank you, I’ve been obsessed with money and lifting weights. How are you? It’s been a while.”
Me: “I’m okay, busy, you know ... Wait, did you say you’re ‘obsessed with money’?”
Curator: “No, I said I’m obsessed with RUNNING.”
On the way back to the office, I pass by the New Museum on the Lower East Side, which has just opened a major Arthur Jafa retrospective. A group of drug addicts is flailing in and out of consciousness just a few feet from the museum's sleek new glass expansion. One of them is rolling on the sidewalk in slow motion, wailing breathlessly, with an extinguished cigarette between his fingers. A second is piled on a stoop, waving away a fly that isn't there. A third is frozen in place, hunched over a dirty suitcase.
Autumn winds are blowing, but the leaves have yet to fall from the trees. At this time of year, few things in the city are as beautiful as the Harlem River.
The Manhattan skyline glimmers from behind a cemetery while the moon is split in half like a black-and-white cookie. A woman looks like she’s about to cry while reading Flannery O'Connor. A photographer is following a cute couple; they look back at the camera, smiling. A store is selling a jacket embroidered with the motivational message on the back, “Don’t be a little bitch.”
“Would you like to try it on?” the woman behind the cash register asks. I say, “No, thanks. I’m just looking.”
— Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief
Armory Week in New York
The Armory Show in One Sentence
This year’s edition seemed awfully quiet and downcast, making the financial sector trade show on the floor below seem like a riot in comparison. | Hakim Bishara
Read MoreIndependent 20th Century, the Mise en Abyme of Art Fairs
Despite the mind-boggling amount of spectacular works on view, I was reminded at each turn that the Breuer Building has been turned into an art mall. | Valentina Di Liscia
Read MoreHere’s What (Dealers Said) Sold at the Armory Show
If collectors had any concerns about the wars or inflation, they did not seem to share them at the New York fair, where the mood was almost too serene. | Aaron Short
Read MoreNo One Is Reading, Except at the New York Art Book Fair
The overlooked, subversive, and playful currents of politics and queer culture flow freely at the fair’s 20th anniversary edition, held at MoMA PS1. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin
Read MoreNews
- A herd of 40 life-sized buffalo puppets migrated through parts of NYC this past weekend for Return of the Buffalo: Tatanka Owe Akupi (Lakota for “buffalo trail home”).
- Disgraced financier and MoMA board member Leon Black plans to convert an iconic Manhattan property into a foundation to display his estimated $5 billion art collection.
- Beijing-based artist Liu Wei returns to New York with brand-new works for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Genesis Facade Commission.
- French authorities apprehend two German men at the Louvre Museum after they affixed two paintings to a wall in the room housing Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.”
- Christie’s launches a new pop culture division, with items for auction including music memorabilia, treasured instruments, and revered film props.
- Documenta 16 artistic director Naomi Beckwith says that some artists declined to participate in the exhibition over “Germany’s position on the Gaza war” and concerns about artistic freedom in the country.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the first major exhibition on Felix Gonzalez-Torres in New York in over 30 years.
- The El Museo del Barrio in New York expresses regret at providing rental space for a conspiracy-filled conference on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
- A new report from the Joan Mitchell Foundation highlights deep structural issues affecting legacy work across the arts.
- Art Movements: Photographer Tyler Mitchell wins Crystal Bridges’s $250K prize, the National Gallery of Art names a new head of American Art, Sharif Bey wins the Spector Craft Prize, a Solange sculpture heads to the High Line, and more in Art Movements.
From Our Critics
The Worst National Pavilions at the Venice Biennale
In the first part of this series, Editor-at-Large Hrag Vartanian and critic Aruna D’Souza discussed the pavilions they loved at the 61st Venice Biennale, running through November 22, and even made a provocative argument in favor of national pavilions. In this second and final installment, they take their gloves off to tear apart the pavilions they didn’t like and argue about the ones they’re split on. Brace yourself; it’s going to get heated. —Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief | Hrag Vartanian, Aruna D’Souza
Read MoreTarot for a Broken World
With some of the oldest surviving tarot decks on view, the Morgan’s exhibition traces how a Renaissance card game became something far more powerful. | AX Mina
Read MoreNo One Is Accountable in Taryn Simon’s Detective Story
In her ambitious exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, injustice seems purely systemic, not the result of individuals behaving badly. | Aruna D’Souza
Read MoreWhat “The Book of Genocides” Teaches Us
Dana Mashoian Walrath’s work of graphic nonfiction points to historical patterns across 10 genocides, from Germany and Turkey to Gaza. | Noah Fischer
Read MoreThe Book of Alison Knowles
A retrospective traces the language of bookmaking in her expansive work and its radical influence on American art. | Leah Triplett Harrington
Read MoreThe Polish Pavilion Dissolves You in the Politics of Sound
At the Venice Biennale, whale songs become a means for communication, opening up a dialogue on accessibility. | Amanda Cachia
Read MoreThe Unsung Craftspeople Who Built Ancient Egypt
A new publication reflects a growing interest in the lives of the makers behind the civilization’s arts and crafts, long marginalized and erased by mythologized depictions of the ancient world. | Nageen Shaikh
Read MoreGather ’Round, Willie Birch Is Speaking
Across five decades of work, he always asked: What’s my neighborhood, and what does it need? | Nereya Otieno
Read MoreWhat Happens After Repatriation?
“Tide of Returns” investigates the histories and futures of handmade dolls repatriated to an Indigenous Australian community. | Eurídice Arratia
Read MoreFeatures
The Titillating Tale of Damien Hirst’s Gay Hole
An infectious play by Sleth explores infatuation and fame through an imagined relationship between Hirst and his gay lover, a younger artist whose paintings consist of holes on the ground. | Hrag Vartanian
Read MoreSarah Michelson’s Delicate Fetish Play
Her 25-day dance at MoMA is meta, but it’s not about dance itself so much as a lifetime of collaborating with dancers. | Amit Noy
Read MoreNYC’s Shelter Population Speaks Out in Public Art Project
Alex Strada’s “Public Address” brings handwritten testimonies from over 400 unhoused New Yorkers and shelter staff to a dozen locations across the Bronx. | Anna Lee
Read MoreIn Chicago, Mexican-American Altars Reimagine Home
As ICE increasingly targets migrant neighborhoods, carefully crafted altars to La Virgen de Guadalupe outside homes transform sidewalks into sites of community and protection. | Crystal Vance Guerra
Read MoreA Bushwick Kid at Bushwick Open Studios
During my first visit to the annual event, I found towering paintings that explore our inner child, diasporic tributes to Filipina culture, and light-filled portraits of an artist’s trans community. | Danielle De Jesus
Read MoreWhat Can Photographs Say in a World Full of Images?
An exhibition at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College examines how artists utilize serial configurations of pictures and text to prompt questions about seeing. | Monica Uszerowicz
Read MoreGuides
10 Public Artworks to See Across the US This Fall
Camille Henrot’s pack of dogs take Central Park, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz leads a procession through Philadelphia, and Sara Genn paints the sky in Santa Fe. | Anna Lee and Rhea Nayyar
Read More10 Art Shows to See in the Bay Area This Fall
Dread Scott’s body politic, Azzedine Alaïa’s sculptural garments, Dewey Crumpler and Irving Norman surveys, and much more. | Max Blue
Read MoreCommunity
Art Problems: If I Have a Day Job, Am I a Real Artist?
Ever been shamed for having a nine-to-five job as an artist? Paddy Johnson can relate.
Read MoreBeer With a Painter: Barbara Takenaga
The Japanese-American artist talks about her place as a paint dot in the universe and embracing disruption in her canvases.
Read MoreA View From the Easel: Mary Magsamen and Stephan Hillerbrand
“Piles to start a project, piles during a project, and piles of stuff after it is finished.”
Read MoreRemembering Lucia Laguna, Rodrigo Cass, and Nelson Garrido
This week, we honor a Brazilian painter inspired by nature and another who drew on Catholicism, and a Venezuelan photographer who challenged power. | Lisa Yin Zhang
Read More
