ArtSeen
Frida Kahlo
By Tessa DeCarloWas it just coincidence that questions about our attitude toward women’s achievement hit the front pages the same week that Frida Kahlo’s centenary retrospective opened at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art?
Meeting Imi and Blinky at Dia: Beacon
By Sharon L. ButlerUp in Beacon, New York, during the early June heat wave, I stopped by Dia for some air conditioning and happened upon a two-gallery installation of 21 oddly-shaped 10-foot panels, each painted with a single, unmixed, straight out-of-the-tube color.
Charles Juhasz-Alvarado Complicated Stories
By Cora FisherAt first glance, the main gallery of Exit Art resembles a Wunderkammer of lovingly selected botanical, animal and human artifacts. These objects, made by the artist Charles Juhasz-Alvarado, tell stories that are as culturally specific as they are utopian and borderless.
Dumitru Gorzo In the Corner of My Eye
By Valery OisteanuLive flowers decorate the ceiling and floors of this new gallery, just as they would at a real Romanian wedding—but the party guests are on the walls: the subjects of the provocative portraits of the Romanian painter known as Gorzo.
Asplundher Syndicate A Nelson Loses Three Heads... Apparently
By Warren FryOn Friday the 20th I was descending into the 72nd and Broadway subway station when my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a man shouting broken words from the platform below.
Erica Svec Same Enemy Rainbow
By Craig OlsonThe six paintings in Same Enemy Rainbow resound across the shell-shocked no man’s land sprawling between dream and reality, metaphor and material—where black naturals and white sharps attack with a yard dog ferocity amplified through a Vox Continental, and the witness is left rubbing her waterlogged ears wondering if what just happened was actual or not.
Sigur Rós
By Jed LipinskiOn June 17th, Iceland’s Independence Day, the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós played MoMA’s lobby in support of their forthcoming album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly) and in conjunction with Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s comprehensive exhibit, Take Your Time.
The Breakaway Republic of Bushwick
By Hrag VartanianIn last month’s Rail, artist/critic James Kalm shined a bright light on the long history of Brooklyn, and Williamsburg in particular, as a creative force in the city’s artistic life.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes The Disasters of War
By Thomas MicchelliTwo hundred years ago last May, the population of Madrid rose up in a spontaneous revolt against the occupation forces of the puppet King of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon.
Philip Guston Works on Paper
By John YauIn 1929, Philip Goldstein—he changed his named to Guston in 1935—enrolled in Manual Arts High School, Los Angeles, where he formed a lasting friendship with a fellow student, Jackson Pollock.
Darina Karpov Infinitely Small Disasters
By Shane McAdamsInfinitely Small Disasters, Darina Karpov’s second show with Pierogi, expands on the technical ambition and scale of her last exhibition there just 16 months ago.
Absence and the Continuum of Nature
By Robert C. MorganFor those who travel from the city to the country during the summer months, the landscape is a place not only for recreation but also for viewing, a place to nourish the body and mind through the act of perception, through the process of coming down, of slowing down, and thus removing oneself from the diurnal routines and omnipresent anxieties that many assume to be second nature—the simulated “nature” of the urban environment.
Brooklyn Dispatches: Cool Island and Garden of Chill
By James KalmThe dog days are here. Feverish nights, sweltering days, humidity like a scalding damp towel. As the temperatures climb, my brain goes boggy.
Mark Fox Paper Bulls
By Lynn CrawfordThe stories we tell ourselves, and the mythic proportions they assume, are so much of what drives us: wealth stems from diligence; I live in the greatest country; Dad is impossible to please; money is the root of evil; government is just; no one liked me in high school; prayer leads to salvation.
TRACKS: More Than a Pretty View
By James TrimarcoTwo wooden boats sit on warehouse-style pallets in the courtyard of the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, New York. One is stained a sandy red, the other a washed-out seafoam green.
