ArtSeen
Being Vincent van Gogh
By Ben La RoccoInspired by the experience of standing alone in the first room of the exhibition: Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night at the Museum of Modern Art, December 2008
John Newman
By Ben La RoccoEntitled Instruments of Argument, John Newman’s exhibition at the New York Studio School might have been called 14 Pearls, after Richard Tuttle’s 20 Pearls, for the gem-like quality and small scale that contribute to the fragile, delicate quality shared by both artists.
Chris Martin Works on Paper
By John YauChris Martin is not afraid to make art that openly alludes to the work of Paul Feeley, Alfred Jensen, Philip Guston, Forrest Bess, Blinky Palermo, and Frank Stella, but in a way that is sophisticated and innocent.
Imi Knoebel
By John YauIs anyone surprised anymore when the culture mavens at the New York Times get it all wrong, again?
Melissa Meyer New Works
By John YauWhen Stephane Mallarme said that everything exists to end up in a book, he didn’t mean an art history book written by a university professor with an axe to grind.
Philip Guston 1954-1958
By John YauThis exhibition of eight paintings that Philip Guston completed between 1954 and 1960 got me thinking about the one or two surprises that I have encountered in nearly all of this artist’s exhibitions that I have seen since his retrospective in 1980, the year he died, and how there is very little explanation or follow-up to them.
Jonathan Torgovnik: Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape
By Cora FisherIntended Consequences conveys through its visual parity the burden of long-internalized silence—unbroken until now—over the sexual torture of Rwandan women by militiamen during and after the bloodiest phase of the 1994 genocide.
Daria Martin: Minotaur
By Claudia La RoccoReal Minotaurs Like It Dirty
Pierre Bonnard & Peter Doig
By Greg Lindquist"Painting,” Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) once declared, is “the transcription of the adventures of the optic nerve.”
Today’s Special: Saucy Curatorship and Tofu Art
By Shane McAdamsThe idea of originality has seen its credibility erode significantly over the past century. Why this happened is a complex matter.
Susan Bee: Eye of the Storm
By Craig OlsonWhere do we turn when the end of our civilization confronts us? This isn’t exactly a new question for artists.
Mike Womack: High Grade Empty
By Shane McAdamsThe history of the moving image is a history written by victors. The victors were electricians: Maxwell, Westinghouse, Marconi, et al.
The Art World on Facebook: A Primer
By Sharon L. ButlerWhat’s so good about Facebook? Most art bloggers will tell you it’s a good way to connect with the people who read their blogs.
Brooklyn Dispatches
By James KalmLife is messy, but death is messier. And at least while you’re alive, you can bust ass in the clean-up—scrub away the stains and sweep what you don’t want seen under the rug.
The Third Mind—American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860 – 1989
By Ellen PearlmanThe Third Mind, a sprawling exhibition, tackles the vastly neglected subject of how Asian thought, defined as the eastern religions of Hinduism, Tantric Buddhism, Chan/Zen Buddhism and Taoism, as well as classical Asian art forms and the living performance traditions of Japanese art and Zen Buddhism, has influenced many forms of American modernism for over a century.
SHE: Images of Women by Wallace Berman & Richard Prince
By Natalie HaddadSex is the pretext at the Michael Kohn Gallery’s SHE: Images of Women by Wallace Berman & Richard Prince.
Stephan Pascher: Who Got the Chickens
By Liz WingWho Got the Chickens is the title of Stephan Pascher’s latest show at Steven Wolf Fine Arts. It’s a lighthearted jab at a well-known artist whose name became entwined with a small town in west Texas.
Letter from LONDON
By Sherman SamFriends and critics have been entirely charmed by the exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre. The Guardian’s Adrian Serle describes it as “inexplicably odd.
Grace Rim: YES Love, YES Life
By Robert C. MorganAfter six years of an escalating art market following the invasion of Iraq, where prices for mediocre spectacles rose beyond the fringes of obscenity, artists and their investors find themselves in a different state of mind.
Matta: Five Decades Of Painting
By Valery OisteanuThis exhibition of fifteen oil paintings by Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren is the first major show of the artist’s work in New York City since a 1957 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.
The Last Breath of Piero Manzoni
By Robert C. MorganThere is as much to say about Piero Manzoni, the artist, as there is to say about his work. They are, more or less, inextricably bound to one another.
Keren Cytter : Les Ruissellements Du Diable
By Thomas MicchelliIf the events in Keren Cytter’s video Les Ruissellements du Diable (The Devil’s Streams) (2008) have a familiar ring, it is because they are adapted from the same source material as Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film, Blow-Up: Julio Cortázar’s short story “Las Babas del Diablo” (“The Devil’s Drool”).
Lost in Space: Outsiderness and the Art of Dave Lane
By Tessa DeCarloYears ago, when I first started writing about outsider art, I mentioned the term to someone who didn’t happen to be an art world insider. She looked puzzled and asked, “Outside art—you mean art that’s shown outdoors?”
DisEchoNance
By Warren FryIn the 49 years since La Monte Young, John Cage and others first investigated chance, duration, and atonality in Yoko Ono’s Chamber St. Loft, experimental music has broadened and defined its boarders, trickled into discrete genres, and almost entirely left private residences for spotlit galleries and trendy venues.
