"It's up to artists to make the art world they want." ¶ On the Acela Express from Penn Station to Providence, Rhode Island, with two members... More >>
The question is not so much if "EXPO 1: New York," a multi-site exhibition, is engaging, but rather if it is pointless. It aims to present a... More >>
For a young artist whose past works include videos of herself dancing in her underwear with middle-aged men who have picked her up in parking... More >>
"You must be sympathetic to man's condition in his environment," the modernist architect Le Corbusier said in a 1957 film. "That's what interests... More >>
"Maybe I am not very human. What I wanted to do," Edward Hopper once explained, "was to paint sunlight on the side of a house." A telling... More >>
First it was slow food, the European social movement that made Ronald McDonald quit Rome's Spanish Steps in the 1980s. Then came slow gardening,... More >>
Jimmy Breslin was right: There is no more beautiful sight than a heaving street full of people. In Havana, on a sun-baked afternoon, that... More >>
James Turrell June 21–September 25, 2013 From the Museum of the Hard to Believe: Light and earth art pioneer James Turrell has not had an... More >>
With his aviator shades, shoulder-length locks, and blasé good looks, Jack Goldstein could have fronted some '70s band you don't quite... More >>
Painters, even the most experimental ones, continually time-travel for inspiration. Right now, you can traverse half a millennium of painting... More >>
In 1958, a six-year-old Mad Magazine published a parody of America's fourth-most popular newsstand title, which they called Bitter Homes and... More >>
Ben Durham doesn't seem like the sort of guy who would be involved with criminals and delinquents. He has the earnest and measured mien of a... More >>
A serious golfer, artist Charles McGill knows from bad lies. In 1997, he photographed himself playing through a vacant lot in Harlem, firing off... More >>
Roaming through MOMA's chockablock installation of highlights from Claes Oldenburg's early career, you can sense a febrile mind and... More >>
There is something both elegiac and death-defying about Gordon Matta-Clark's work. The short-lived Matta-Clark (1943–1978) is most famous... More >>
The mother of all Great Depression books, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, grew out of a Time magazine assignment. Accepting it were two young... More >>
Contrary to many expectations, there is rigorous contemporary art that knocks your block off at first sight. James Nares's high-definition video... More >>
Adam Cost is at a Basquiat exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery, a rare trip for him into a world he's never been welcome in or belonged to. But for... More >>
Palermo: Works on Paper 1976-1977 April 25–June 29 As noms d'artiste go, he had a ringer. Born Peter Schwarze, the adopted Peter... More >>
Robert Arneson (1930–92) was an incorrigible provocateur. You might recall his notorious 1981 memorial for slain San Francisco mayor George... More >>
Although the band broke up three decades ago, Abba continues to reverberate across cultural frontiers. Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson has... More >>
Rantoul and Die: Filthy Couch Comedy
The last Amoralists show I saw, Happy in the Poorhouse, was so shrill that I avenged myself by writing the review in all caps. Therefore, I had expectations lower than… More >>
The Comedy of Errors Serves Up Midcentury Mayhem; The Explorers Club Doesn't Discover Much
What lies along the bus route from Syracuse to Schenectady? In the Public Theater's cheerful Comedy of Errors—now playing in Central Park—it's Ephesus, town of endlessly confused identities, cigar-puffing mafiosi,… More >>
The Bruce High Quality Foundation Takes on Art, Money, and the Fame Game
"It's up to artists to make the art world they want." ¶ On the Acela Express from Penn Station to Providence, Rhode Island, with two members of The Bruce High… More >>
Memory Can be a Sticky Swamp in La Brea
Like the famous tar pits, Gregory S. Moss's La Brea—directed by Adam Greenfield, part of Clubbed Thumb's 2013 Summerworks series—reminds us that memory can be a sticky swamp. And if… More >>
'EXPO 1' Imagines the End Times--And Does Nothing to Stop Them
The question is not so much if "EXPO 1: New York," a multi-site exhibition, is engaging, but rather if it is pointless. It aims to present a "darkly optimistic" view… More >>
Laurel Nakadate: Strangers and Relations
For a young artist whose past works include videos of herself dancing in her underwear with middle-aged men who have picked her up in parking lots, Laurel Nakadate's current exhibition,… More >>
Reasons to Be Happy, in which Neil LaBute May Hate Inanimate Objects
A box of ice cream sandwiches suffers a vicious assault in Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Happy, produced by MCC. As does a vending machine, a sports trophy, a microwave,… More >>
Roadkill Places Its Audience in Perilous Proximity to its Violations
Are you sitting comfortably? Then you are not attending Cora Bissett's Roadkill, a site-specific screed against human trafficking produced by St. Ann's Warehouse, in which attendees share a minibus bound… More >>
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman in Sontag: Reborn
Few people who read Susan Sontag's work—essays, fiction, nonfiction, plays—feel lukewarm about it. The polarizing cultural critic's proclivity for using her vast breadth of knowledge to make bold, grand assertions… More >>
Venice Unites Rap and Shakespeare, Shakily
Composer-lyricist Matt Sax loves hip-hop. He also loves Shakespeare. These enthusiasms unite—not always smoothly—in Venice, a rap and pop musical loosely tied to the tragedy of Othello, but more concerned… More >>
