Gide’s Looking Glass
Harris Wheless reviews Damion Searls’ new translation of André Gide’s “Marshlands.”
Yesiyu Zhao’s ‘Journey to the West’ at David Castillo Gallery
Suzy V reviews Yesiyu Zhao's show "Journey to the West” at David Castillo Gallery in Miami.
The Vollard Suite
“You see this truculent character here, with the curly hair and mustache?” Picasso asked about the Vollard Suite, “That’s Rembrandt. Or maybe it’s Balzac; I’m not sure. It’s a compromise, I suppose. It doesn’t really matter. They’re only two of the people to haunt me. Every human being is a whole colony.”
Some Observations on Charles Ray: Figure Ground at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2022)
Charles Ray is unquestionably one of the most powerful and challenging sculptors alive. His recent works presented at the Met carry within them a subtle and expansive understanding of space, a boundless wit and delicacy, and a deep sense of history.
Sofia Gubaidulina: Der Zorn Gottes (2019)
If society no longer reliably yields a consistent aesthetic framework, and if even the immediate sensations of our own minds can no longer be trusted, how can we hope to reach the inner truth of an artwork?
Louise Lawler “LIGHTS OFF, AFTER HOURS, IN THE DARK” at Metro Pictures
It took the formula of one species of conceptualism to capture the swan song of another.
John Currin “Memorial” at Gagosian
They’re explicit pictures, and in a world so entirely scrubbed clean of transgression, any sense of naughtiness is its own form of pleasure. Dainty feet and hands poke out in flirty little kicks, one appendage in front of the trompe l'œil frame, the other receding behind. The effect is not unlike a peep show.
“With eyes like ripening fruit”: Manoucher Yektai at Karma
It’s not true that the world is ending — if anything, it already has. And yet life continues, alive in its death. These thoughts — speculations — give a perfunctory account of the work of the late painter and poet Manoucher Yektai, a member of the New York School whose first solo show in the city since 1984 opened at Karma two weeks ago.
Apocalyptic Vision: Poems by Ronnie Burk
He was not a literary artist in the sense that his work doesn’t seem to wrestle with questions of form; he’s not attempting to reinvent the surrealist modes at his disposal but rather making use of them as vehicles for his insurgent imagination and apocalyptic vision, the fury of which elevates his writing above and beyond the mere assemblage of irrational word combinations.
When the Critics Saw
A work of art has never graced the cover of the journal October. Since the first issue was published in 1976, the front cover has only ever carried the journal’s allusive title, spelled out in large capitalised letters underneath the smaller italicised headings of ‘art’, ‘theory’, ‘criticism’ and ‘politics’ (in that order).
Meow Wolf: Revenge of the Artist?
When Meow Wolf’s claim to fame, House of Eternal Return, hatched in March 2016, the art world was forced to confront the monster that two decades of discourse around socially-engaged art had unwittingly created.
Six Theories About Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola doesn't seem to work so much with “the female gaze,” whatever that might mean. She doesn't watch women so much as she watches men watching women.
Anvil and Rose 12
For Anvil and Rose 12, Inspector Watt returns with reviews of books from Paul Celan (tr. Pierre Joris), Jean Daive (on Celan), Alen Hamza, Lara Mimosa Montes, and a COVID anthology edited by Alice Quinn.
Anvil and Rose 11
In this latest Anvil and Rose, Herman Van den Reeck reviews books from Rosebud Ben-Oni, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, Andres Cerpa, Andrew Levy, and Jackie Wang.
The Anatomy of the Image
The experience is absolute; a demonstration is made of the presence of an incomplete reality to which its image is opposed by the intervention of a motor element condensing the real and the virtual into a superior unity.
Anvil and Rose 10
In this latest Anvil and Rose, Inspector Watt reviews books by Agustín Guambo, David Lehman, J. Michael Martinez, Maureen N. McLane, and Chelsey Minnis.