Spoiled Roots: Mark Bradford and the Erasure of Community
Artists tasked with filling the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale have often poked at its resemblance to Monticello, the plantation designed by the…
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Momus Best-Of Volume 3: 2016-17
I confess to experiencing regular doubt, lately, about what art criticism can contribute to the fray when the conversations we need to be having,…
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Free to Care Less: On the Cynicism of “Starting a Conversation”
This year’s spate of artworld controversies surrounding cultural appropriation and the ethics of representation suggests that we should sharpen our vocabulary, and find precise…
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Place, Space, or Backdrop: The Dilemma of Desert X, the “Coachella Biennial”
Against this summer’s alignment of Documenta 14, the Venice Biennale, and Skulptur Projekte Münster, the first edition of the Desert X biennial seemed to…
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Post-Confessional: The Aging Intimacies of Sophie Calle
In advance of Missing, French conceptual artist Sophie Calle’s first major retrospective in the United States, both New York Times Magazine and the Guardian…
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How to Act Ethically in Art
Don’t fuck the curator. Or the artist, the gallerist, the writer, or their editor. Unless, of course, you really want to. And, it almost…
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Mourning Jimmie Durham
In April, I wrote a review of an exhibition at the Hammer Museum at UCLA: “Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World.” I…
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That’s the Way to Do It!: The Fairy Tale Life of Ydessa Hendeles
Let’s start with the premise that Ydessa Hendeles is an artist. And why shouldn’t we? Is it the fact that she started as a…
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Hélio Oiticica’s Journey From Art Visionary to Coke Dealer and Back Again
Hélio Oiticica, one of the most famous figures of Brazil’s mid-century surge of experimental art, once said that his goal was to strike “a…
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The Intimate Dangers of Reading Georgia O’Keeffe Through a Blouse
Any description of the new traveling Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit Living Modern must start with a blouse. On a hanger in the middle of the…
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