The Possessions of Paul Pfeiffer
When Paul Pfeiffer was ten years old, he dreamt that he was possessed by the devil. He had just moved from the tropical suburbs…
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They Made Him Gray: The Whitney Museum Dims Artist and Mystic Harry Smith
When you first walk into Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith at the Whitney Museum, you’re greeted by Andy Warhol’s…
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Detective Stories about Feelings: The Driving Force of Peter Schjeldahl
Most of us have never known an art world without Peter Schjeldahl in it. We count on him being part of New York like…
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Behind the Curtain: Beatriz González’s Political-Decorative Art
A familiar scene: two dandies basking in a casual lunch on the grass, immersed in delightful parlay, accompanied by a completely naked woman in…
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Dubious Icons: Godheads, Messiahs, and the Artist as Celebrity
Perhaps it’s an unfair caricature of MFA students, that each appears to inhabit their own personalized reality TV show. Perhaps. But having been one…
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Interrupting Business as Usual: A Close Reading of MoMA’s Muslim Ban Intervention
New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recently rehung its prized Modern galleries, swapping out works by greats like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso for…
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Interview: Paul Petro on Becoming the Legacy-Building, “Bent Identity Politics” Gallerist of Toronto
The spiritual iconographies of Paul Petro’s roster are many. Robert Flack’s seven chakras series from the 1990s; Stephen Andrews’s heaven painting, and The Apostles;…
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Understanding Lina Bo Bardi’s Unending Popularity (and Misuse)
Imagine the ghost of Lina Bo Bardi banging the ceiling with a broomstick to annoy whomever’s making a ruckus upstairs. Now imagine it’s not…
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How to See the Invisible
“An SEP,” he said, “is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that…
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The Inequality of Contemporary Art
In an 1854 painting called The Meeting, a young Gustave Courbet depicted himself encountering a rich art patron and his servant. Such was the…
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