From Artworld Punchline to Real-World Parable: Ruben Östlund’s “The Square”
The degree to which contemporary culture understands (or fails to understand) “The Art World” can be measured in how it gets portrayed in film…
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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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A Parasitic ‘joie de vivre’ in “Viva Arte Viva”
When a curator chooses a title as desperately bubbly as Viva Arte Viva, something is clearly amiss. “Live art live!” – the 57th Venice…
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“The Only Things That are Unchangeable are Tombstones”: Vito Acconci (1940-2017)
Vito Acconci, a towering figure in the history of performance art, and more recently known for his experimental architecture, has died at the age…
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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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After Brexit, Art Must Break Out of Its Bubble
In the early days of 2009, to celebrate its ascendancy to the presidency of the European Union, the Czech Republic commissioned a special artwork…
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Evasion and Euphemism: The Guggenheim Underintellectualizes and Depoliticizes László Moholy-Nagy
In 1921, the Hungarian expat László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), then in Berlin, signed a “Call for Elementarist Art,” alongside Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, and…
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The Pantomimed Fellowship of Nicole Eisenman’s “Al-ugh-ories”
Nicole Eisenman – beloved New York painter, now MacArthur-certified “Genius” – has just opened a show at the New Museum with the jokey title, “Al-ugh-ories.” The single-floor showing…
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“I Wanted to Find a Way to Respond”: Artist Ben Quilty on Working with Refugees
How do you conceive of the human cost of the largest refugee crisis since World War II? Though images of the overcrowded boats crossing…
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The State of the Artworld, Explained
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan is opening its new contemporary art initiative, taking over the old Whitney Museum of American Art’s building…
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