The Enduring Popularity of Fictional Critic “Madame Realism”
Even self-assured egos have their sensitive spots. This was certainly true of Madame Realism, a fictional critic who, from 1984 until 2007, analyzed art…
Read MoreMitch Speed
Stay on It: Maintaining Julius Eastman’s Radical Desire
For months, a Times article about Julius Eastman accrued dust in my New Jersey apartment. It sat dormant within an increasingly oppressive stack of back issues,…
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“A Self-Implicated Search”: Reviewing Robert Linsley’s Final Book
At an artist talk several years ago, I asked Robert Linsley to explain why artworks should be treated as human beings. Seemingly embarrassed, he…
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The Many Faces of Brian O’Doherty
A common theme haunts descriptions of the Irish artist Brian O’Doherty; to many, he is a protean ghost, transcendent of categories and heedless of…
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The Atmospheric Pressure in “Reading” Barbara Bloom
Is there a color more indexical of melancholy than blue-grey? It is the color of fog, the color of nature suffused with an intelligence;…
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Ways of Seeing John Berger, in Two Recent Documentaries
“It’s in hell where solidarity is important, not in heaven.” – John Berger, Seasons in Quincy Media veracity, it seems clear, has dissolved into…
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Romancing the Stone: Three Berlin Exhibitions Commune with the Ancients
The past vexes us. Longing to feel connected to it, those with money tour the world’s ancient ruins searching antediluvian kin. Meanwhile in Eurocentric contemporary…
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The Past Imperfect of Jutta Koether
For many years, Jutta Koether drained blood and love from the color red. In her paintings, that untouchable hue became atmosphere for a genus…
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The Ellipses of Eva Hesse: Reading Her Collected Diaries
Eva Hesse’s collected diaries begin at the end. In the book’s last sentence, editor Barry Rosen thanks Hesse’s friend Gioia Timpanelli for discovering the…
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Simone Leigh’s Powerful Meditation on Race and Healthcare Suffers, Ironically, from Lack of Access
Within intimate relationships, symptoms of passive aggression range from mild irritation to buckling torpor. When the relationship is between entire populations and corrupted institutions,…
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