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…
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What Kind of Criticism Do We Need Now? Coming to Terms with Teju Cole’s “Known and Strange Things”
“We look at them for the way they cooperate with the imagination, the way they contain what cannot otherwise be accommodated, and the…
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An Elegy for Beau Dick (1955–2017)
Beau Dick was given the name “Walis Gwy Um,” which means “big, great whale” in the Kwak’wala language. His carvings tap into the supernatural,…
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How To Write a Review
Go see an exhibition at a museum, a gallery, a studio. See a show skywritten above the arroyo, tucked under a bridge, in virtual…
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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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Where the Bodies Go: Lili Huston-Herterich’s Poem to the Power of Community
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Abrasion and Collision: On History’s Steps with Robert Rauschenberg, at the Tate
Three quarters of a lifetime ago, in the early spring of 1964, I saw an exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Who exactly was…
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The Double-Bind in Raqs Media Collective’s Institutional Critique
Longing we say, because desire is full of endless distances …
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Forcing the Fortuitous: Tacita Dean Searches for Luck
Nothing is more frightening than not knowing where you’re going, but then again nothing can be more satisfying than finding you’ve arrived somewhere without…
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What Is an Art Fair Doing Asking “What Is To Be Done?”
Tented within Manhattan’s industrial piers, and under a cold sweep of wind, the Armory Art Fair rounded out its latest edition (under new director,…
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