McDermott and McGough Compromise With the Past

Some people worry that art is stuck in the past—McDermott & McGough wouldn't have it any other way. For three decades, the artist duo have immersed themselves for years at a time in bygone eras: renovating a Gilded Age apartment, say, or an Eighteenth-Century farmhouse upstate, and assiduously building a period-appropriate lifestyle around it. They've made art objects, but this sustained performance comprises a quiet rebellion against everything that is shoddy, tasteless, frantic, and mass-produced in contemporary American life, and it may be their biggest statement.
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Tricks on the Brain?

For L.A.-based street artist Thierry Guetta, aka Mr. Brainwash, art is "simple" and the key to curating an exhibition is "Bring, bring, bring." The art world refuses to take him seriously, but the Frenchman tries not to let that get to him. It's Tuesday afternoon, two days before the opening night of his second show, "Icons," and he's sitting, in aviators and paint-splattered jeans, in the rented Meatpacking space he's already trucked more art into than he could ever dream of including in the show. One of his many assistants shouts, "Le camion arrive!" More trucks.
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Kehinde Wiley Sticks a Fork in Art Basel

On Sunday night, as Miami Basel's last lights were winking out, Kehinde Wiley was bopping around the back yard of the Shore Club in a floral-print suit, grinning, smoking, and greeting guests. He was hosting his annual closing-night fish fry.

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The Tenor of Julius Shulman

Without photos, even a perfect work of architecture can feel incomplete: it's a mute poet, a star without her close-up. Visual Acoustics, a new documentary about the late Julius Shulman, shows how one photographer not only captured and popularized but also helped create American modernism over the course of his 70-year career.
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