Art in America - Most Recent Features

Occupy Wall

By Ben Lerner — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100

An exhibition of Diego Rivera’s portable murals made in the ’30s for New York’s MoMA prompts the author to consider their timeliness.

The Meet and Greet Museum

By Steven C. Dubin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Walmart heiress Alice Walton's newly opened Crystal Bridges Museum defies elitist views on art ownership and the public.

Provisional Painting Part 2: To Rest Lightly on Earth

By Raphael Rubinstein — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100

In a sequel to his 2009 article "Provisional Painting," the author reflects, via artists named and unnamed, on the lure of the unfinished and the uses of doubt.

Illuminations

By Barry Schwabsky — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0100

AMONG THE MOST significant artworks that have come into my life have been a chair, a trash can, a child’s dress. When I look at them as art, I tend to think of them as sculpture. Why do I (sometimes) call them that? As when I bestow the name of art on other things, it’s because of how they prompt me to think about form, appearance, meaning.

At Home with Ai Weiwei

By J.J. Camille — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0100

A rare in-person chat with the dissident artist provides an intimate glimpse into his beleaguered Beijing life.

Sensory Remix

By Leah Ollman — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0100

One of the most edifying— and disorienting—of the “Pacific Standard Time” exhibitions revisits the art of light and surface in Southern California.

Buckle and Flow

By Faye Hirsch — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0100

In ceramics, Arlene Shechet has found the medium that best accommodates her career-long penchant for transformative processes and accidental effects.

The Art Basel Effect

By James S. Russell — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Art Basel Miami Beach put the international art world spotlight on a free-form scene driven by street muralists. Can Wynwood and the Design District survive fashion retail and visitor throngs?

Mono-ha Moment

By Stephen Wallis — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Work from a little-known Japanese movement of the late 1960s and early ’70s is being quietly snapped up by museums and collectors.

Mining the Field

By Joe Fyfe — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0100

In her lively and formally diverse works, the German painter Charline von Heyl eschews ironic attitude while maintaining a cool engagement with the panoply of visual culture.

Theaster Gates

By Lilly Wei — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Whether he builds history-charged sculptures or encourages neighborhood initiatives, Chicagoan Theaster Gates insists that his art be both made and lived.

Atlas Berlin

By Travis Jeppesen — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0100

The author takes a look in the edgiest corners of the Berlin art scene.

Clyfford Still, Unpacked

By Hilarie M. Sheets — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Opening this month, Still’s namesake museum unveils treasures that, because of the artist’s rigid demands, have been hidden for decades.

Transformer: Dana Schutz

By Daniel Belasco — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Dana Schutz casts a coruscating eye on human foibles and the art historical canon in her lush, raucous paintings, currently the subject of a traveling 10-year survey.

Matthew Brannon

By Steel Stillman — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Given the sophistication of Matthew Brannon’s artwork, you might not guess that he was raised in sparsely populated North American wildernesses.

Maurizio Cattelan, All in One

By Michele Robecchi — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100

For most of his career, the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) has been trying to escape the pressures of the art system, attacking it with a sarcastic humor that he often directs against himself as well. Now, he seems to have yielded to its temptations.

Lisa Yuskavage

By Faye Hirsch — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Jesse Murry died not long after my opening at Elizabeth Koury gallery in SoHo, in January 1993. He was the most erudite person I ever met. He was physically grand: tall, with a big belly, and very dominant. He went to Yale graduate school in his late 30s to become a painter after publishing art criticism and being an art history professor.

Ed Ruscha: The Golden State

By Bob Monk — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Known for his precisionist, Pop-inflected paintings that often incorporate text, as well as for a series of tightly focused photo books centered on the environs of Los Angeles, California-based painter Ed Ruscha has achieved an international reputation. A high point in his career came in 2005, when he was the U.S. representative at the Venice Biennale. His exhibition there was enthusiastically received by the public and the press.

Wake-Up Call

By Nancy Princenthal — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0100

A show at the Corcoran features hometown painter Chris Martin, whose paintings defy all manner of spatial, material and formal conventions.

Llyn Foulkes in the Studio

By Ross Simonini — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0100

For more than 50 years, the Los Angeles painter and musician Llyn Foulkes has decried both art world careerism and trends in popular music. At 76, he remains a dissenting voice. Often left out of histories of art, he refers to himself, bittersweetly, as the “Zelig” of contemporary art, referring to the Woody Allen character, a pervasive and influential figure ultimately uncredited for the role he played in 20th-century history.