Art in America - Most Recent Features

Peculiar and Personal at the Whitney Biennial

By Michael Wilson — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 +0100

"One of the most peculiar galaxies known, this strange system seems to be ejecting material with explosive violence." The description appears in a vintage astronomy book from which Berkeley-based conceptual artist Lutz Bacher has torn 84 illustrated pages, dispersing them on walls throughout the 2012 Whitney Biennial.

Demand's Mirror

By Colin Westerbeck — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Photographing full-size paper replicas of newsworthy sites, Thomas Demand counters the distractions of media glut to create a pared-down, subtly conceptual imagery.

Carol Bove

By Brian Sholis — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Carol Bove's considerable reputation rests upon more than a decade's worth of refined and culturally literate artworks. Her early sculptural installations, often taking the form of plinths or wall-mounted shelves laden with period books and knick-knacks, evoke memories of 1960s- and '70s-era bohemianism, and the individual and societal soul-searching that accompanied the period's wrenching social transformations.

Urban Renewal

By Anne Doran — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Klara Lidén, whose first U.S. museum survey opens this month, challenges social systems with provocative actions and installations staged both in and out of art venues.

Rashid Johnson

By Christopher Stackhouse — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0100

RASHID JOHNSON'S ARTWORKS are meditations on the cultural phenomena that shape African-Americans as a social group. Viewers of his videos, photographs, sculptures, paintings and installations are looking at deft presentations of slippery conceptual surfaces. However, abstract form is equally significant to the artist and guides his process. Craftsmanship, autobiography, design, theater, ambience and historical scholarship are always evident.

Mary Miss

By Nancy Princenthal — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0100

MARY MISS HAS been making art in, and about, the environment since the late 1960s. More specifically, she treats the surface of the landscape as a permeable skin, and pays particular attention to places where the solid parts of the planet meet the watery ones: riverbanks, lakefronts, tidal basins, even an old swimming pool.

Scaling Up

By Ossian Ward — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Is bigger better? That’s a question many artists and architects are facing, as ever-expanding installations, multivenue exhibitions, vast architectural projects and outsize artworks grab the spotlight. Is bigger better? That's a question many artists and architects are facing, as ever-expanding installations, multivenue exhibitions, vast architectural projects and outsize artworks grab the spotlight.

Photography Objet Manque

By Claire Barliant — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Creating sculptures and installations to be photographed and then dismantled, some contemporary artists put a fresh spin on the notion of photographic truth.

Weegee as Witness

By Luc Sante — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Accidents, suicides, violent crimes, derelicts, cheap entertainers and luminous celebrities—these are the stuff of Weegee’s tabloid photos, starkly imaging mid-20th-century urban America.

Muse: The Interview

By Liz Magic Laser — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Today, the interview positions the artist— who experienced similar transformations in the 20th century—as the reality behind the work.

Lutz Bacher

By Andrew Berardini — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Bay Area artist Lutz Bacher is receiving wider art-world attention after decades of cult accolades, but her work stubbornly resists characterization.

Photography in Flux: Reinventing the Medium

By staff — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

John Chamberlain 1927-2011

By David Ebony — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0100

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/files/2012/02/02/img-chamberlain-departure-_125952464012.jpg_standalone.jpg

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.