ArtSeen
LUCIE STAHL: End of Tales
By Simone KrugLucie Stahl drags her viewers onto the battlefield. An ideological war is being waged, and refuge is a remote, idyllic conceit.
MYSTICAL SYMBOLISM: THE SALON DE LA ROSE+CROIX IN PARIS, 1892—1897
By Ann McCoyJoséphin Péladan’s (1858-1918) portrait by Jean Delville (1895) as “Sâr Mérodack,” white robed and posed like a Byzantine Christ Pantocrator “ruler of all” with an arm raised in benediction, greets the exhibition’s viewer.
RADICAL BODIES: Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer in California and New York, 1955—1972
By Kaitlyn A. Kramer“Photographs really are experience captured,” writes Susan Sontag in On Photography. The camera’s appropriation of living moments, freezing them as images, “feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power.” When still images are extracted, they are dissociated from their context and, over time, distill the events they represent.
BLUE BLACK: Curated by Glenn Ligon
By Jason RosenfeldIt is a fraught moment to be discussing race and politics in art. The developing story of the national reassessment of disgraceful Confederate monuments has productively unearthed, for the general public, the symbolic power of art and its propagandistic role in perpetuating systems of power and control.
MARY HEILMANN: RYB: Mary Heilmann paintings 1975—1978
By David RhodesBefore becoming one of the most eminent abstract painters of her generation, Mary Heilmann arrived in New York as a sculptor in 1968. Exploring Pearl Paints, a short distance from her Chinatown loft, (Barnett Newman among many others had bought supplies at the famed, now-shuttered retailer), Heilmann initially decided against using the wide range of pigments on offer, avoiding what she referred to as “pretty” color and working in a restricted palette of earth tones and white. In 1974, however, her art underwent a substantial shift.
ALVIN BALTROP: Selected by Douglas Crimp
By Osman Can YerebakanIn one of Alvin Baltrop’s photographs at Galerie Buchholz, the late queer icon and activist, Marsha P. Johnson joyfully smiles at the camera. Her face is nested in voluptuously flowing hair as she leans toward Baltrop’s lens. None of the seventy-two photographs on display are dated with precision.
Transitions: Dong Yuan, Lam Tung-Pang, and Lao Tongli
By Alex WoodendThese days, news about China is sure to mention its “rise,” “economic upheaval,” or “corruption.” The Chinese government now plays a large role in world politics. Urbanization has transformed the landscape, creating some of the world’s most populous and polluted cities.
RICHARD GERSTL
By Will FenstermakerMuch has been penned about the twenty-five volatile years leading to Richard Gerstl’s death in early November 1908, when the young painter hanged and stabbed himself in the heart.
DON VAN VLIET: WORKS ON PAPER
By Jonathan GoodmanDon Van Vliet—better known as the late, great rock singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Captain Beefheart, who collaborated with the equally gifted guitarist and composer Frank Zappa in the 1970s—made visual art even as he was establishing himself as one of the most experimental and inspired musicians in rock and roll.
RAPHAEL RUBINSTEIN AND HEATHER BAUSE: THE MIRACULOUS
By Michael McFaddenTwo yellow posters hang on the outside of the MD Anderson Library at the University of Houston. In summer, the campus was no longer abuzz the way it is in spring, but a student, mid-20s with baseball hat drawn to the brow in an attempt to block the Texan sun, stopped to read them.
RAILING OPINION
By Hans HaackeHi, I just found the article by Timothy Francis Barry about documenta 14 in the July/August issue of the Brooklyn Rail. Apparently, due to the author’s misunderstanding of an explanation he was given, he stated that I had adopted a neo-Nazi slogan for the banners and posters I designed for display in Kassel (and in Athens).
Abstract Expressionism Behind the Iron Curtain
By Joyce BeckensteinIn 1945, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner purchased an 1879 farmhouse in Easthampton, New York that is today the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center. Here, they created the iconic paintings that helped launch a distinctly American style of Abstract Expressionism.
BELKIS AYÓN:NKAME
By William WhitneyThe first emotion that hits upon entering NKAME is intrigue. Belkis Ayón died. She was 32. She killed herself.
CAMERON MARTIN:
ABSTRACTS AND RETICULATIONS
By Robert R. Shane
Cameron Martin is known for his black-and-white landscape paintings informed by semiotics, but for the last three years the artist has been working on a new body of nonrepresentational paintings and drawings.
ART/AFRIQUE, LE NOUVEL ATELIER (ART/AFRICA, THE NEW WORKSHOP)
By Eliza NicholsArt/Afrique, le nouvel atelier at the Louis Vuitton Foundation comes at a time when France is celebrating artists from the African continent on a scale hitherto unknown.
MAUREEN GALLACE: CLEAR DAY
By David RhodesThis sparingly hung exhibition, including over seventy works, is the largest gathering to-date of Connecticut born artist Maureen Gallace’s (b. 1960) small-scale paintings. While it is easy to see precedents for these paintings—Fairfield Porter, Jane Freilicher, Lois Dodd, and Alex Katz—the paintings are distinctly singular; in a genre tradition, but certainly not generic.
TAKE BACK THE FIGHT: RESISTING SEXUAL VIOLENCE FROM THE GROUND UP
By Laura HatryBefore the annus horribilis of the election of 2016, Rebecca Solnit described 2014 as a year of “feminist insurrection against male violence.”1 Within this spirit, Louise Barry, Rachel Corbman, Melissa Forbis, Lani Hanna, and Monica Johnson mounted this historical overview of artist’s resistance against sexual violence.
Analog Currency
By Simone KrugOversize pixels flash on the screen, rearranging shapes to resemble faces. John Houck’s Portrait Landscape (2017) applies custom facial-recognition software to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 classic Blow-Up, in which a fashion photographer examines the grainy exposures on his contact sheet only to notice he has inadvertently recorded a murder.
QUEER BRITISH ART 1861-1967
By William CorwinCome with a thorough knowledge of Britain’s queer subculture or be prepared to take notes: the convoluted, colorful, and vibrant world of alternating genders, orientations, romantic attachments, and associations is the focus of this exhibition.
