Alexander Nagel
ALEXANDER NAGEL is a Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Guest Critic
The Prismatic View
By Alexander NagelIn the last Whitney Biennial a significant percentage of the works on view took as their subjects actual historical episodes or addressed earlier moments in the history of art. This is different from artists grappling with and working out of tradition, which is how art gets made at any time.
Alexander Nagel
Alexander Nagel is Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. His last book, Medieval Modern: Art out of Time, was published by Thames and Hudson in 2012.
THE HELD ESSAYS ON VISUAL ART
Beyond the Relic Cult of Art
By Alexander Nagel
I am nostalgic for a time before the modern concept of art forgery had gelled, when it was possible to imagine many ways for artworks to exist out of their time. I love the culture of Renaissance art because it was not settled in its categories, and produced art out of that unsettlement. It knew forgery, but it wrinkled time in other ways as well.
On Scale
By Alexander NagelThree recent books on scale throw a sharp light on attempts at human-based measurements. Each book induces a humbling sense of the limitations of human efforts to understand themselves in relation to their environment, an incipient awareness that also suggests the possibility of imagining alternatives.
