Year in Review: Here Are the Most Talked About Artists of 2017

Year 2017 saw its fair share of controversies, culture wars, and political upheavals, and in some ways, it seems like the art world has run parallel to mainstream culture more than ever in recent decades. Artists have not only responded to the difficult issues that have come to light this year; some have raised controversy […]

Kerry James Marshall: ‘As an artist, everything should be a challenge’

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Kerry James Marshall taught himself to draw and made his first paintings in Harlem YMCA. As a major retrospective opens in LA, he talks about taking on the Old Masters. The day before the crowds get in to his critically praised retrospective, Kerry James Marshall is walking around the Museum of […]

artnet News Critics’ Picks: The Most Memorable Artworks of 2016

While 2016 may have been pretty awful on any number of fronts, we have to admit that it also gave us a lot of pretty great art. Consider Maurizio Cattelan alone, who gave us a solid gold toilet to relieve ourselves on at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, a real life donkey, pooping in the tent […]

Kerry James Marshall’s Paintings Show What It Means to Be Black in America

People say we’re in the middle of a second civil rights movement, and we are. The only surprise is that the first one ever ended. The artistKerry James Marshall was there for it. He was just a kid then, born in Birmingham, Ala., in 1955. But kids take in a lot. He was in Birmingham […]

Three can’t-miss contemporary-art shows in Vancouver

In Vancouver this January, some important moments in contemporary art: A Canadian artist’s Turner Prize-nominated work has its North American premiere; collector/real estate guru Bob Rennie mounts his most complex show yet at his own gallery; and Brian Jungen returns to his seminal source material – sneakers. Western arts correspondent Marsha Lederman walks us through […]

Curator Nicola Vassell on Her New “Black Eye” Show, and Why the Art World Stays So White

There are two shows currently taking place in New York that regard Obama as a touchstone. The first is Michelle Grabner’s festive floor at the Whitney Biennial, where the president stares with distinguished self-possession into the lens of photographer Daywoud Bey. Young and commanding, this is Obama before the announcement of his candidacy in 2008. The moment marks a progressive […]