Isa Genzken at MoMA and the Schizoconsumerist Aesthetic

They love, love, love Isa Genzken over at the Museum of Modern Art, where the artist’s first major American museum survey remains on view through March 10, before traveling to museums in Chicago and Dallas. The 65-year-old Berlin-based German sculptor, whose 150 works fill 10 open-plan galleries on the museum’s sixth floor, is “one of the most important artists […]

Saltz: The Next MoMA Expansion Is As Big a Mess As the Last One

The word art barely came up. Maybe that’s why midway through this excruciatingly verbose three-hour closed-door briefing about MoMA’s second major rebuilding in less than ten years, I felt my eyes tear up and my stomach turn.

What Was the Pictures Generation?

“The Pictures Generation” is as elusive as any label attached to a group of contemporary artists. As it is often used, the phrase refers to a range of painters and photographers active during the 1970s and ‘80s whose work made use of images appropriated from mass culture. With that understanding, it’s easy to conjure up some […]

Walter Robinson’s New Year’s Resolution to Forget 2013

We begin 2014 with a resolution, and that is to leave all the unfinished business of 2013 behind—to be done with it, to turn our back on it and give it not another thought. After all, we don’t want to start the new year by getting distracted by all the unexplored themes and missed opportunities […]

Breakfast with the FT: Nicholas Penny

“The National Gallery’s great advantage is that we are obliged to give prominence to works of art that are important in the collection but don’t mean much to people today,” he says cheerfully. Conceptual works by trendy names – notably installations by Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger alongside Titian in 2012 – have entered the […]

He’s back … honestly! Chinese camouflage artist returns …

They may look like plain old photographs of road sides and supermarkets, but these meticulous images take hours to construct.  It is the latest series of camouflage trickery unveiled by artist Liu Bolin, or ‘the invisible man’, who made his name blending into the background of everyday scenes.

Sculptor Anish Kapoor brings new stone works to old Istanbul

For his first major show in Turkey, famed Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor brought huge works that have never before been exhibited to a gallery that ripped down walls to accommodate him. Massive slabs of rough-hewn slate, polished Iranian onyx and rough sandstone, weighing a combined 110 tonnes, dominate the galleries at Istanbul’s Sakip Sabanci Museum.

Returning Home, but Always Going Forward Recent David Hockney Work at the de Young in San Francisco

At 76, David Hockney is in one of his primes, and apparently he knows it. Not for nothing is his exuberant, immersive survey at the de Young Museum here cheekily titled “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition.” By then [early 1980’s] Mr. Hockney was one of the most popular of all living artists. Thousands of people […]

Glorious 40-Part Motet returns to National Gallery for holidays – video

 The National Gallery has re-installed  Forty-Part Motet, the sound work by Janet Cardiff that is one of the very best things in the Gallery’s permanent collection. Forty-Part Motet consists of 40-plus voices, each singing its own part of the 16th-century choral piece Spem in Alium, by Thomas Tallis, and each heard through its own speaker. The 40 speakers are […]

Power 100 – Artinfo

Soft power, wall power, purchasing power, power alliances, perennial power, emerging power, power plays: there are as many different ways to wield influence in the art world as there are personalities who do so. Herewith, Art+Auction’s annual list of the top players – from the Renaissance to the Contemporary cutting edge – in auctions, galleries, […]

Martin Creed – A Complexity that Trumps Similarities

Sometimes I think the British artist-musician Martin Creed makes art for dummies, not excluding myself. At the same time, his accumulations and arrangements of everyday objects and materials initially seem so rudimentary and forthright that they can also make you feel smart. Roberta Smith reviews Martin Creed

What the Hell Is Food Stamp Art Doing at Art Basel?

Thanks to Paula Cooper Gallery, ABMB visitors have four more days to take in the most offensive artwork in the fair: Meg Webster’s “Food Stamp Table.” Comment:  Paddy Johnson and ArtFCity usually get it right, but not here, we say.  We think these issues do need to be raised, even at an art fair.

Kanye West’s “Bound 2″: Blame It on the Collector Class

Watching Kanye West’s “Bound 2” is about as joyous as romping through a stock photography website. The generic sprawling sunsets, mountain vistas, and gradient backgrounds are airless. Our two protagonists are large as gods, with Kim Kardashian reclining in the buff—though her nipples are airbrushed—playing a human hood ornament atop Kanye West’s motorcycle. These two celebrities, and a […]