Ever since critic and theorist Walter Benjamin penned his landmark essay in 1936, it’s been accepted as a kind of common wisdom that the aura of the artwork has withered in the (never-ending) age of mechanical reproduction. But a new study suggests the aura hasn’t vanished entirely yet, and perhaps it never will. “Are Artworks More Like […]
Is an exhibition ever too beautiful for its own good? Jenny Holzer’s new show at Cheim & Read, Dust Paintings, is ravishing. But the sensuality of these text-based abstractions, done in oil on linen in mostly muted colors, runs counter to their content, which is derived from declassified government reports of brutalization and death during the […]
Its Wikipedia entry calls it “a short and violent movement,” and even compared with the aesthetic extremes of the 1960s, the unrelenting art of Vienna Actionism stands apart. After the passage of fifty years, the questions it raised about the limits and origins of art remain no less troubling or closer to resolution. The four […]
As if his museum-filling Whitney retrospective weren’t enough, Jeff Koons currently has a massive sculpture on view at Rockefeller Center. “Split-Rocker,” presented by Gagosian Gallery and organized by the Public Art Fund and real estate developer Tishman Speyer, is comprised of two halves, one the recreated head of a toy pony rocker that belonged to his son, the […]
Can money buy critical immunity? It certainly seems so, judging by critics’ response to the Whitney Museum’s retrospective devoted to the most expensive living artist,Jeff Koons. In this week’s edition of Critical Reduction, we boil down eight critics’ takes on the shiny extravaganza, which, befitting of such a divisive artist, tend to be either vividly enthusiastic or vehemently dismissive. […]
Given that he’s a goliath figure in the art world whose output spans three decades, it may come as a surprise that Jeff Koons’s Whitney retrospective is the artist’s first major solo show at a New York museum. The exhibition offers 150 works dating back to 1978, giving visitors a comprehensive look at the former commodities trader’s ambitious and diverse artistic […]
A generic, brand video. Check out the Video. Do you “buy” what they are selling?
We Go to the Gallery, is a book which is a riff on what’s popularly known in the UK as the Peter and Jane series — early readers that have been published by the Penguin UK imprint Ladybird Books since the 1960s. The Peter and Jane books show the siblings of the same names, plus their Mummy, […]
Disposable and deteriorated, the developer trays used by photographers are usually discarded. Brooklyn-based photographer and printer John Cyr has discovered the beauty in these battered trays, where so many images first appeared.
The dirty alchemy of photographer Roger Ballen in combination with frenetic rap-ravers Die Antwoord resulted in the video for “I Fink U Freeky” in 2012. Now a monograph distills the mix of the South African collaborators to its elements. Roger Ballen / Die Antwoord: I Fink You Freeky, published by Prestel in the fall, cuts […]
Mention Joseph Beuys’ name and the usual iconic gestures come to mind — the objects made from felt and fat; the scribbled-out drawings; the pioneering performances of “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare” (1965) and “I Like America and America Likes Me” (1974) — all of which have borne a profound influence on […]
Remember the kid who climbed on the Donald Judd sculpture at the Tate Modern? Well, her parents have taken to the London Evening Standard to set the record straight. They want the world to know that their daughter, Sissi Belle, was only on the sculpture for a matter of seconds and meant no harm — and that the nine-year-old […]
Bushwick gallerist Stephanie Theodore is at the Tate Modern today and spotted this hilarious/sad/incredible/unbelievable (so many mixed emotions) scene of parents allowing their child to use a Donald Judd sculpture as a … er … a bunk bed. In response to my question of whether she actually took this almost-hard-to-believe scene she responded: yes. I told […]