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(An Appropriate Distance)

 

FROM THE MAYOR'S DOORSTEP

By Piri Halasz

Report from the Front

Art criticism, sometimes with context, occasional politics. New shows: "events;" how to support the online edition: "works."

 

TWO HISTORY STORIES

January 31, 2012
Tags: Emanuel Leutze, Asher B. Durand, Diego Rivera
AT THE MET: AMERICAN ART HISTORY

American art history is such a cozy corner of the discipline. Few scholars paid much attention to it prior to the 1960s, which may help to explain why I knew next to nothing about it when I entered grad school in 1974. In grad school, I learned quite a lot about it, thanks to a couple of excellent courses taught by Barbara Novak, but I also learned that an awful lot of  Read More 
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THE LATEST SUPERSPECTACULAR

January 21, 2012
Once again, it’s time for the super-group show at Sideshow, this year titled “MIC:CHECK (occupy)” (through February 26). Proprietor Richard Timperio explains that the title refers to the “human microphones” that the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators used to get the word out, when they were forbidden to use regular mikes. Timperio is nothing if not an anarchist, and the 489 artists  Read More 
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AB-EX RENEWED

January 3, 2012
Tags: Frank Wimberley
Frank Wimberley (b. 1926). Bayou. 2010. Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 50 in. Collection of Spanierman Modern, New York
Sometimes, it seems, all that an artist really needs is the right gallery. So I conclude, anyway, from Frank Wimberley,” at Spanierman Modern, a vigorous and not-easily-forgotten exhibition of 19 abstract expressionist paintings, brilliantly organized by Alice Hammond (through January 14).

I say, “not easily forgotten” because when I saw  Read More 
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FUN & GAMES IN THE BIG APPLE

January 1, 2012
Tags: Sherrie Levine, Carsten Holler

Maurizio Cattelan’s waxworks are not the only show in a Manhattan museum to dress up a fundamentally silly idea with rafts of bureaucratic stuffing & mountains of portentous Artspeak. Two other museums are also weighing in (if that’s the word I want) with undertakings that are even more outspokenly dedicated to the Duchampian notion that anything can be art if the artist says it is.  Read More 
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REMEMBERING HELEN

January 1, 2012
Tags: Helen Frankenthaler
As most of the world knows by now, Helen Frankenthaler died on December 27. I will miss her, and I'm sure many others will, too. David Cohen has been kind enough to publish my formal tribute to her in his webzine, artcritical.com A few more informal & personal reminiscences follow below. Read More 
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