In Edward Albee’s The Occupant, a play about the American sculptor Louise Nevelson, a nameless interviewer quizzes the artist on her fame and critical fortunes. He mentions the name “Louise Bourgeois.” Nevelson reacts with dismissive hauteur. The implication is clear: The Nevelson character feels threatened by Ms. Bourgeois.
Why, exactly, is left unanswered. Envy Read More
New York Times art critic Ken Johnson recently offered a recommendation to teachers, “a perfect assignment for a college seminar in the history of modern art”: It’s an exhibition called Assemblage at Zwirner and Wirth. Following Mr. Johnson’s advice, I accompanied a group of graduate art students to the Upper East Side to take a Read More
Of the many artists included in Freestyle , a group exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem a couple of years back, one of the few whose work has stayed with me is Jerald Ieans. Freestyle was an accurate and therefore saddening measure of our scattered, anything-goes Zeitgeist (if I may flog that poor word Read More
You know it’s been one of those weeks when the most rewarding gallery exhibition you’ve seen features an artist who has been relegated to the sidelines. Not that Cy Twombly, who’s exhibiting six new paintings and one sculpture at the uptown branch of the Gagosian Gallery, hasn’t had his moments. His signature compendiums of scrawls, Read More
The Spiderwoman Of Rockefeller Center
New York, it has often been remarked, is a city of juxtapositions-typically extreme, at times delightful and too often appalling. One of the more eye-catching juxtapositions is currently on view at Rockefeller Center, where a trio of giant spiders are towering over not only the usual spate of tourists, Read More
Drawings & Sculpture, a group exhibition currently at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, is so modest in tone and even in tempo that it takes a few minutes before one notices how good the work on display is. There’s no theme to the show, unless one is so backward as to consider quality theme enough. Ms. Read More
Each year for the past 17 years, “Between the Bridges,” an outdoor sculpture exhibition, has been held in the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn, a tiny little piece of windswept real estate between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges overlooking New York Harbor and lower Manhattan. Lorraine Walsh and Christopher Drago, curators for this year’s Read More
