Near the beginning of A Bigger Splash, Jack Hazan’s newly restored 1974 semi-fictionalized film about British artist David Hockney, the artist’s studio assistant Mo McDermott says in a voiceover, “When love goes wrong, more than two people are affected.” When it comes to Hockney, he’s right. Hazan gives us an intimate look into how forcefully … Continue reading
If you run a Google search for “Stonewall exhibition,” you will find dozens upon dozens of arts and historical venues across the United States that put together shows related (with varying degrees of specificity) to the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. In Philadelphia, Stonewall is being commemorated at Drexel University’s Pearlstein Gallery, in a show of … Continue reading
In her 1994 essay The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity, art historian Linda Nochlin ties the genesis of modernism to the French Revolution, framing the guillotine as a symbol of the severing of inherited dynastic power ushering in an era of radical politics, creativity, and culture. The guillotine becomes representative … Continue reading
It was a quiet Sunday afternoon of perusing exhibitions around the Lower East Side, and somewhat of a synchronistic moment to meet the artist Martin Wilner in midst of his current exhibition The Case Histories at Pierogi. Wilner invited each of the gallery’s artists to produce their own “responsa” to his dialogue with them, each … Continue reading
I can only imagine how impossible it must be to put together a biennial that everyone likes—to curate a group of works over the course of several years that will need to speak to the issues on everyone’s minds in the here and now, even though the news cycle moves at the speed of light. … Continue reading
Michel Houellebecq once wrote, “They would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness—powerless and shame filled—to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies.” Here, Houellebecq speaks of inevitable physical decline as inevitable spiritual decline. With your strength, goes your spirit. With your beauty, goes your hope. Whether we are … Continue reading
I live with Trumpy Bear. Yes, the “I come when the Trumpet sounds. I am the Storm!” Trumpy Bear with a comb-over, a tragic tie, and an enormous American flag built into his back. The one from the commercials airing on Fox News that seem like an SNL skit (what doesn’t anymore?). My relationship with … Continue reading
