Raising Cosmic Consciousness
The topic of cosmic consciousness in art takes a front seat in current and recent shows in Houston of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. More...
A Century-and-a-Half Minting Artists
James Yood has spent 25 years on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. With SAIC marking its 150th anniversary, it is clear that Yood would be happy to continue working there through the 200th anniversary. More...
My Only Advice
With the recent retirement of Kenneth Baker, we welcome Charles Desmarais to the key role of art critic at The SF Chronicle. DeWitt Cheng offers the longtime museum Director and art school President a few suggestions. More...
The Broad, the Veil, the Scorching Sun
The concrete-and-fiberglass "veil" of the newly opened Broad museum serves as a hermetic fortress designed as much to keep the climate out as the art treasures safe. Form does not follow function but serves as a harbinger of ozone depletion. More...
Poland’s Cultural Recovery
National museums in Warsaw and Krakow provide a yardstick by which Poland's recovery from historical and cultural abuses may be measured. More...
Wallace Berman and the Dawning of the Information Age
Wallace Berman was not only a key figure in the emergence of California assemblage, but his now classic Verifax collages were remarkably prophetic in both aesthetic and technological ways. More...
Darn, Trump Beat Me To It
A number of commentators have pegged the Presidential candidacy of Donald Trump as a kind of performance art, and not exactly to praise him. Bill Lasarow draws on some other aesthetic precedents to further illuminate where Trump's prospective leadership might take us. More...
Constant Change
The format of the gallery exhibition has long served as the art world's model of presentation. Could that era be coming to an end? More...
Hometown Expats
It's tempting to gripe about the well known pattern of artists moving into a crummy neighborhood to get cheap space; upgrading the area and making it cool; and then being priced out. DeWitt Cheng offers some upside reflections. More...
The Artist as Charity
It makes us feel very nice to see artists contributing their work for glittery charity events that support good causes, no doubt. But might there be a dark ring around such an apparently clean transaction? More...
Holocaust Memorials of Poland Cross Political Eras
Recently in Poland, Matthew Kangas encountered a series of Holocaust memorials that over a half century reflected changes in how and to what degree history and political reflection shapes aesthetic intent. More...
Jesús Moroles: Connecting Us to the Cosmos
Jesús Moroles died recently in a tragic car accident. He will be remembered as one of his generations major public artists and an absolute magician in the use of granite, which he used to create monuments connecting the earth to the cosmos. More...
Still Nothing Like Venice
It's got to be the most stressful to negotiate, chaotically presented art festival in the world, but between Venice itself and its impossibly sprawling Biennale there remains nothing of comparable excitement in the art world today. More...
An Aesthetic of Political Audacity
Are gender-based and political issues still viable in art criticism today? is the 13th question discussed by DeWitt Cheng in his series of responses to the venerable Irving Sandler. More...
“Getting” Abstraction. Or Not
Richard Speer continues to be dumbfounded by the remaining degree of public resistance to art that does not represent the familiar. Oddly, a dance performance recently provided him with the reason why. More...
Frye Salon
Historically under appreciated, the founding collection of the Frye Museum today can no longer be dismissed thanks to fresh knowledge. More...
Zombie Abstraction (Pt 3)
Abstraction in the 21st century remains both a vital and relevant part of today's art world, particularly in the right hands. More...
Time to Declare Victory
At the recent "Superscript" conference addressing "Arts Journalism in a Digital Age," James Yood listened to what has become a familiar litany of challenges and ills and comes to his own conclusion. More...
Writers and Art Mags
DeWitt Cheng continues his dialogue with Irving Sandler's 2012 questions to art writers: How do art magazine policies affect art criticism? More...
"When Rivers Flow Like a Stream of Glass"
Richard Speer's recent stay in New Zealand heightened his awareness of the relationship between color and place, of water deeply saturated yet also transparent. More...
