Eleanor Coen’s Pioneering Fresco
Lisa Wainwright's accidental discovery of Chicago artist Eleanor Coen's fresco in Mexico cast fresh light on her early career. More...
From Gay Art to Queer Art in the Pacific Northwest (Part I)
The Pacific Northwest was the only region in the country in the 20th century where an entire art movement was founded exclusively by homosexuals. The so-called Northwest School's four major figures were Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Guy Irving Anderson and Kenneth Callahan. More...
To Swoon, Perchance to Dream
Richard Speer takes a close-up look at the zone separating carnal from spiritual ecstasy in some exceptional artworks. More...
Lagomorphs
The recent auction sale of Jeff Koons' "Bunny" is just the latest reminder how much the big money art market just pisses DeWitt Cheng off. More...
Still a White People’s Place?
On a recent visit to the headline exhibition at San Francisco's Museum of the African Diaspora, Maria Porges noticed how the predominantly African American audience stood in stark contrast with the overwhelmingly white audience you see at most museums. But there may be signs that diversity is taking hold. More...
Configuring Language
David S. Rubin explains how two recent exhibitions, one featuring Allen. Ruppersberg, the other featuring Mel Bochner show how text-based art can be engaging and lively rather than a tedium to get through. More...
Reconsidering the Art Museum Post #MeToo
Manet at the Art Institute of Chicago sounds awfully good. But the show's curators could not have made it any more irrelevant to the present moment. More...
This Must Be the Place
Lorraine Peltz' survey of chandeliers and bouquets are now deeply connected to her late husband, art critic and educator James Yood. More...
Remembering Selma Waldman, Activist Artist
The late Selma Waldman spent most of her career in obscurity but produced some of the most expressive and skillful political art of her generation. More...
My Own Private Artspeak
Everybody claims to hate artspeak, and most of us art critics will offer full-throated denials that we sink to using it. Anyone who writes about art professionally is bound to use certain words and phrases that strike lay ears as esoteric. More...
Never Look Away
The recent film "Never Look Away," loosely based on the life of Gerhard Richter, traces an artist's complex journey from repression to freedom. More...
Dancing Across Genres, Medium Serving Message
When artists have something intensely personal to express, sometimes they do so in a medium different from the one they're most associated with. Richard Speer cites painter Sherrie Wolf's dance choreography and Marne Lucas' shift from photography to film as exceptional examples of just such a leap. More...
The Pros and Cons of Juried Exhibitions
If juried exhibitions offer emerging artists for exposure oapotuntites, they also can place them at the mercy of unscrupulous operators. More...
Charles White
Currently the subject of a LACMA retrospective, Charles White's aesthetic progeny are popping up elsewhere around L.A. to amplify his message. More...
In Praise of Art Criticism
Serious journalism in general and art criticism in particular has honestly never been very lucrative, but it may be more important than ever. More...
Performance Art is Where Liberal Humanism Thrives
That stuff that's not really performance art is being called performance art, argues Lisa Wainwright, ignores the context of its emergence and direction over the last half century. It has from the start been an expression of the tradition of liberal humanism. More...
A Tale of Two Art Sites
Between the recently opened Ed Paschke Art Center and the much ballyhooed Lucas Museum of Narrative of Art to be opened in four years, which do you suppose tells us more about Chicago? More...
A Beautiful Mess
Moving away from the crowded galleries of a blockbuster museum show can lead to unexpected rewards, as Maria Porges recently learned. More...
Art Films
With the recent release of attention grabbing films set in or about the art world, DeWitt Cheng offers a "best of" selection of such films styled as satire, drama and documentary.. More...
What I Didn’t Take Pictures of in Nepal
Leery of social media's trivializing effects he may be, but Richard Speer concedes that it has raised public awareness of the visual realm. On a recent stay in the Himalayas he found plenty of things to photograph and post, but also learned something about what not to photograph. More...
