December 29, 2019
The Pursuit of Art, 2019
MoMA’s recognition of the modernism’s multiverse, alongside artist-led drives for greater transparency on the part of museums and their boards, brought a twinge of optimism to the close of the year.
Thomas Micchelli
This Be the Verse 2019
John Yau and Albert Mobilio select a few of their favorite poetry books from the past year.
Jessica Dismorr Is Getting Her Due, 80 Years Too Late
There is much to praise about Radical Women: Jessica Dismorr and her Contemporaries, and there is not a little to regret.
Michael Glover
The Unsparing Pages of Francis Bacon
Almost 30 years after his death, the unabated edginess of Bacon’s paintings, and the dark literary sources informing them, put the lie to our self-mythologizing.
Tim Keane
SPONSORED
But is it Folk Art? Avant-Garde Quilts and Found Object Assemblages
Coulter Fussell and Butch Anthony work in traditional mediums to examine modern issues.
The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art
A Daily Commute Frames an Author's Reflections
Over the course of her graphic memoir, Commute, Erin Williams acknowledges the lives of people she encounters in her day, but she maintains a steady gaze on herself.
Angelica Frey
The Endlessly Inventive Jörg Immendorff
Imagine Gustave Courbet’s materialism joined to Max Beckmann’s aggressive color, with a dash of Caspar David Friedrich’s visionary panoramas thrown in.
David Carrier
Big Thief's Haunting Musical Dreamworld
The Brooklyn folk-rock band’s two 2019 albums invent an imagined environment with its own internal logic, a densely wooded forest with strange, benevolent creatures lurking in the shadows.
Lucas Fagen
Required Reading
This week, the meme of the decade, historical accuracy and the 1619 Project, how not to discuss African fiction, considering the Black interior art, Chinese restaurants are closing in the US, and more.
Hrag Vartanian
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