Hans Janssen’s Piet Mondrian: A Life gives a comprehensive picture of the Dutch artist’s life and character, but leaves some questions unanswered.
David Carrier
David Carrier’s most recent books are Art Writing Online: The State of the Art World and Philosophical Skepticism as the Subject of Art: Maria Bussmann’s Drawings. His book In Caravaggio’s Shadow: Naples as a Work of Art is forthcoming.
Posted inBooks
What’s Behind the Angel of History?
Annie Bourneuf’s Beyond the Angel of History brilliantly shows that the significance of Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus” may still be hidden.
Posted inArt
David Bailly’s Puzzle of a Painting
The longer I looked at Bailly’s “Vanitas Still Life with Portrait of a Young Painter” the more puzzled I became by it.
Posted inArt
How Anthony Daley Abstracts Rubens
In the work of Rubens, painter Anthony Daley finds correspondences of color that can carry expressive meanings abstractly.
Posted inArt
The Single Detail That Changed My Mind About Alex Katz
A little detail in an artwork can reveal that sometimes what is right on the surface can change our understanding of the whole.
Posted inOpinion
Why I Won’t Be Visiting the Warhol Show in Saudi Arabia
I couldn’t in good conscience accept an invitation to an exhibition hosted and sponsored by a brutal regime.
Posted inArt
The Church of Secular Art
Bill Viola’s installation at a Naples church misses the spiritual mark.
Posted inBooks
Who Holds the Power in Art?
If art is power, as Farah Nayeri’s Takedown consistently shows, then how can galleries and museums successfully negotiate relationships of power?
Posted inArt
Looking Anew at a Strange Matisse Masterpiece
In 1911 Matisse created “The Red Studio,” a self-enclosed world in his studio, by showing 11 earlier works of art, without the presence of the artist.
Posted inArt
Sean Scully’s Abstract Paintings Have Stories to Tell
Minimalism sought to empty out narrative pictorial content. Scully’s goal has been to put it back.
Posted inArt
An Artist’s Monument to the Monotony of Images
Bayrle creates an art gallery version of computer reproductions of unreality. His art inhabits a world composed of repeated ready-made images.
Posted inArt
What Can We Learn From Italy’s Early Leftist Modernists?
The artists in Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917 faced a real problem: how to represent injustices and project a hopeful vision of what changes were possible?
