Art
Can a weakly conceived and poorly executed exhibition be unforgettable? That is how I would describe my reaction to “Art at War”—“L’art en guerre: France 1938-1947”—the big show about French art during the German Occupation that I caught on the day it was closing in Paris; it opens next week at the Guggenheim Bilbao, where it runs through the summer. READ MORE >>
Inside the GIF-Industrial Complex
How the animated image file took over the Internet
One weekend afternoon in September, Mike Konczal sat down at his computer to research a blog post. Another miserable jobs report had restarted the debate about what, if anything, the Federal Reserve should do to help unemployed Americans find a job. Konczal, a Roosevelt Institute think tanker specializing in economics, wanted to write about it. READ MORE >>
Photography in an Age of Smartphones
When photography is everywhere, when is it art?
Is photography dying? No, not exactly. But the mysteries of the darkroom are by some accounts nearly extinct. And in the age of the smartphone, the art of photography sometimes seems to be vanishing in a cloud of digitalization, with the formal concerns that used to absorb even the sophisticated amateur dissolving as all images become more or less equal. READ MORE >>
George W. Bush, you’re no Dwight Eisenhower. A hacker using the alias Guccifer yesterday posted photographs, emails, cell phone numbers and other sensitive material swiped from the accounts of the Bush family. READ MORE >>
J.M. Coetzee, Curator?
The gravest novelist of our time dives into art world glitz
Berlinde De Bruyckere, an artist known for her disturbing humanoid sculptures, announced last week that she wanted some outside assistance organizing her exhibition for the Belgian pavilion at this summer’s Venice Biennale—but instead of tapping a professional curator, she’s chosen a writer to help her mount the show. And not just any writer. She’s tapped J.M. READ MORE >>
If Ai Weiwei, the much admired Chinese dissident artist, were a character in a novel, I would know exactly what to think about him. I would regard him as a fascination, at once formidable and absurd, courageous and disingenuous, unquestionably brilliant and downright moronic. I would take in stride the outlandish paradoxes that are integral to his reputation. READ MORE >>
