New York

 Left: Pablo Picasso, The Sculptor , 1931, oil on plywood, 285 x 96 cm; right: Pablo Picasso, The Supplicant Woman , 1937, gouache on wood, 24 x 18.5 cm. Both: © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy: Musée national Picasso, Paris

Left: Pablo Picasso, The Sculptor, 1931, oil on plywood, 285 x 96 cm; right: Pablo Picasso, The Supplicant Woman, 1937, gouache on wood, 24 x 18.5 cm. Both: © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy: Musée national Picasso, Paris

Warming over Hannah Gadsby’s stand-up Picasso takedown from 2018, “It’s Pablo-matic” undermines the Brooklyn Museum’s own staff and even gatekeeps the privileges of non-expertise.

 View of “Project for a New American Century,” Whitney Museum of American Art, 2023. Photo: Ron Amstutz

View of “Project for a New American Century,” Whitney Museum of American Art, 2023. Photo: Ron Amstutz

In New York, a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney recaps Josh Kline’s horrorcore journalization of the 21st-century precariat.

 Amar Kanwar, The Torn First Pages , 2004–08

Amar Kanwar, The Torn First Pages, 2004–08, 19-channel b/w and color video, sound, silent, varying duration

A blockbuster survey at MoMA, New York, lauds video art as a democratic counter to hegemonic power. But with AI usurping its witness function with endless content invention, is “Signals” actually the medium’s post-mortem?

The cultish bravura of New York’s most in-crowd shit-poster led to predictions of an in-cinema shooting at the premiere. But reflecting a scene back at itself is not an insight into our incoherent condition – it’s a hype tactic.

 View of “Intertwined,” New Museum, New York, 2023. Courtesy: the artist and New Museum. Photo: Dario Lasagni

View of “Intertwined,” New Museum, New York, 2023. Courtesy: the artist and New Museum. Photo: Dario Lasagni

The largest-ever retrospective of a living artist at the New Museum, New York charts Wangechi Mutu’s turn from the material resonance of found-object collages to the easy symbolic iterations of bronze sculpture.

Xiyadie, Sorting sweet potatoes (Dad, don't yell, we're in the cellar sorting sweet potatoes), 2019, papercut with water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 140 x 140 cm. All images courtesy: the artist

An exhibition of Xiyadie’s steamy papercuts at The Drawing Center, New York narrates his four-decade usurpation of a traditionalist folk form and a coming-out transition from shame to bliss.

 Senga Nengudi performing Air Propo at Just Above Midtown, 1981. Courtesy: Senga Nengudi

Senga Nengudi performing Air Propo at Just Above Midtown, 1981. Courtesy: Senga Nengudi

MoMA looks back on the New York gallery Just Above Midtown (1974–86), a hub for Black abstract and conceptual artists long omitted from the canon.

   Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait , 1658

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1658

For his October column, Dean Kissick writes a roundup of New Yorks fall exhibitions. They are many, so many, and pleasant, so pleasant, as palliatives for a doomed dying world.

 Jake and Dinos Chapman, Disasters of War #9 (after Goya)  (1999)

Jake and Dinos Chapman, Disasters of War #9 (after Goya) (1999)

Violent videos fill up art shows, TikTok feeds, and telegram chats. This month, Dean Kissick wonders: how do we reckon with the chilling fog of content? 

 Cassidy Grady in  Dimes Square  (2022)

Cassidy Grady in Dimes Square (2022)

A new play by Matthew Gasda takes on the politics and power-plays of a notorious Lower East Side locale. 

 Kate Cooper, Somatic Aliasing  (2021). Courtesy the artist

Kate Cooper, Somatic Aliasing (2021). Courtesy the artist

With nostalgia taking hold at The New Museum Triennial and MoMA PS1’s survey of Greater New York, Dean Kissick wonders: what’s so great about it? When art gets sucked back into tradition, where is the future to be found?

 The Harrowing of Hell by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch, 16th century

The Harrowing of Hell by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch, 16th century

Have we blown past the point of Peak Identity? Continuing on the heels of last month’s column, Dean Kissick considers how memes and masks have superseded the performance of the self.

 Balenciaga Spring ’22, Look 64: “Demna”

Balenciaga Spring ’22, Look 64: “Demna”

Are we human, or are we content? Dean Kissick ponders Demna Gvasalia, Donda, the cult of celebrity, and the actual occult in this month’s Downward Spiral.

Gauntlett Cheng’s A/W 2018 runway show, featuring canine companions. Photo: Chris Thomas

In lieu of this year’s New York Fashion Week, Natasha Stagg gets a front row seat to the weird pet parade. 

Sex is Comedy (2002) dir. Catherine Breillat

Why does film  an art form built on stardom, visual pleasure, and control – have such a persistent sexual misconduct problem? It's an industry full of either monsters or geniuses, depending on who you ask. 

 Tombstone, Arizona.

Tombstone, Arizona.

With an uptick in breakthrough cases and breakups, what’s left in New York? The shambles of the Astor Place Kmart, some piecemeal conspiracy theories about who controls it all – models, probably – and the Friends Experience (not to be confused with having friends).

 FBoy Island on HBO Max (2021)

FBoy Island on HBO Max (2021)

Good poetry and graceful aging might be casualties of the reality TV era, but at least we can all star in our own private dramas – or opt out and gossip anonymously. 

 Photo: Natasha Stagg

Photo: Natasha Stagg

Even in a summer of change, some things remain the same. NATASHA STAGG’s column is back. This week, for the first installment, she observes that certain constants – like FOMO and self-delusion – are here to stay.

 Inside China Chate, n.d.

Inside China Chalet, n.d.

Out Of State (part 8) is back in New York, and there NATASHA STAGG wonders about the future of the restaurant biz and all of the people that used to flock to the Big Apple for the good eats and parties. Did we see this coming?

DEAN KISSICK takes us through the troubled beginnings of the 2020s, charting his own history in New York, and the timeline of events of the previous decade that brought us here. Writing is the best cure for amnesia. 

 Liza Minelli in “New York, New York” by Martin Scorsese

Liza Minelli in “New York, New York” by Martin Scorsese

Get your black spandex tights and head down broadway musical memory lane with NATASHA STAGG in her seventh installment of OUT OF STATE. After the curtain drops, there's still New York behind any rendition of "New York, New York." Which is your favourite?

Sanya Kantarovsky, As ye sow, so shall ye reap, 2020, oil and watercolor on linen, 127 × 101.6 cm

Gertrude Abercrombie,White Cat and Red Carnations, 1941, oil on canvas, 40.6 cm × 50.8 cm, 61.6 × 71.75 cm (framed)

Nell Blaine, Untitled, 1957, oil on canvas laid to Masonite, 76.2 × 55.88 cm

 All photos by Natasha Stagg

All photos by Natasha Stagg

NATASHA STAGG’S third column focuses on speech acts, and the elected officials who seem incapable of delivering them with any eloquence. As the US just celebrated the 4th of July, maybe the fireworks will do a better job of speaking for New Yorkers than the old dudes behind a podium.

Why isn't anyone having sex in New York?

 Hudson Yards viewed from Central Park

Hudson Yards viewed from Central Park

By Joanna Kloppenburg

 Greene Naftali Gallery, 508 W. 26th Street

Greene Naftali Gallery, 508 W. 26th Street

Carol Greene interviewed by Kari Rittenbach

Mike Pepi on Reed Partners

 Photo: Kira Wilson

Photo: Kira Wilson

Jordan Barse on raiding Barneys

 Susan Alexandra, Runway Show

Susan Alexandra, Runway Show

Natasha Stagg on New York Fashion Week

 Tim Griffin, Dan Graham

Tim Griffin, Dan Graham

What happened to underground music in New York?

What is the relationship between art and real estate in New York?

 Gelatin, The B-Thing , 2000 World Trade Center I. Photo: © Gelitin 

Gelatin, The B-Thing, 2000 World Trade Center I; All images: © Gelitin 

There’s so much mystery surrounding Austrian collective Gelatin’s The B-Thing that some believe it never really took place. This barely plausible architectural intervention on the ninety-first floor of the World Trade Center in 2000 was shown – once and once only – to a lucky handful of invited guests. Among them was artist Maria Hassabi, who witnessed the events on a Sunday morning in Lower Manhattan. By Maria Hassabi 

 Guggenheim Museum, New York, Countryside: the Future

Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal, “Countryside, the Future”, Guggenheim Museum, New York

The countryside is synonymous with the desires for escape, health, self-sustainability, and many other things that might well describe the current mood under the threat of corona. DEAN KISSICK weighs in on one exhibition that presents the nether reaches as just that: somewhere far away. 

“Nine Weeks of Art and Action”

Protest at the Whitney Museum in New York in 2019

Photo: Andres Rodriguez

New York has been called Gotham, a modern Gomorrah, Empire City of the New World, the city of dreams, and the capital of the art world. If you fake it in here, you fake it anywhere, right? Rahel Aima on the immorality of New York.

 Montez Press Radio photographed by Taylor Ervin

Montez Press Radio photographed by Taylor Ervin

A love letter to Montez Press Radio from Dean Kissick

George Maciunas founded one of the most influential art movements of the 20th century: Fluxus. Embodying its principle that art must not congeal, in everything he did he transformed the lives of artists and in so doing transformed the fate of SoHo. By Gerry Beegan

 Zanele Muholi Masihambisane - On Visual Activism (2017) A Performa 17 Commission Photo: Paula Court; Courtesy Performa

Zanele Muholi
Masihambisane - On Visual Activism (2017)
A Performa 17 Commission

Photo: Paula Court; Courtesy Performa

Performa director RoseLee Goldberg talks to Maximilian Geymüller about the 2019-edition, and artists’ attraction to performance.

 Artwork by Ed Fornieles showing Amalia, Dean and Ed passing through New York on their way to Los Angeles four years ago

Artwork by Ed Fornieles showing Amalia, Dean and Ed passing through New York on their way to Los Angeles four years ago

DEAN KISSICK on what he has learnt from the greatest city in the world

At the Ukrainian National Home, East Village / 3 November, 2018

 Rose Salane The Failure to Address  (detail, found postcard, 2018) Courtesy the artist and Carlos/Ishikawa Company hosting Carlos/Ishikawa, London

Rose Salane
The Failure to Address (detail, found postcard, 2018)

Courtesy the artist and Carlos/Ishikawa

Company hosting Carlos/Ishikawa, London

This month DEAN KISSICK visits 19 galleries on a summer’s day

 Photo: Tseng Kwong Chi

As New York's East Village is becoming host to a score of elite art organisations, the question of whether the local creativity they endorse is still alive and well comes to the fore. By Ariella Wolens

 Archie Burnett

Archie Burnett

Dancer Archie Burnett, the first Father of the House of Ninja, talks about 45 years of Vogue and Waacking

 Photo by Amalia Ulman

Photo by Amalia Ulman

What does it mean today to have a life with kids, to have a life in art, and to live a life? Why are children and the artist's life so hard to unite? Or is this a false assumption? Spike Art Daily dedicates a series of interviews to the problematic relationship that the art industry has with its offspring. In this interview Lauren Boyle and Marco Roso, two of the four members of DIS, talk about why the concept of family is just "too much for the art world" and the differences between raising kids in Berlin and New York.

 I am an artwork and I am 3 years old ,  2004 Acrylic paint on wall and box Courtesy die Künstlerin und kaufmann repetto, Milan/New York

I am an artwork and I am 3 years old, 2004, acrylic paint on wall and box
Courtesy die Künstlerin und kaufmann repetto, Milan/New York

Lily van der Stokker's wall paintings and installations play on the decorative, the “nice” and the “girly”. Gossip, celebrity friends, and the always-dirty home find a place on the museum's walls, which become a diary full of colourful flowers and clouds. In this way, the artist has developed not only her own approach to image and text but also a feminist strategy: “Nonshouting Feminism” as she calls it.

 Lady Bunny and RuPaul

Lady Bunny and RuPaul

Originally envisioned as a survey show of emerging artists, the fourth instalment of “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1 changes tract and raises the average artist age to a getting-on-a-bit 48. Through the more mature positions the difference between old New York and the “Post-Bloomburg iteration we’ve inherited” becomes startlingly clear. Musing on the inclusion of videos of drag performers by Nelson Sullivan and the cruising photographs of Alvin Baltrop, our writer gets nostalgic for the salad days of NYC.

 Drawing by Dan Perjovich for Spike

Drawing by Dan Perjovich for Spike

Many people are anxious that the growing class divide in the art world and the succession of record-breaking prices paid for contemporary art endanger the belief system supporting it. But why is nobody worried about money itself? Isn’t what happens at an auction that money celebrates its freedom, its release from the burden of being a means of comparison? Is art the new money? On a currency that lives from the bank of the gaze, into which we all make payments.

 McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg

McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg

The New York–based artist shows us everything but her studio.

Crystal Cinema I, Marina Abramovic

It was one of the biggest meetings of art and pop culture in the last ten years. But was it also a game changer? And what were the consequences for the participants? When Jay-Z adapted Marina Abramović's performance "The Artist is Present" (2010) for his video "Picasso Baby" at New York's Pace Gallery in 2013, many wondered: how did Abramović end up here? New York’s art scene was the audience, with Abramović herself as the star. Looking back, Marina wonders this too. At her recent retrospective at SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, she openly discussed the drawbacks of having replaced the physical, face-to-face encounter with the camera, and having become a brand.

 Photo: Johannes Worsøe Berg

Photo: Johannes Worsøe Berg

The New York-based Norwegian artist is drawn to big subjects – violence, sexuality, destruction, aging, self-expression. His exhibitions are dense installations packed with paintings, sculptures, readymades, photographs, and contributions from friends working with art, design, or literature. Jennifer Krasinski speaks to him about the visual dimension of writing, the death drive in homosexuality, and the irrelevance of cultural relevance.

 Kathy Acker at 26th Studio, New York 1990

Kathy Acker at 26th Studio, New York 1990
Photo: Michel Delsol

Chris Kraus writes about the renewal of interest in this controversial punk icon.

Untitled, 2015
Oil on canvas
16 1/8 x 13 inches (41 x 33 cm)
Framed: 18 5/8 x 15 1/2 x 1 3/4 inches (47.3 x 39.4 x 4.4 cm) 

 

Untitled, 2014
Oil on canvas
10 1/2 x 13 3/4 inches (27 x 35 cm)
Framed: 13 3/16 x 16 1/2 x 1 3/4 inches (33.5 x 41.9 x 4.4 cm)

 

Untitled, c. 1970
Pastel on paper
9 1/2 x 11 13/16 inches (24 x 30 cm)
Framed: 13 1/4 x 15 1/2 x 1 5/8 inches (33.7 x 39.4 x 4.1 cm)

 

 Bjarne Melgaard, »Ignorant Transparencies«, 2013 Installation view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York

Bjarne Melgaard, »Ignorant Transparencies«, 2013
Installation view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York

Jordan Wolfson, (Female figure) 2014, 2014
Mixed media
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London
Photo: John Smith

For many visitors, Jordan Wolfson’s robot represents a first contact with the most technologically developed and also most disturbing robot they have ever seen. But can the gallery space do justice to the experience? After all, a robot is only as evil as the world into which it is placed.