Barry Schwabsky

How Soon Was Now?

December 22, 2009

The death, and afterlife, of the Polaroid.

The Resistance of Painting

December 16, 2009

To speak of a movement of abstractionists would be a contradiction in terms, like speaking of a church of atheists.

A Makeshift World

October 21, 2009

For the photographer Thomas Demand, Germany is like any other country because it is haunted by history.

Letters

October 21, 2009

Fever Charts

September 23, 2009

Jack Tworkov's writings wrestle with the figures of Abstract Expressionism and his own lost illusions.

Beyond Exhaustion

August 26, 2009

Does the art of Dan Graham and his disciples promise deceptive simplicity or formulaic thinking?

Hubbub and Stillness

July 1, 2009

The funky chaos of the 2009 Venice Biennale.

A Million Little Pictures

May 13, 2009

Do images understand us, the Pictures generation asked, more than we understand them?

Disquieting and Enraptured

April 2, 2009

Pierre Bonnard's late still lifes, on view at the Met, are lessons in unknowing.

Ceaselessly Opportuning

March 4, 2009

Barbara Guest's Collected Poems showcase her knack for catching sight of time in its act of escaping one's grasp.

The Human Metaphor

February 11, 2009

The paintings of Marlene Dumas, at the Museum of Modern Art, and Barkley Hendricks, at the Studio Museum of Harlem.

Point and Place

December 22, 2008

Democratic Camera: William Eggleston's grand and gorgeous retrospective at the Whitney Museum.

Between the Dead and the Living

December 17, 2008

A new collection of poems by Jack Spicer returns one of the great American visionaries to print.

'Lost as Food and Won as a Coast'

December 2, 2008

Is a new, computer-generated poetry anthology as intriguing--and boring--as the lifework of any fairly prolific poet?

Agony and Ecstasy

November 13, 2008

What we talk about when we talk about art.

The Aesthetic Is the Personal

July 1, 2008

The Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Guggenheim.

Seeing Past the Gorgons

June 19, 2008

The New Yorker's art critic turns his eye toward the cultural summits.

Solemn, Expanded Time

June 5, 2008

An exhibition looks at the bits and pieces that made up some of the great artwork of Californian artist Jess.

Spots, Smudges and Glitter

April 9, 2008

A tour of the New York art galleries reveals a number of talented artists exploring the possibilities of "bad" representational painting.

Daring Intransigence

March 6, 2008

Gustave Courbet's blunt pictorial style and taciturn sensibility prefigured the ambivalence and photographic exactitude of modern painting.

The Where of It

February 5, 2008

The best location for Lawrence Weiner's conceptual art is in the viewer's own imagination.

An Unmonumental Grimace

January 28, 2008

Taking stock of the new New Museum.

Love by a Thousand Cuts

November 21, 2007

Museums can't get enough of Kara Walker, whose silhouettes of the history of slavery seem to be a nightmare she's trying to enjoy.

The Imperfectionist

October 18, 2007

Reconsidering the life and legacy of avant-garde artist and poet Francis Picabia.

Breaking and Entering

May 31, 2007

Gordon Matta-Clark's art displays how empty spaces illuminate the structures they are housed in.

A Painter of Our Time

December 14, 2006

Diego Velázquez was a restless innovator, a painter who slyly revealed the ordinariness of his exalted subjects--one is almost tempted to call him modern.

Modern Love

September 28, 2006

Two new biographies of Clement Greenberg take the measure of an ambitious art critic who had a knack for predicting success.

Octoberfest

December 8, 2005

Four editors of October magazine trace the history of contemporary art. Though Art Since 1900 seeks to be comprehensive, its writers leave out entire movements and impose moralistic judgments on the artists and art they profile.