Wu Guanzhong: Better in Black and White

The promise of Chinese ink paintings inflected with a contemporary sensibility had me running to the current exhibition at the Asia Society: "Revolution in Ink: The Paintings of Wu Guanzhong" (on view through August 5). Wu (1919-2010) taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, meaning his work was largely in offical favor, though he did encounter harsh criticism during the Cultural Revolution for...

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Ryan McGinley: Bestiality (Not That There's Anything Wrong With That)

Among all contemporary artists, Ryan McGinley has the best eye for--and access to--hot, frisky youths. His photographs of nude beauties of both sexes frolicking in nature and with each other may not be great art--but they certainly make you envious of the artist, who clearly is having a damn good time with his camera. Classic McGinley: "Holding Hands" (2003) He currently has exhibitions (through...

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Pick of the Week: Sheila Hicks

This pick of the week is easy: Sheila Hicks' exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins, on view through June 2. The artist, born in 1934, has been making work for more than five decades; this is her first show at the gallery with perhaps the best taste in Chelsea. Sheila Hicks "Androise" (mono filament, linen slate) 2005 Using interesting materials with great intelligence to make objects of unusual beauty...

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Whitney Biennial 2012: One Room Only

This year's Whitney Biennial was the worst I've seen in my 20-plus years of attending, which I guess makes 10 versions. At least part of the blame belongs to Jay Sanders, the show's co-curator and a director at a commercial gallery, Greene Naftali, through November 2010.Two the Biennial artists are in the Greene Naftali stable (Richard Hawkins, John Knight) --and neither are big-time-biennial worthy. Another...

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Flip-Flop Feelings: Brice Marden, Dana Schutz, Marlborough Gallery

Three shows now on view at Chelsea galleries have upended some of my longstanding aesthetic assumptions. I've loved Dana Schutz's figurative work from her first exhibition at Zach Feuer in 2004. Her bold, brushy, overscaled canvases typically have featured genuinely & wonderfully disturbing compositions: self-eating cannibals, grotesquely twisted and deformed bodies, operating rooms...

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Henry Taylor: Skin in the Game

One of the many reasons I love PS1 is that it's one of the few museums that regularly introduces an old art addict like me me to talents with whom I'm not familiar. Case in Point: The Henry Taylor show on view now in the main, first-floor exhibition area through April 9. Henry Taylor, "Huey Newton (2007) The majority of the show is taken up with mid-sized paintings, mostly portraits and mostly...

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Sculpture Center: Hidden Gem Is One of NYC's Coolest (and Scariest) Art Venues

I made one of my quarterly visits to Queens on Sunday, March 18, drawn primarily by the Henry Taylor show at PS1 (more on that in a later post), but I also swung by the Sculpture Center--one of my favorite exhibition spaces in the city. Exterior view of the Sculpture Center  If you don't like crowds or lines--indeed, if you like having art all to yourself--the Sculpture Center is for you....

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Chuck Close Has Face Blindness!

Irony of ironies--Chuck Close, perhaps the most-famous painter of the human visage of the past 50 years, apparently has "face blindness," according to the latest 60 Minutes--that is, he can't recognize famous or familiar peop...

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Lichtenstein/China: Powerful Surprise

Roy Lichtenstein is an artist who's easy to like, but hard to love. I've always considered his bright, Pop confections, crafted with his signature Ben-Day-dots, cheery but shallow--worth a look but not a linger. But my standard assessment was shattered by a show (through April 7) at Gagosian's 24th Street emporium of Lichtenstein's "Landscapes in the Chinese Style." I was utterly unfamiliar with...

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MoMA's Glenn Lowry Is a Pervert: Cindy Sherman

OK, so Glenn Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, isn't really a pervert--or at least, I don't know if he is or he isn't. But he did make quite a  risqué, sexually confrontational choice (some might say a "courageous" pick, in the current critical parlance) for his favorite of all the photographs by Cindy Sherman currently on display (through June 11) at MoMA. Cindy Sherman, Untitled...

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