Canon Fodder
What’s wrong with art-history textbooks? As publishers churn out revisions, the College Art Association is asking if the old standards are relevant to today’s students. Read More
Also in this Issue
Salons de Refuse
Updating Kurt Schwitters, artists are bringing a poetic impulse to their obsessive, sprawling installations
Jori Finkel
Penguins, Lies, and Videotape
In the spirit of the mockumentary, edgy videos blur the line between fact and fiction
Carly Berwick
Beautiful Mutants
If it’s sweet and sad, sentimental and repulsive, cute and creepy, it must be postmodern mannerism
Kay Larson
How Street It Is
The grit and glamour of graffiti, hip-hop, and skateboarding are moving into the gallery
Rebecca Spence
American Gothic
Imagery from the Civil War and other dark moments from the nation’s history allows artists to express concerns about the present
Edith Newhall
Just Bead It
Artists are unabashedly using craft materials to “let their inner eccentrics flower”
Elisabeth Kley
Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding
Skeptical artists are reassessing the pursuit of a perfect world
Carly Berwick
Where Magic Mushrooms Bloom
The sensory overload of the psychedelic esthetic plays with the eye and the mind
Hilarie M. Sheets
The New Romantics
Knights, princesses, and shipwrecks are getting a 21st-century makeover
Meredith Mendelsohn
Departments
Art Talk
Candida Smith, Carmen Giménez, Elizabeth Peyton, Gavin Brown, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Matthew Higgs, Steve Lafreniere, Steve Martin, Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Yutaka Sone, Don Gummer, Matthias Weischer, David Hockney, Chrissie Iles, Sarah Howgate, Lou Reed, Douglas Henderson, Lex Fenwick, Whitney Rugg, Oona Stern, Cory Arcangel, Anna Craycroft
National News
Spotlight John Bullard: “I can’t leave the ship” Washington, D.C. Restitution: Give and take Detroit Terror victims sue U.S. museums for Iran’s assets New York Warhol board expands Biloxi Rebuilding the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum Philadelphia Storr’s new job
International News
Washington, D.C. The immunity defense Spotlight Alfred Pacquement: Bringing chaos to the Pompidou Tel Aviv $20 million and change Düsseldorf “A question of morality”
Studio
Dancing bears and dressed-up dogs: Borrowing from puppetry, the circus, and Kabuki theater, Tom Knechtel fills his sprawling paintings with his own fantastic characters
Holly Myers
Looking at Art
Goya’s melancholy masterpiece: Why a portrait of a mysterious sitter is so deceptively simple
Jonathan Brown
Critic’s Pick: Kim McCarty
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp
Reviews
NEW YORK Luc Tuymans; “Frequency”; Roy DeCarava; Gerhard Richter; Claes Oldenburg; Mike Kelle; Bill Viola; Rebecca Horn; Charles Burchfield; Doug & Mike Starn; Nancy Spero; Keith Tyson; “The Poetic Vision: American Tonalism”; Derek Walcott; Steve DiBenedetto; David Korty; “Continuum”; István Farkas; Jonathan Horowitz; James Cambronne and Sally Hazelet Drummond; Jane Evelyn Atwood; Sheila Makhijani
NATIONAL Miami “MOCA and Miami”; Shahzia Sikander; Ralf Peters; Robert Flynn; Luis González Palma; Eduardo del Valle & Mirta Gómez Beverly Hills Ed Ruscha Houston Robert Gober Phoenix Anthony Caro Santa Fe Tony DeLap Washington, D.C. Christine Kesler Chicago Evelyn Statsinger Atlanta “25 Years” Sewickley, Pennsylvania Dimiter Mitchy Boston Michal Ronnen Safdie Philadelphia Anne Seidman and Susan Hage
INTERNATIONAL London Turner Prize 2005; Richard Billingham Paris Brigitte Nahon Winterthur, Switzerland Robert Frank Essen Nina Fandler