COURTESY BALLROOM MARFA
Art at the Edge
The late Jason Rhoades gets held out as an artist for the Age of Trump—or at least “a harbinger of this absurd and unforeseeable moment in which nothing is unspeakable.” [The New Yorker]
A moving Roberta Smith review of a memorial show for Steve Wolfe, whose “painted sculptures” include meticulous replicas of tattered books such as Moby-Dick, Anna Karenina, and Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon. [The New York Times]
A long, personal profile of Bill Arnett, collector of African-American and outsider art under the aegis of his foundation Souls Grow Deep. [The Washington Post]
Soundings
A sound-inspired exhibition in Marfa, Texas by Gryphon Rue, who happens to be Alexander Calder’s great-grandson, includes a Calder work from the family’s collection. Also: tuning forks, radio-transmission towers, and an electrified peyote cactus. [The Art Newspaper]
Better than coffee, more vitalizing than bacon and eggs: video of Herbie Hancock playing a synthesizer on Sesame Street in 1983. [Open Culture]
Rocker Jack White likens De Stijl to the blues in a profile on his life before, during, and after his band the White Stripes. [The New Yorker]
Museum Moves
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is getting a new restaurant: Marisol. Offerings will include fancy, artful food and “one of Chicago’s deepest vermouth and aperitif lists.” [DNAinfo]
Holland Cotter goes to town on “Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim,” with a guide to what he digs most. [The New York Times]
A Q&A with Los Angeles painter Frank Romero on the occasion of his retrospective at the Museum of Latin American Art. Topics of conversation include The Count of Monte Cristo, working for Charles and Ray Eames, and the Watts Towers. [The Los Angeles Times]
Art in Context
Turkish painter and journalist Zehra Doğan was sentenced to nearly three years in prison after painting and sharing a scene of destruction caused by Turkish security forces that she witnessed for a feminist news agency. [Artforum]
The story of DOT Art, a civic commissioning program in New York to spruce up the byways of the Department of Transportation. [am New York]