Paul Fisher’s back-and-forth tease about John Singer Sargent’s sexuality starts out as intriguing, then becomes distracting, and finally irritating as the biographer never quite closes in on his targets.
Visual Arts Review: “Fired Up: Glass Today” — Remarkable Beauty
The dignified design and subtle lighting of the Wadsworth installation manages to keep the diversity, frenetic variety, and colorist’s dream of this exhibition from being overwhelming.
Book Review: “As It Turns Out” — Not Enough About Edie and Andy
Alice Sedgwick Wohl has a disturbing tendency throughout the book to back away from her points even as she makes them, as if afraid she will find herself trapped in some politically incorrect cul de sac or just a bad neighborhood.
Visual Arts Review: “Milton Avery” — The Slow But Steady Growth of an American Master
Perhaps unintentionally, the show is a moral fable on the nature of true achievement: Milton Avery’s steady progress on his own path stands out in this age of online influences and the rabid pursuit of instant fame and material success.
Visual Arts Book Review: “Florine Stettheimer: A Biography” — One of American Art’s Greatest Enigmas
The volume’s overarching goal is to restore Florine Stettheimer to what the biographer sees as her rightful reputation as one of the great American artists of the 20th century.
Visual Arts Review: “Seeing Silicon Valley” — Our Future Dystopia?
This is an important book, a powerful account of the decline of California as America’s paradise.
Arts Remembrance: Art Critic and Historian Barbara Rose
At a time when ambitious women of any sort were often harshly criticized for pursuing a professional career, Barbara Rose only forged on.
Film Review: “Wojnarowicz: F**K YOU F*GGOT F**KER” — Homage to a Perpetual Rebel
The documentary covers a lot of dark and tragic territory, but it remains entertaining throughout, no doubt more than anything else from its skill in capturing the fierce, tender, acidic, brilliant, and ultimately inextinguishable energy of its subject, artist David Wojnarowicz.
Visual Arts/Film Review: “Elliott Erwitt — Silence Sounds Good” — Far From Dull
Aside from making generalities about “making good photographs” and “earning a living,” celebrated photographer Elliott Erwitt steadfastly refuses to be drawn out.
Book Review: “Great Demon Kings” — A Comet Circling Gas Giants
John Giorno was in the vanguard of what later became the herd: Ginsberg, Kerouac, Warhol, Buddhism, Burroughs, enlightenment, spiritual quests to India, unfettered sex, wild poetry, new technology, experimental forms of expression, queer politics, pot, speed, LSD — all the household bric-a-brac of the counterculture.