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Theatre Review: Greek to Me

by Frank Episale

Medea and its Dou­ble by Euripi­des, adapted and directed by Hyoung-Taek Limb. Pre­sented by Seoul Fac­tory for the Per­form­ing Arts and La MaMa ETC
Auto Da Fe by Masa­taka Mat­suda, trans­lated by Kameron Steele and Shigeki Mori, directed by Josh Fox with Paul Bar­getto. Pre­sented by Inter­na­tional WOW Com­pany and the Baruch Per­form­ing Arts Cen­ter
On paper, there […]

A Dutch Treasure Comes To The Met

by Michael Busch

The mini-marquee exhibit, which runs through the end of Novem­ber, offers a blue­print of what to expect from the Met as it moves for­ward with a new model of recession-special instal­la­tions — small shows anchored in a promi­nent work or two, and bol­stered by a sup­port­ing cast drawn from the museum’s expan­sive per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. The logic of the move is clear: with a con­tract­ing endow­ment and sig­nif­i­cantly reduced oper­at­ing bud­get, the Met’s recently-appointed direc­tor Thomas Camp­bell decided that look­ing inward and rely­ing on the occa­sional munif­i­cence of part­ner insti­tu­tions was the museum’s most promis­ing tac­tic to cut costs with­out sac­ri­fic­ing qual­ity. But con­cerns chal­leng­ing the util­ity of this approach per­sist, mak­ing Vermeer’s Mas­ter­piece the most impor­tant trial of Campbell’s young career.

Unfor­tu­nately, the bud­get block­buster falls flat. To be sure, the exhibit betrays hints of lim­ited resources. Includ­ing period repro­duc­tions of ceramic bowls and tile work, for exam­ple, is charm­ing but sug­gests a quiet des­per­a­tion to fill space with­out clear pur­pose in the absence of rel­e­vant con­tent, while the comic book-length cat­a­logue (sta­pled at the spine) indi­cates that the Met has aban­doned its tra­di­tion of pro­duc­ing gor­geously hefty com­pan­ion pieces to its major exhibits. But this is hardly the problem.

Archive Art: A Rosler Project Revisited

by Sarah Mills

By Sarah Mills
Martha Rosler’s home­less project is back, only this time in archival form. The exhi­bi­tion, “If You Lived Here Still…,” cur­rently on view at New York’s e-Flux gallery, revis­its numer­ous mate­ri­als on home­less­ness and hous­ing, which Rosler first began col­lect­ing for the exhi­bi­tion, “If You Lived Here…,” held at the Dia Art Foun­da­tion in 1989. In the […]

Generation ‘Ehh’

by CMatlin

The Gen­er­a­tional: Younger Than Jesus. At the New Museum, on view till June 14, 2009
Let’s get right to the point: if this is the best the so-called Mil­lenials have to offer (myself being one of them) then the art world as we know might as well pack up and leave. It’s been a good run. Every­one should […]

Nothing to Say: Hirschhorn’s Universal Gym

by CMatlin

I have always been sus­pi­cious of Swiss-born instal­la­tion artist Thomas Hirschhorn’s art; it always strikes me as a lit­tle too easy. The bla­tant in-your-face qual­i­ties of his instal­la­tions recall a petu­lant teenager who really wants to shake things up but can’t get out of his own way. Hirschhorn’s 2006 show Super­fi­cial Engage­ment, at Bar­bara Glad­stone, was at […]

A Swooning We Will Go: On Pipilotti Rist’s ‘Pour Your Body Out’

by CMatlin

Pour Your Body Out (7345 Cubic Meters), by Pip­i­lotti Rist. At the Museum of Mod­ern Art.
How do we approach Swiss artist Pip­i­lotti Rist’s video instal­la­tion Pour Your Body Out (7345 Cubic Meters)? The crit­i­cism, if it can be called that, up to now says that one should be com­pletely enam­ored with the visual spec­ta­cle of seeing […]

Enchanting the Modern: Gino De Dominicis at P.S. 1

by NKurchanova

Gino De Domini­cis at P.S. 1. On view Octo­ber 19, 2008 — Feb­ru­ary 9, 2009. 22 – 25 Jack­son Ave at the inter­sec­tion of 46th Ave, Long Island City.
P.S.1, the offi­cial affil­i­ate of the Museum of Mod­ern Art in Long Island City, has recently become a more attrac­tive place of pil­grim­age for art lovers than its revered par­ent. A series of […]

In the Custody of Love: Elizabeth Peyton at the New Museum

by CMatlin

Live For­ever: Eliz­a­beth Pey­ton. At The New Museum (through Jan­u­ary 11).
One must be care­ful with how one approaches the work of Eliz­a­beth Pey­ton. It is too easy to dis­miss her, to fault her for her own seem­ingly bot­tom­less devo­tion to the seduc­tions of youth and beauty as Sarah Valdez did in her review of Peyton’s 2001 […]

Women Artists Across the Board

by NKurchanova

Louise Bour­geois and Cather­ine Opie at the Guggen­heim Museum
Olga Cherny­sheva at Foxy Pro­duc­tion
Even in a city as excit­ing and diverse as New York, it is a rare occa­sion that inter­est­ing exhi­bi­tions of women artists spring up simul­ta­ne­ously from var­i­ous cor­ners of the city. It is hap­pen­ing now, with the Guggen­heim arrang­ing two impres­sive shows in a row: Louise […]

Suprematism Revisited: The works of Nikolai Suetin and Vera Ermolaeva

by NKurchanova

SUPREMATISM REVISITED:
NIKOLAI SUETIN AND VERA ERMOLAEVA
Since the late 1980s, the Russ­ian avant-garde has caught con­sid­er­able amount of atten­tion, both in the coun­try of its ori­gin and abroad. With the open­ing of Soviet archives and muse­ums’ stor­age rooms, numer­ous books and exhi­bi­tions have explored what used to be closely kept secrets of Com­mu­nist rule. Recently, the […]