Pick from More Artists

Preceding names!

Cage

John Cage literally took chances, with both his music and his tastes in art. Is Rolywholyover a Circus a fittingly postmodern memorial?

Cai

As Thomas Krens departs the Guggenheim, he leaves behind Cai Guo-Qiang, some fireworks, and an auto wreck. Which most resembles a Cultural Revolution?

In 2006, Nancy Rubins, Cai Guo-Qiang, and "Between the Bridges" join an almost empty landscape for summer sculpture. Is the promise of lower Manhattan culture fading?

Calle

Whose life is this anyway? Sophie Calle, Robert Doisneau, Neo Rauch, and Amy Bennett all have deceptively traditional, penetrating views of realism, and their tales unfold against a complex world, but they bring one on intimate terms with the human comedy.

Can digital art make a revolution while appropriating the same old world? Compare "BitStreams" and "Data Dynamics" to the obsessions, intimacy, and invasions of privacy in such gallery artists as Sophie Calle, Gary Hume, and Peter Sarkisian.

Campbell

Do collecting and mirroring add up to narcissism? Barbara Bloom puts real and imaginary museums through their paces, while Beth Campbell acts the same wherever she goes.

Campin

If the Renaissance still casts a long shadow, Robert Campin cast some of the most intricate ones, especially in his great altarpiece at the Cloisters. Is it still meaningful to say that Western art emerged from one man's inspiration?

Could Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Memling have painted just for you? "Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych" shows the private side of the Renaissance.

Caravaggio

What was Caravaggio doing at a Dutch painter's four hundredth birthday party? Perhaps he was helping one study Rembrandt prints.

Can you connect the dots all the way from Leonardo to Caravaggio and call it a regional style? With "Painters of Reality," painting in Lombardy turns out to look more eclectic than that innocent title lets on.

Cardiff and Miller

Can summer sculpture vanish into carpeting and thin air? Unlike typical summer sculpture, Rudolf Stingel and Janet Cardiff with George Bures Miller take the great outdoors inside.

Video art cannot imitate Mel Gibson, Federico Fellini, and Alfred Hitchcock all at the same time, can it? Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Jon Routson, and Christian Jankowski give it a try.

J. Carey

What good are the arts, and who gets to decide what counts as art? John Carey has a stern answer to the first and an accommodating answer to the second, enough to drive even a relativist to the museum.

P. Carey

Is there more to critics, dealers, catalogs, and "the art world" than fraud and theft? A novel by Peter Carey, an economist, and the owner of a possible Jackson Pollock found in a thrift shop all want to know.

Carnevale

The Met has found a name to go with an architectural fantasy from the Italian Renaissance, Fra Carnevale. Has it also found a new course for painting from Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca?

Carrier

While the Brooklyn Museum redirects curators, MOMA lets Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron put perception on a leash. Would David Carrier call this museum democracy?

Carroll

For critics of photography, Lewis Carroll has served as everything from moral theater to soft-core porn. So which challenges modernism more, the scantily clad children or the ones all dressed up with only dreams to go?

When I think of sex, violence, and sheer play, am I talking about childhood or art? "Visions of Childhood" at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center lets Lewis Carroll, Nayland Blake, Nan Goldin, Grace Goldsmith, Laurie Simmons, and others ask just that.

Casebere

James Casebere uses scale models to create the illusion of vast interiors in ruin, and others have piled up intricate arrangements of everything from trash bags to Twinkies. Has the distinction between art and craft vanished, and is it about time?

castaneda/reiman

Do Chelsea's once idealistic galleries now form a business district—or a theater district? Michael Fried argued that "theatricality" precedes and follows modern art, and he could have been arguing with me as I checked out such artists as Cindy Sherman, Richard Tsao, castaneda/reiman, Deborah Turville, Scott Tunick, and Lynda Benglis.

Castillo

Can fall in Chelsea start any sooner? Liset Castillo, Jules de Balincourt, Dean Monogenis, Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher, and others pack the city.

Cézanne

Did Camille Pissarro teach Paul Cézanne everything he knew? Their decade of closest collaboration takes art from Impressionism to an unpredictable future.

Edouard Manet took on a revolution, with The Execution of Maximilian, and "Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde," witnessed one, in his dealings with artists from Paul Cézanne to Pablo Picasso. Why, then, do "Americans in Paris" seem so tame?

Chamberlain

Set side by side, Willem de Kooning and John Chamberlain look lovely, but what gets left out? Perhaps Modernism knew something about omissions (and party crashing) all along.

Chapman

Fire consumed a political statement by Dinos and Jake Chapman, while Sue Coe and group shows like "Bush League" and "The Presidency" went on the warpath. Did any of it make a difference?

For "Sensation" in Brooklyn, British artists and New York politicians recycle old scripts, nearly a decade after appropriation art held sway. With Dinos and Jake Chapman, Chris Ofili, Damien Hirst, Jenny Saville, to name just a few, what accounts for the shock of the not so new, and can a savvy analysis by Hal Foster pin it down?

Chan

After five years in Iraq, can art have mere intimations of disaster? Paul Chan, Deborah Brown, Joy Garnett, Lucien Samaha, and Meg Webster reveal the anxious artist.

Chardin

Jean-Siméon Chardin's quiet, beautiful still lifes and domestic interiors could well stand for the Enlightenment in paint. So why do people always remember Chardin as a painter from another era?

Chassériau

Théodore Chassériau died young, as "the unknown Romantic," but his short career took in Classicism, a foretaste of academic doldrums, and a hall of mirrors. Who knew?

Chen

How did the costs of globalization become an art film, with an Asian cast? Chen Chieh-Jen finds loveliness, pride, brutality, and numbingly obvious messages, but also touchingly real faces.

Chia

What lies between self-expression and postmodern theater? Probably sex, smashed dishes, and broken promises, plus a visit to Soho along with Sandro Chia, Tracey Emin, Julian Schnabel, and Philip Taaffe.

Chicago

How many feminisms does it take to light up Brooklyn? Despite "Global Feminisms," Judy Chicago, and a new Sackler Center for Feminist Art, all too few.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude open The Gates to New York. Along with tens of thousands, was I exploring the metaphoric fabric of a city, an installation, a landscape, my own childhood, or the shifting status of a work of art?

Chodorow

Why are women are like that anyway, and how long a feminist bibliography can I compile about it? Nancy Chodorow calls mothering a psychological necessity, even as artists challenge each person's identity and a woman's role.

Church

For decades Frederic Edwin Church returned to the same valleys, vistas, and volcanoes. Does that really make him closer to Impressionism and Modernism than to his Romantic roots?

Cimabue

These days artists and celebrities can become famous for their passing fame. Cimabue got there first, before Giotto, however—or was it Duccio?

Clark and Pougnaud

Clark and Pougnaud, Julie Blackmon, Thomas Demand, Benjamin Fink, and Alex Prager make photography at once domestic and fantastic. Can anyone tell what they create, what they stage, what they find, and what they manipulate?

Claude

Academic art may sound sedate, but did Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin have something else in mind? Drawings from them and their time help define an ideal.

Close

Can an artist stop believing in his illusions? Chuck Close challenges the camera and raises questions about the idea of artistic genius.

Cocks

Are artists rising to the challenge of 9/11? If Anna Somers Cocks misses political art, Roger Kimball finds it everywhere—but perhaps neither knows where to look.

Coe

Fire consumed a political statement by Dinos and Jake Chapman, while Sue Coe and group shows like "Bush League" and "The Presidency" went on the warpath. Did any of it make a difference?

Conner

Postmodernism calls practically everything text, including casual words and creative acts. Can Maureen Conner, Ronald Jones, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Sarkisian, Mark Sheinkman, and others avoid reprint corrections with a hand-made book?

Constable

The White Horse is many people's favorite painting at the Frick Collection. Downstairs, can a small show explain the origins of John Constable's Romantic landscapes?

Can the artist known for direct cloud sketches need five drafts to complete a painting? Two full-size versions of Constable's Salisbury Cathedral help show Romanticism's changing conception of nature and the creative imagination.

Cooney

Is moral philosophy still possible? Tim Cooney believes that a basis for morality is even necessary, and the Internet can help, for acknowledging mere opinions marks a great step toward democracy.

May I add a brief personal appreciation after his death? I offer what I tried with my heart to say at the memorial for a writer, a philosopher, a drinker, a madman, and a generous friend.

Coplans

Art cries out for a great alternative space, but as alternative to what? I find out at the reopened P.S 1, especially in rooms by Marina Abramovic, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Robert Wogan, and John Coplans—whose photographs are a disturbing revelation.

High costs of living and the art-world carnival make postmodern artist and viewer alike pressed for time. For artists like Deborah Mesa-Pelly, Joao Onofre, Kara Walker, Hiro Yamagata, and John Coplans, does that mean more choices, more extravagance, or plainer tales?

Corot

What kind of art criticism belongs online—or anywhere else? I take my online aims out of hiding and into J.-B.-C. Corot's landscape, with a contrast to how Michael Kimmelman sees it.

Courbet

Gustave Courbet landscapes hold a very feminine eroticism. Did he need Realism to keep his imagination from running wild?

Can Gustave Courbet's gravity and Vincent van Gogh's manic highs trace a single path to Modernism? van Gogh's final patron and a sometime painter, Dr. Gachet, shows what their admirers often missed.

Coyne

When black, white, and color become so visible that one wants to reach out and touch, can one still call it visionary? Petah Coyne, Robert Ryman, and Richard Tsao move beyond debates over formalism and illusion to metaphor, geometry, and goo.

Cramer

David Altmejd, Pipilotti Rist, Julianne Swartz, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Jane and Louise Wilson are back, Jonathan Cramer channels Jackson Pollock, and Bjorn Melhus changes the channels on Jerry Springer. Is Chelsea truly over the top?

Crewdson

Is it painting or photography, staged or observed? Gregory Crewdson, Ron Diorio, Anne Hardy, Sherry Karver, and E. E. Smith all have one guessing.

Currie

Is London racing past New York or mired in tradition? Ken Currie, Damien Hirst, Christian Jankowski, Marilene Oliver, and Bridget Riley suggest the deep roots of a crazed arts scene and urban landscape.

Currin

Like Lisa Yuskavage, John Currin takes realism seriously. Does it mean more than exposing the female body to mass marketing and other threatening eyes?

If Postmodernism wants to ground art historically, why does it keep riffing so wildly on the past? Consider what happens when Robert Mapplethorpe encounters Mannerism, contemporary painters create their own "Idols of Perversity," and—long before both—Goethe built a great drawing collection on his mistakes.

Cutler

Is there a thread connecting Amy Cutler, Cui Fei, Jonah Groeneboer, and Chiharu Shiota? Their weave catches added dimensions, female communities, private writing, and the viewer.

Daguerre

The media in "The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes" and "Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting" have vanished, and neither one left copies. Must photographs and books come in multiple editions to feel modern?

Dalí

"Barcelona and Modernity: From Gaudí to Dalí" and Spanish Painting from "El Greco to Picasso" both deserve the name "From Picasso to Picasso." But can Barcelona or the Spanish mind really explain any of these artists?

Could André Breton get enough sex? With "Surrealism: Desire Unbound" and Salvador Dalí the Met allows Breton's movement plenty of desire, but too small a revolution and not nearly enough madness.

Dalton

Does Chelsea's massive fall opening amount to an entertainment event or a model for museums of contemporary art? In 2006, artists could easily grow cynical or messianic, including Jennifer Dalton, Barnaby Furnas, and Matthew Ritchie.

Danto

Are Auguste Rodin's twisting bodies and multiple casts more like variations on a theme or Xerox copies? Arthur C. Danto, Nelson A. Goodman, and Rosalind E. Krauss—as critics and philosophers—each tackle the originality of the avant-garde.

Danto wants to approach art without the biases of his own time. Is he wrong to draw conclusions from hypothetical art, or is that what artists themselves do every day?

Imagine a stick-in-the-mud like Immanuel Kant writing weekly reviews for ordinary readers. Rare among philosophers, Danto loves art and says so—but is that why he takes his time getting to artists?

Should artists approaching "The Art of 9/11" feel angry, guilty, or both? Danto curates a measured response, and Chang-Jin Lee offers the comforts of a "Homeland Security Garden," but anger wells up with "A Knock at the Door. . . .

Danto calls his essay on Peter Fischli and David Weiss "The Artist as Prime Mover." Why, then, do they, Andy Goldsworthy, avaf, Alexander Lee, and so many others seem intent on trashing the gallery?

Danto cut his philosophical teeth on Warhol's Brillo boxes. Did Andy Warhol decline from agent provocateur into celebrity, or was he asking for it all along?

Can Danto's strategies take him to a definition of art? Neo-conservatives are already all-too-fond of definitions and limits.

I also give Danto special acknowledgment. Can I take my online aims out of hiding and into J.-B.-C. Corot's landscape?

B. Davis

Does art need a post-critical theory? Ben Davis and Johanna Drucker find art, like that of Gregory Crewdson, in complicity with the culture industry—and loving it.

S. Davis

Can one locate the origins of modern art in something other than painting? Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso may not have discovered Cubism in film, but Henri Matisse sure knew textiles, and Stuart Davis literally drew on New York.

How did Picasso get to America without leaving Europe? "Picasso and American Art" traces his influence on Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, and others.

Dean

With Tacita Dean, "Family Pictures," and "Closed Circuit," two museums step hesitantly into new media. Who knew?

de Beer

What terrors lurk in that dark house, and whose desires draw one into video? Sue de Beer shapes the scenes from "Black Sun" twice, on screen and as installation, and her women ask viewers, too, to take risks.

When artists bring death to the style pages, have they created a fourth-wave feminism? A slippery slope to suicide haunts video by Sue de Beer, paintings by Rachel Howard, and a sell-out by Sam Taylor-Wood.

Degas

One of the most original artists of his time carefully bought and arranged hundreds of works from the past. For Edgar Degas as collector, what was the connection?

de Hooch

Did Pieter de Hooch and Jan Vermeer see the same street in Delft? In "Vermeer and the Delft School," the art of painting takes on a city's dreams.

Delvoye

How long will New York look to the sky at Ground Zero? Outdoor installations in 2003 from Wim Delvoye, the Socrates Sculpture Park, and "Between the Bridges" have one reimagining the ground below.

Does the Chelsea gallery scene know where the bodies are bodied? Wim Delvoye, Tracey Emin, Gary Hill, Daniel Rozin, and Sam Taylor-Wood may not get real, but they do get physical.

de Maria

When Manhattan Island gets an island of its own, should one call it a site, a nonsite, or gentrification? With the assistance of Nancy Holt, Floating Island makes a provocative addition to a suitably systematic and entropic Robert Smithson retrospective—and a striking contrast to New York earth art by Walter de Maria, while emerging artists "Make It Now."

How did so much earth and the dark corners of New York streets get inside? Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset create an underground End Station, Peter Wegner a paper labyrinth, and Mike Bouchet a pungent alternative to Walter de Maria.

Demand

Thomas Demand, Julie Blackmon, Clark and Pougnaud, Benjamin Fink, and Alex Prager make photography at once domestic and fantastic. Can anyone tell what they create, what they stage, what they find, and what they manipulate?

Derrida

Faced with what he slyly called the truth in painting, it is hard to avoid challenging, deriding, misusing, or plain stealing from Jacques Derrida. My most explicit theft is a dialog about Brancusi's sculpture.

It is hard to do without his idea of erasure when I see a Warhol silk screen. In fact, what happens in the movies, when a man with a paintbrush or a woman with a gun try erasing Warhol?

I also enter into his gorgeous chain of voices surrounding two enigmatic shoes. Are they and their painter, Vincent van Gogh, really two of a kind, and what kind of art history does that leave?

Can you name an even more difficult writer? Well, I know several, but Jacques Lacan makes more sense to me in light of his and Derrida's brilliant essays on Poe.

Is it right to call Derrida (or Marx or Freud) a secular Jew? I can answer only for myself as one.

Besides, an intriguing show called "Word to Word" explicitly invokes his concept of philosophy as a kind of writing. What remains of writing and art alike as all-too-physical gestures?

Dewing

The Brooklyn Museum showed Nardo de Cione's great Madonna from the New York Historical Society downstairs from Thomas Wilmer Dewing's decorative portraits. Must art always worship women?

di Cosimo

Can art from Toledo means more than El Greco? From Ohio, the Toledo Museum shows art history's grappling with humanity and nature in such figures as El Greco, Piero di Cosimo, and Jacob Bassano, while Spain and St. John the Divine set aside "Time to Hope."

Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Will the High Line preserve an overgrowth of wild flowers and urban history, or will it tower over Chelsea as one more dark, utopian vision? Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in association with Field Operations and with photographs by Joel Sternfeld, offer a look down upon the art world.

Should one trace motion in painting and new media to illusion, vision, or physical sensation? Daniel Rozin looks in the mirror, Michael Betancourt in pop psychology, Diller Scofidio + Renfro at the spy camera, and Peter Paul Rubens into his own heart.

Dion

How can science and art intersect, and, if they cannot, will opposites attract? Mark Dion, "Produced at Eyebeam 2005," Michal Rovner, Jessica Bronson, and Jacob van Ruisdael feel the attraction.

Can a museum dedicated to modernity become a custodian of the past? Jed Perl thinks so, but Mark Dion literally digs up the dirt on the Museum of Modern Art.

Diorio

Is it painting or photography, staged or observed? Ron Diorio, Gregory Crewdson, Anne Hardy, Sherry Karver, and E. E. Smith all have one guessing.

di Suvero

Is there any art left in Soho? I offer a light, off-the-cuff spring 1997 tour, with the most space to Elizabeth Murray, Mark Tansey, and Mark di Suvero—whose latest installation really knows how to use space.

Djurberg

With Nathalie Djurberg, Bill Henson, Judith Eisler, and Nan Goldin, art gets painfully explicit about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. So why do their human actors vanish so easily into forests, fairy tales, claymation, the blur of a picture tube, or death?

Doisneau

Whose life is this anyway? Robert Doisneau, Neo Rauch, Amy Bennett, and Sophie Calle all have deceptively traditional, penetrating views of realism, and their tales unfold against a complex world, but they bring one on intimate terms with the human comedy.

Dolmanisth/Masters

Art can carry on after 9/11, but can it return to normal? A group show seeks sincerity in "Extreme Existence" while, over in Brooklyn, Karen Dolmanisth and Deborah Masters mix ritual and performance, and Bob and Roberta Smith offer an Art Amnesty.

Donatello

Does fine art these days sound alarmingly—or thankfully—elistist compared to popular culture? With manuscript illumination from Jean Poyet, as well as relief sculpture from Donatello and others, the Renaissance showed off some delightful interchange between "high" and "low."

Donovan

When the art scene blends into night life, does art become self-indulgence or directed dreaming? Tara Donovan, Cao Fei, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Jessica Rankin, Jessica Stockholder, and Salla Tykka each walk the line between light and dark.

Dossi

Do Dosso Dossi, David Salle, Julião Sarmento, and David Wojnarowicz all spin postmodern allegories? Something funny happens to fables without a subtext.

Dove

The Whitney puts up scaffolding for some serious remodeling, just in time to display Arthur Dove, Andrew Wyeth, and a new look at its permanent collection. Is the museum getting back to America's roots or retreating into the bunker?

Dragset

How did so much earth and the dark corners of New York streets get inside? Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset create an underground End Station, Peter Wegner a paper labyrinth, and Mike Bouchet a pungent alternative to Walter de Maria, while emerging artists "Make It Now."

You call this a monument? Ed Ruscha traces the course of empire and Thomas Hirschhorn a world in ruins, while "Monuments for the USA," featuring Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset among so many others, seeks a nation worth remembering.

Drew

At the end of 1996, did "in" New Yorkers still never travel north of 14th Street? I check out the new Chelsea galleries and dear old 57th Street, with the most space to Christian Haub, Garry Hill, Ellsworth Kelly, Jodi Manasevit, Sue Williams, and Leonardo Drew—but you knew all along that Leonardo drew.

Is anything left of Modernism's daring except nudity and nostalgia? In the cold winter of 2001, I take a quick gallery tour, with most space to Leonardo Drew, Nan Goldin, Robert Longo, and Lisa Yuskavage, who also has a rather early retrospective.

Drucker

Does art need a post-critical theory? Johanna Drucker and Ben Davis find art, like that of Gregory Crewdson, in complicity with the culture industry—and loving it.

One can trace a magnificent history of the Renaissance, from its emergence with Duccio to its triumph with Dürer and Michelangelo. But did even these artists always travel in straight lines?

These days artists and celebrities can become famous for their passing fame. Cimabue got there first, before Giotto, however—or was it Duccio?

Duchamp

A survey of "Dada" spans two doors, six cities, and hundreds of objects. Did Marcel Duchamp, May Ray, and others rebel against the very idea of art or engender all of art to come?

What if a urinal entered the museum? Hypothetical art sounds like a contradiction in terms, but like Charles Ray, Yoko Ono, and Marcel Duchamp, artists imagine it every day.

Mike Bidlo creates emblems of the postmodern museum, like his turning Marcel Duchamp into bathroom wallpaper, alongside Tom Merrick's inflatable green dinosaur and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's bird house out at P.S. 1. Do these twists on the museum look any different, now that the Museum of Modern Art has bought that Contemporary Arts Center lock, stock, and toilet?

Durand

Up on the latest gossip from Artforum? Money talks louder than art yet again, through the UBS Collection and the sale of an Asher B. Durand.

Durant

As plans for culture at Ground Zero stagnate, can political art respond? The backlash definitely is setting in, with exhibitions of the key architects, plus Luc Tuymans, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Sam Durant.

You call this a monument? Ed Ruscha traces the course of empire and Thomas Hirschhorn a world in ruins, while "Monuments for the USA," featuring Sam Durant among so many others, seeks a nation worth remembering.

One can trace a magnificent history of the Renaissance, from its emergence with Duccio to its triumph with Dürer and Michelangelo. But did even these artists always travel in straight lines?

Still more names!

jhaber@haberarts.com