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Pick from More Artists
John Haberin New York City
Ingres
Heir to France's academic traditions, at home with rich surfaces and wealthy patrons, toady to the emperor, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres might stand for France's retreat from revolution. Could Ingres's portraits point the way to Romanticism—and beyond?
Inness
Sanford Robinson Gifford and George Inness gave the Hudson River School some of its most visionary landscapes. Did they really find that vision in Europe?
Irwin
With Minimalism, does art surrender to experience, or does the viewer surrender to the art? With a factory redesign by Robert Irwin, 300,000 square feet, and big shows for Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Andy Warhol, and many more, Dia:Beacon assumes control.
Jacir
Why should one trust a journalist more than an artist, when it comes to events as charged with political and human meaning as 9/11? Emily Jacir, Guy Richards Smit, and others know when to listen, even when the voices get a little crazed.
Jankowski
Video art cannot imitate Mel Gibson, Federico Fellini, and Alfred Hitchcock all at the same time, can it? Christian Jankowski, Jon Routson, and Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller give it a try.
Is London racing past New York or mired in tradition? Christian Jankowski, Ken Currie, Damien Hirst, Marilene Oliver, and Bridget Riley suggest the deep roots of a crazed arts scene and urban landscape.
Johns
The Cold War did not do nuance, and Jasper Johns appropriated at least two of its symbols. How could he have worked so often in shades of gray?
Somehow, Jasper Johns evolved from the front-and-center imagery of maps, flags, and targets to rich, hidden clues toward a private past. From his first Diver to his latest Catenary, could his art be falling down on the job?
Is art text—and, if not, why do people keep wanting to censor it? Jenny Holzer integrates both text and its censorship into paintings, while a flag-burning amendment could reduce treats Jasper Johns to a sign.
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.
Johnson
Can digital art, for all its reliance on data and random access, still tell tales—and even lie? Computers and their metaphors help connect the dots from Sol LeWitt, Kysa Johnson, and Casey Reas to Christina McPhee.
Jonas
Through words or photos, one can imagine oneself a traveler in exotic lands. Do Joan Jonas, Simon Lee, Michael Rakowitz, and Michael Waugh make one a tourist or a voyeur?
Jones
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?
Joos van Cleve
Who painted that Madonna, and why does an attribution turn on everything from botany to religious beliefs in Europe and the conquest of Mexico? Joos van Cleve shared a passion for the Renaissance, but not a passion flower.
Jordan
Does photography still have an inferiority complex? Chris Jordan, Vera Lutter, "The End Is Nigh," and "Colour Before Color" try extra hard to make an impression.
Just
Terence Koh floods a museum with light and Jesper Just sets off fireworks, while Doug Aitken illuminates three sides of a museum tower. Have they located new media in sensual experience or the multiplex?
Kabakov
Ilya and Emily Kabakov experienced the Soviet Union, and they recreate galleries as empty hospital wards and museums. Have they seen through art's powerful institutions or dissolved them entirely?
Kandinsky
The protagonists of Jacob Lawrence and Wassily Kandinsky were each on a journey to freedom—for a black person and for the spiritual in art. When a museum sets the journeys two side by side, which road would you choose?
Kant
Imagine a stick-in-the-mud like Immanuel Kant writing weekly reviews for ordinary readers. Rare among philosophers, Arthur C. Danto loves art and says so—but is that why he takes his time getting to artists?
Karver
Is it painting or photography, staged or observed? Sherry Karver, Gregory Crewdson, Ron Diorio, Anne Hardy, and E. E. Smith all have one guessing.
Kelley
Art seems to collapse right out from under Mike Kelley, James Hopkins, Jon Kessler, Diana Kingsley, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, Daniel Rozin, and Catherine Sullivan. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?
E. Kelly
Symmetry is back, but are artists opening or shutting doors? Ellsworth Kelly, Ron Gorchov, Mark Grotjahn, Fred Sandback, and Catherine Yass start knocking.
When Paul Klee and Ellsworth Kelly step back from vision, have they put the abstract in abstraction? Artists today can still draw back from "The Edge."
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 Leonardo Drew, Christian Haub, Garry Hill, Jodi Manasevit, Sue Williams, and Ellsworth Kelly—with his first solo show since a triumphant career retrospective.
K. Kelly
Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Khalif Kelly, Do Ho Suh, Pieter Schoolwerth, and the video artists in "Closer Now" might agree to disagree.
Kessler
Art seems to collapse right out from under Jon Kessler, James Hopkins, Mike Kelley, Diana Kingsley, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, Daniel Rozin, and Catherine Sullivan. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?
Kiefer
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?
Kimball
Has the avant-garde fallen to academics, politics, celebrities, or niche markets? Roger Kimball roots out liberalism at the CCS Hessel Museum, but Banks Violette just wants to rock and roll.
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.
Kimmelman
For most people, a day in museums feels like hard work, so imagine what a professional arts writer must feel. Is Michael Kimmelman right, then, to await his epiphany?
Has art become a product of museum advertising, one-of-a-kind genius, or just a lucky accident? For Michael Kimmelman, Lina Bertucci, and Matthew Barney, they all add up to star power, and Hal Foster wants to know why.
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.
Kingsley
Art seems to collapse right out from under Diana Kingsley, James Hopkins, Mike Kelley, Jon Kessler, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, Daniel Rozin, and Catherine Sullivan. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?
Klee
When Paul Klee and Ellsworth Kelly step back from vision, have they put the abstract in abstraction? Artists today can still draw back from "The Edge."
Klein
Madonna and Steven Klein try to create a satanic fashion show. Does this leave video art in decent shape—or only the model?
Klima
Does computer art offer anything at all new, and is anyone buying? After a gallery tour and panel discussion, John Klima, Kirsten Geisler, Mark Napier, and John F. Simon suggest that old news from art and software can still create strange new bedfellows.
Koh
Terence Koh floods a museum with light and Jesper Just sets off fireworks, while Doug Aitken illuminates three sides of a museum tower. Have they located new media in sensual experience or the multiplex?
de Kooning
What happened to Modernism when it ran into America? In a centenary mini-retrospective, Willem de Kooning gives formal, gestural abstraction the charge, wit, and sly vulgarity of Pop Art and Postmodernism.
Poignantly, a show of Willem de Kooning's last work coincided with his passing. Was the museum's memorial to his decline into Alzheimer's, to his greatness as Abstract Expressionist, or to his sharp eye for art today?
I lived five years over a topless bar and never once went in. What does that say about going into the Museum of Sex—or into the Cedar Bar with de Kooning: An American Master?
It takes comparisons to de Kooning to earn Chaim Soutine a retrospective. How many Modernisms are there?
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.
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.
Kos
When it came to fame and fortune in art, San Francisco long stood out of the loop. Did that allow Paul Kos to get too laid back, or did it help him see beyond us versus them?
Kosuth
Can art escape the prison house of language? Zen advertising from Matthew Brannon, a labyrinth of quotes from Joseph Kosuth, and an excised library by Simryn Gill lay a trap of words.
Kounellis
As installation art takes over, can any sculpture garden bother with plants or a gallery with real life? Monica Bonvicini, "In Practice" for 2007, and Jannis Kounellis give it a try.
Krasner
Did Lee Krasner try too hard to remain in Jackson Pollock's shadow? A retrospective shows her forced to break free time and time again.
Krauss
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.
What most hurts contemporary art, a lowering of standards in the name of critical theory—or a commodity culture that breeds amnesia about past experiments? A new textbook by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin Buchloh upsets conservative critics by daring to ask.
Krens
As Thomas Krens departs the Guggenheim, he leaves behind Cai Guo-Qiang, some fireworks, and an auto wreck. Which most resembles a Cultural Revolution?
Kruger
Can art, as Dave Hickey demands, still "civilize us"? The enormous futon that Klaus Biesenbach and Wendall Walker call Volume, SHoP's manic sculpture garden by the name of Dunescape, and "Around 1984" with its look at the 1980s do their best, but Barbara Kruger wittily refuses to try.
Kusama
What has invaded Chelsea in the fall—birds, meteor showers, drugs, or just art? Yayoi Kusama, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, and Rivane Neuenschwander have their own ways of looking to the sky.
Lacan
Still in need of a primer on this difficult writer? He makes more sense to me in light of his and Jacques Derrida's brilliant essays on Poe.
Does all that theory raise great expectations? If my primer seemed confusing, try applying Jacques Lacan to Charles Dickens.
Was Sigmund Freud's greatest case study a lie? When a woman's dreams are put on the couch, free association, artistic freedom, and feminism turn out to have a lot in common, and Jacques Lacan helps explain why.
Landfield
Artists never truly paint like their influences, right? Yet the influence of Abstract Expressionism lingers on, not just with Jules Olitski and the late Neil Welliver, but in younger artists who seem almost to channel them—including Ronnie Landfield, Makoto Fujimura, Peter Reginato, Duston Spear, and Joseph Stashkevetch.
Lasker
Philip Taaffe erects totems, John Bauer ghostly architecture, Julian Lethbridge textbook Pollocks, and Jonathan Lasker abstraction as a kind of graphic novel. Has abstract art really gotten over irony?
La Tour
Modern tastes had to rediscover George de La Tour. Which was more modern, his quietly modulated light or the duplicity of his card sharps?
Lawrence
The protagonists of Jacob Lawrence and Wassily Kandinsky were each on a journey to freedom—for a black person and for the spiritual in art. When a museum sets the two journeys side by side, which road would you choose?
When Pieter Bruegel and Jacob Lawrence created work for reproduction, how seriously did they take themselves and all that moralizing? Perhaps it takes a little high seriousness to create a truly popular art.
Ledare
Learning to love photography after sex and the Web? Leigh Ledare, Donna Ferrato, and iheartphotograph.com state their case.
Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Do Ho Suh, Khalif Kelly, Pieter Schoolwerth, and the video artists in "Closer Now," including Leigh Ledare, might agree to disagree.
A. Lee
Arthur C. 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?
S. Lee
Through words or photos, one can imagine oneself a traveler in exotic lands. Do Simon Lee, Joan Jonas, Michael Rakowitz, and Michael Waugh make one a tourist or a voyeur?
Does abstraction really have to stand for painting, as if meanings stood still apart from art and culture? Skip over the decades with Simon Lee, Nell Blaine, Milton Resnick, Anne Truitt, and Sean Scully, and see if the whole idea of abstraction is still standing.
Should artists approaching "The Art of 9/11" feel angry, guilty, or both? Arthur C. 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. . . .
Léger
Fernand Léger transformed Cubism into a vision of human dignity. Could he have anticipated postmodern criticism of "humanism"?
Leonardo
What lies behind the Leonardo legend? The Met looks to drawings to capture Leonardo da Vinci's genius, but he keeps reinventing the myth.
Will high-res images replace paintings or just help sell art? Leonardo, The Last Supper, and Tom Friedman meet Photoshop and globalization.
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.
Leslie
When Alfred Leslie abandoned Abstract Expressionism, did he leave behind the Zeitgeist? It might make a good movie—or even two or three.
Lethbridge
Philip Taaffe erects totems, John Bauer ghostly architecture, Julian Lethbridge textbook Pollocks, and Jonathan Lasker abstraction as a kind of graphic novel. Has abstract art really gotten over irony?
LeWitt
Can digital art, for all its reliance on data and random access, still tell tales—and even lie? Computers and their metaphors help connect the dots from Sol LeWitt, Kysa Johnson, and Casey Reas to Christina McPhee.
What happens when a conceptual artist takes leave of his senses? Increasingly, Sol LeWitt tries too hard for the sensual, but Dennis Oppenheim just lets himself go crazy.
For once, can outdoor sculpture evoke the lazy months of summer? In 2005, Sol LeWitt, "Set and Drift" on Governor's Island, "Sport" in Socrates Sculpture Park, and "Between the Bridges" all give it a try.
Lichtenstein
How could postmodern irony get so beautiful? Roy Lichtenstein has a brush with the past.
Lightner
Splat! Does that sound mean that abstraction lives on, thanks to Robert S. Neuman and Thomas Nozkowski, or that Kurt Lightner and Kelley Walker are using it to bury familiar images in paint and chocolate syrup?
Liotard
Jean-Étienne Liotard played the Turkish painter, but what did the refined Swiss artist learn from the East? Earlier, Paolo Veronese serves Renaissance Venice's Mediterranean empire.
Lippi
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?
If individualism came in with the Renaissance, what is one to make of the son of a greater artist and a lesser contemporary of Titian? The drawings of Filippino Lippi, Filippo Lippi's son, show a visionary style in the making.
Livre da La Chasse
In "Illuminating the Medieval Hunt," is the Morgan Library illuminating the early Renaissance? Le Livre de la Chasse unbinds a rare manuscript.
Liu
If Dik F. Liu teaches studio art, does that make his art academic rather than modern? In four solo shows, often featuring still-life under the blade of a palette knife, it comes to sound like a distinction ripe for deconstruction.
Lockhart
Summer and photography alike promise a window onto nature. How, then, do Dietmar Busse, Roger Ricco, and Sharon Lockhart present "Mutilated/Cultivated Environments"?
Longo
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 Robert Longo, Leonardo Drew, Nan Goldin, and Lisa Yuskavage, who also has a rather early retrospective.
Lotto
If individualism came in with the Renaissance, what is one to make of the son of a greater artist and a lesser contemporary of Titian? A retrospective of Lorenzo Lotto shows a visionary style in the making.
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
For once, can outdoor sculpture evoke the lazy months of summer? In 2005, Sol LeWitt, "Set and Drift" on Governor's Island, "Sport" in Socrates Sculpture Park, and an incarnation of "Between the Bridges" called "Rapture" all give it a try.
Lozano
Art may or may not come out of fashion, but what makes it go out of fashion? Guess which applies to Lee Lozano, Dieter Roth, and Cindy Sherman, who stars in "Fashioning Fiction."
Lutter
Does photography still have an inferiority complex? Vera Lutter, Chris Jordan, "The End Is Nigh," and "Colour Before Color" try extra hard to make an impression.
Madonna
Madonna and Steven Klein try to create a satanic fashion show. Does this leave video art in decent shape—or only the model?
Magnuson
How long will Chelsea offer a mix of warehouses, idealism, chic, and big money? In late 1999 it at least has room for Postmodernism, laughter, and laser-cut tears, including Andreas Slominski, Gary Hill, Eric Magnuson, Diane Samuels, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.
Magritte
In The Seducer, René Magritte lets the sea take over a sailing ship, with a demon lover nowhere in sight. Has he seduced the sailors, the viewer, modern art, or even himself?
Malevich
If it took outsiders to create the European avant-garde, it took Europe to bring the avant-garde to Russia and America. Does that make Kazimir Malevich and Suprematism a model for political art today—or a disparate warning?
Manasevit
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 Leonardo Drew, Christian Haub, Garry Hill, Ellsworth Kelly, Sue Williams, and Jodi Manasevit—an abstract painter with an image in mind.
Manet
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?
When Napoleon turned his cannons on Spain, he also stirred up art, with a new taste for the Spanish Baroque. What happens when art history rolls out the canon, from Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Goya all the way to Edouard Manet and John Singer Sargent?
Théodore Géricault took Romanticism out to sea, and artists as late as Edouard Manet kept "Crossing the Channel." Did an era really set its differences aside, or has museum politics displaced artistic and national divisions?
Stung by Salon criticism, Edouard Manet did the editing that left a great painting or two. Was he less of a modern after all than John Singer Sargent, who gave up society portraits for landscape?
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; nd he could have been arguing with me as I took his hero, Manet, to check out such artists as Cindy Sherman, Richard Tsao, castaneda/reiman, Deborah Turville, Scott Tunick, and Lynda Benglis.
An exhibition puts "The Origins of Impressionism" back in the Salon. Can it dispel the air of mystery and adventure around the birth of modern style?
What are Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse doing in the Met's nineteenth-century galleries along with Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh? Perhaps the Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman collection can fill their place.
Man Ray
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?
Man Ray enters a gallery known for Morris Louis and Yoko Ono. How many Modernisms are there?
Mapplethorpe
Cindy Sherman exposes Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lucas Samaras keeps exposing himself. Who does that leave for a photograph to discover?
Robert Mapplethorpe invited controversy all his life, but it took him to the third leg of a museum retrospective after his death to earn it. Should public funds simply keep their hands off the arts?
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.
Marden
Sean Scully and Brice Marden still treat a painting as both an object and a study in studio light. Why, then, does their abstraction cherish the cracks in a wall of light?
Mark
Five years after Rapture, Shirin Neshat still finds an intensely personal drama in exotic rituals and another nation's public and private squares. Has video become simply cinema, romanticizing the prostitution that Mary Ellen Mark documented twenty-five years ago?
Masaccio
The Italian Renaissance is supposed to begin with Giotto and burst out with Masaccio, right? An exhibition about art in Florence wants to prove me half wrong.
Matisse
Do Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse really stand for line and color, confrontation and guilty pleasure, or even modern art? A show of their rivalry and affection suggests double dealing.
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.
What are Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse doing in the Met's nineteenth-century galleries along with Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh? Perhaps the Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman collection can fill their place.
Matta-Clark
A steam shovel and power saw sound like tools for Robert Smithson. But what remained of Minimalism and its "High Times, Hard Times" after Gordon Matta-Clark cut into it?
How did art get from nonsites to Web sites? Christina McPhee moderates a discussion of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and new media.
C. McCarthy
Zaha Hadid gives a brusque welcome to Postmodern architecture, and Sarah Sze and Caroline McCarthy look everywhere at once. Which represents the future of New York City?
P. McCarthy
What can sustain the Chelsea money machine, and what is it doing to the state of the art? With Aleksandra Mir, Paul McCarthy, and the Whitney "Undone," it is heading south.
McCoy
When the art scene blends into night life, does art become self-indulgence or directed dreaming? Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Tara Donovan, Cao Fei, Jessica Rankin, Jessica Stockholder, and Salla Tykka each walk the line between light and dark.
McGee
Has graffiti art returned to fashion? At an outpost of chic in Soho, Barry McGee and SWOON return to the streets and bring the action indoors.
McPhee
Where have all the people gone? Catherine Opie photographs the emptiness of American cities, while Christina McPhee finds a surfeit of traces in La Conchita Mon Amour—digital prints, drawings, and video of a devastated coastal community.
Can digital art, for all its reliance on data and random access, still tell tales—and even lie? Computers and their metaphors help connect the dots from Sol LeWitt, Kysa Johnson, and Casey Reas to Christina McPhee.
How did art get from nonsites to Web sites? Christina McPhee moderates a discussion of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and new media.
As moderator of an online panel on arts education, Christina McPhee asks "what is to be done." Who most demands change—the artist, the market, or the latest media?
McRae
Can Soho recover memories of modernity? Wendell McRae, Stephen Westfall, Tim Hawkinson, and Donald Baechler take on the construction job—with everything from abstract painting and photography to machine parts.
Mehretu
The Whitney calls a show of abstract art "Remote Viewing: Invented Worlds in Painting and Drawing." With Julie Mehretu and, in the galleries, Pat Steir and Ernst Haas, need one even think of abstract art as painting and drawing?
Melhus
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?
Memling
Hans Memling casts the same eye on the men and women of Bruges, their aspirations, and their possessions. What can preserve such a worldly balance?
Could Hans Memling, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Robert Campin have painted just for you? "Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych" shows the private side of the Renaissance.
Mendel
Will people maintain their trust in photography, as a passive trace of real, in the digital age? Barbara Savedoff has her doubts, but Walker Evans and Sylvia Mendel may put that trust in question in the first place.
Mendieta
Traditionally, a man got to play the artist, finding his inspiration in a woman and in nature. What happens, then, when a young woman plays with art and images of nature, as in the work of Ana Mendieta and Phoebe Washburn?
Merrick
Tom Merrick's inflatable green dinosaur creates an emblem of the postmodern museum, alongside Mike Bidlo's turning Marcel Duchamp into bathroom wallpaper 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?
Merz
Mario Merz has laid a table with real fruit. Is it a postmodern installation or a modern still life?
Mesa-Pelly
High costs of living and the art-world carnival make postmodern artist and viewer alike pressed for time. For artists like John Coplans, Joao Onofre, Kara Walker, Hiro Yamagata, and Deborah Mesa-Pelly, does that mean more choices, more extravagance, or plainer tales?
Meshulam
Had enough of the war on terrorism and struggles over memorials to 9/11? M. Meshulam and Carl Andre lower the volume.
Michelangelo
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?
Miller
Is "shock art" bad art? In The Crucible, Arthur Miller took on good and evil, leaving only the bad.
Minter
Which supplies the most grisly erotic theory—high heels in the mud, Abu Ghraib, or gold chains? Marilyn Minter, Fernando Botero, and "The Gold Standard" know what is naughty and nice.
Mir
What can sustain the Chelsea money machine, and what is it doing to the state of the art? With Aleksandra Mir, Paul McCarthy, and the Whitney "Undone," it is heading south.
Mitchell
Boys will be boys. But do Joan Mitchell and, in the galleries, Eileen Brady Nelson, Susan Rothenberg, and Kate Shepherd really just indulge in girl talk?
Modigliani
Can a show that reclaims an avant-garde artist for Sephardic culture seriously pretend to go "beyond the myth"? Consider the case of Amedeo Modigliani and, a continent away, Elie Nadelman.
Moffatt
Can a feminist still laugh at fashion and celebrity? Tracey Moffatt, Carla Gannis, Rachel Harrison, and Shannon Plumb dress for success.
Moholy-Nagy
When Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy came to America, did they bring fine art, sound design, or more consumer products? "From the Bauhaus to the New World," James Turrell, and "Aspects, Forms, and Figures" all have one asking.
Molinier
Is there more to Surrealism than sex and violence? When Pierre Molinier manipulated photography and gender, his own life was on the line.
Mondrian
Piet Mondrian gave each of his grids an obsessive balance, and yet the balance constantly shifts from painting to painting. Did his urge to vary himself drive a century of art?
Hanging Mondrian and Ad Reinhardt side by side shows their parallel growth as painters. How many Modernisms are there?
Monet
A retrospective traces Claude Monet, from leader of a movement to the center of his private garden world. Which makes him most a modern artist?
What are Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse doing in the Met's nineteenth-century galleries along with Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh? Perhaps the Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman collection can fill their place.
An exhibition puts the origins of Impressionism back in the Salon. Can it dispel the air of mystery and adventure around the birth of modern style?
Monogenis
Can fall in Chelsea start any sooner? Dean Monogenis, Jules de Balincourt, Liset Castillo, Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher, and others pack the city.
Morlinghaus
Can one play at once abstract painter, architect, and voyeur? Cordy Ryman, Claire Seidl, David Ersser, and Christoph Morlinghaus can, but somehow using sculpture or photography.
Can critics still judge art, and should they? Raphael Rubinstein points to "A Quiet Crisis in Art," but more critical noise might well drown out some seriously quiet art—including the photographs of Christoph Morlinghaus, Shelburne Thurber, and Catherine Opie.
Mueck
How big can art get, and will it then outgrow its own myths? Ron Mueck, Dana Schutz, and Neo Rauch see art as a matter of life and death.
Mulvey
Laura Mulvey took feminism to the movies, when she asked just who is stalking Alfred Hitchcock's women—the murderer, the hero, or the man in the movie house. But is someone else altogether stuck on a woman's image?
Munch
When thieves stole The Scream and Madonna, by Edvard Munch, in August 2004, did they really get the goods, or did they just miss the version of the first stolen from another museum in Oslo ten years before? A show of "The Unfinished Print," including several versions of Madonna, discovers how the same word—and the same art—can mean both raw and just one more step in a series.
Muniz
Does art still have the power to shock or only to numb the senses? "Into Me / Out of Me," inspired by Susan Sontag on raw experience—along with subsequent shows of "Defamation of Character," "Silicone Valley," and Vic Muniz—can make one overlook the difference.
Murphy
After feminism, how does one tell the good girls from the bad girls? Margaret Murphy, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, and Anna Gaskell prefer not to say.
Murray
Do some painters nudge art toward the future, while some shape it? Elizabeth Murray and Joan Snyder may have chosen the first course, even with shaped canvas, but they dare one to overlook the influence of women artists.
Is there any art left in Soho? I offer a light, off-the-cuff spring 1997 tour, with the most space to Mark di Suvero, Mark Tansey, and Elizabeth Murray—a painter whose canvases try literally to explode upon the scene.
