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Pick from More Artists
John Haberin New York City
Saenredam
Will the age of the virtual museum dispel the aura of art—or add a new veneration of images? Something other than religion can go on anyway in painting, even within the confines of Pieter Saenredam's majestic seventeenth-century cathedrals.
Saint-Aubin
Can a little-known Rococo artist find a home in the age of graphic novels? Gabriel de Saint-Aubin cannot stop drawing.
Salle
Do David Salle, Dosso Dossi, Julião Sarmento, and David Wojnarowicz all spin postmodern allegories? Something funny happens to fables without a subtext.
Saltz
When so many Chelsea galleries jump-start their fall openings, has contemporary art lost the "battle for Babylon"? Jerry Saltz finds hope on the margins, but Bill Owens and others leave one unsure.
"Is the art market making us stupid?" Jerry Saltz worries, and Jed Perl is dead certain, but "Private Treasures" look smart.
"Not for Sale" takes work that artists have kept for themselves, but has P.S. 1 managed not to sell out? Jerry Saltz has his doubts.
Samaha
After five years in Iraq, can art have mere intimations of disaster? Lucien Samaha, Deborah Brown, Paul Chan, Joy Garnett, and Meg Webster reveal the anxious artist.
Samaras
Lucas Samaras, Slater Bradley, and John F. Simon, Jr., remake their image and surrender the copyright. With Macs so expensive and bytes so cheap, what else is a digital artist to do?
Cindy Sherman exposes Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lucas Samaras keeps exposing himself. Who does that leave for a photograph to discover?
Samuels
So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Diane Samuels, Michal Rovner, Mark Sheinkman, Julian Stanczak, and Jennifer Steinkamp, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.
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.
Sanaa
The New Museum, in architecture by Sanaa, promises a rebirth on the Bowery, but its opening show, "Unmonumental," promises to retain the spirit of the Lower East Side. Which will win out?
Sandback
Symmetry is back, but are artists opening or shutting doors? Fred Sandback, Ron Gorchov, Mark Grotjahn, Ellsworth Kelly, and Catherine Yass start knocking.
Can anyone still follow the thread of art history into Minimalism and beyond? With the flimsiest acrylic thread, Fred Sandback can seem to alter the very air in which one moves.
Sargent
John Singer Sargent returned again and again to portraits of children. How many adults haunt those images, and how many of them are alive today?
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 ea Goya all the way to Edouard Manet and John Singer Sargent?
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?
Sarkisian
Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? Peter Sarkisian, Janine Antoni, Amy Bennett, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, David Shapiro, and E. E. Smith put them both to the test.
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?
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 Peter Sarkisian, Sophie Calle, and Gary Hume.
Sarmento
Do Julião Sarmento, Dosso Dossi, David Salle, and David Wojnarowicz all spin postmodern allegories? Something funny happens to fables without a subtext.
Savedoff
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.
Saville
For "Sensation" in Brooklyn, British artists and New York politicians recycle old scripts, nearly a decade after appropriation art held sway. With Jenny Saville, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Damien Hirst, and Chris Ofili, 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?
Schapiro
Is modern art a fake? Despite such eloquent defenders as Meyer Schapiro, it was still fighting that charge when Postmodernism turned up to agree.
Who is that couple in Jan van Eyck's most famous painting, face front and hands joined, as if for a solemn ceremony? Three books seek the truth in painting and a new art history, just as Meyer Schapiro once had faced an enigmatic pair of shoes by van Gogh.
Cézanne and Pollock both started off as expressionists, and then both created a classicism teeming with emotion. But what in Jackson Pollock carries the sensuality that Meyer Schapiro found in Cézanne's apples?
(Note: if you meant Joel Shapiro, look down.)
Scheinman
Does painting have critics "Seeing Red"? A survey at Hunter College, influenced by Josef Albers, starts with the psychology of color, but Nancy Scheinman, Walter Biggs, James Nares, and Gregg Stone have something else in mind.
Schiele
Is Egon Schiele's Expressionism the ancestor of today's "shock art"? It depends on who is shocking whom.
Schnabel
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.
Did Andy Warhol decline from artist into celebrity, or was he asking for it all along? A film by Julian Schnabel—an artist who knew celebrity all too well—make an eerie backdrop for yet more of Warhol's late work.
Schoolwerth
Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Pieter Schoolwerth, Do Ho Suh, Khalif Kelly, and the video artists in "Closer Now" might agree to disagree.
Schutz
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.
Schwitters
You call this painting? Frank Stella may have given up on paint, but not on the word, while Kurt Schwitters brings to newsprint and collage the texture of an old master.
Scully
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?
Does abstraction really have to stand for painting, as if meanings stood still apart from art and culture? Skip over the decades with Sean Scully, Nell Blaine, Milton Resnick, Anne Truitt, and Simon Lee, and see if the whole idea of abstraction is still standing.
Segal
As a humanist and Jew, George Segal probes art's conscience. Do his body casts only bury it in their whiteness?
Seidl
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.
Serra
Everyone coming to Richard Serra will have that special moment, when the light bulb comes on and for a time everything seems so clear. At his retrospective, should you trust it?
What does one do with twelve-ton sculpture disguised as Minimalism? When it comes to Richard Serra, take a walk through it and surrender to the difference.
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 Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, Andy Warhol, and many more, Dia:Beacon assumes control.
Seurat
Can one have Impressionism without the color? In his drawings, Georges Seurat finds luminosity in shades of black.
Did followers of Georges Seurat miss the boat to Modernism? From Paul Signac to Helen Frankenthaler and her Lighthouse series, his independence of color has had a sustained influence.
Shakespeare
If I claim to be a feminist and postmodernist, what am I doing sending a valentine from Romeo and Juliet? I must have been lost in Juliet's words.
D. Shapiro
Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? David Shapiro, Janine Antoni, Amy Bennett, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, Peter Sarkisian, and E. E. Smith put them both to the test.
J. Shapiro
Not all sculpture looks better as an outdoor monument. How can Joel Shapiro, Roxy Paine, and others in Socrates Sculpture Park or the 2007 "Between the Bridges" look so graceful?
(Note: if you meant Meyer Schapiro, look up.)
Shaw
It takes only a small step to proceed from chaos to mythos. Can that explain "Organizing Chaos," Tunga, and Jim Shaw's The Donner Party?
Sheinkman
Sometimes art aspires to a science experiment. With Mark Sheinkman, David Fried, Antony Gormley, Jeppe Hein, and Eileen Quinlan, is it all done with smoke and mirrors?
So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Mark Sheinkman, Michal Rovner, Diane Samuels, Julian Stanczak, and Jennifer Steinkamp, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.
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?
Shepherd
Boys will be boys. But do Joan Mitchell and, in the galleries, Kate Shepherd, Eileen Brady Nelson, and Susan Rothenberg really just indulge in girl talk?
Sherman
Art may or may not come out of fashion, but what makes it go out of fashion? Guess which applies to Dieter Roth, Lee Lozano, and Cindy Sherman, who stars in "Fashioning Fiction."
Does a dark opening with sharp teeth, sculpture like frozen lava, or a look of desire buried in the mask of a clown suggest a male artist's wrestling with industrial scrap—not to mention deeper fears about female sexuality? Lynda Benglis, Lee Bontecou, and Cindy Sherman show that a woman artist can make the story more complicated yet.
Cindy Sherman exposes Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lucas Samaras keeps exposing himself. Who does that leave for a photograph to discover?
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.
Did Monderism have a choice, and does the Museum of Modern Art now? In "Making Choices: 1920-1960," Cindy Sherman's shards of an ego, "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor by Frank Stella, and Walker Evans's collision with reality each get to define modern art's first decades of triumph.
Shiota
Is there a thread connecting Chiharu Shiota, Amy Cutler, Cui Fei, and Jonah Groeneboer? Their weave catches added dimensions, female communities, private writing, and the viewer.
SHoP
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.
Shore and Fisher
Can fall in Chelsea start any sooner? Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher, Jules de Balincourt, Liset Castillo, Dean Monogenis, and others pack the city.
Signac
Did followers of Georges Seurat miss the boat to Modernism? From Paul Signac to Helen Frankenthaler and her Lighthouse series, his independence of color has had a sustained influence.
Sigurdardóttir
Can an artist still break through boundaries, with or without a radio signal? Rirkrit Tiravanija, Katrín Sigurdardóttir, and Susan Hamburger give it a try.
Sillman
Bob Nickas calls his group show "An Ongoing Low-Grade Mystery." Could he be describing, too, the appeal to insiders from Amy Sillman, Reena Spauling, and others near the downtown club scene?
G. Simmons
When Gary Simmons looks at blackness, he finds degrees of whiteness in need of erasure. Can an artist recover America's past by effacing it?
L. Simmons
Did Laurie Simmons and other artists of the 1980s sell out, get forced out, or aspire to move out all along? "East Village USA" evokes a scene of experiment and entrepreneurship, like a trial run for art today.
Is it just a few years ago that Soho felt like a carnival? I offer a light, off-the-cuff summer 1994 tour, with the most space to Nayland Blake, Michael Heizer, Jenny Holzer, and Laurie Simmons—an artist for whom women are more than living dolls.
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 Laurie Simmons, Nayland Blake, Lewis Carroll, Nan Goldin, Grace Goldsmith, and others ask just that.
Simon
John F. Simon, Jr., Slater Bradley, and Lucas Samaras remake their image and surrender the copyright. With Macs so expensive and bytes so cheap, what else is a digital artist to do?
Does computer art offer anything at all new, and is anyone buying? After a gallery tour and panel discussion, John F. Simon, Kirsten Geisler, John Klima, and Mark Napier suggest that old news from art and software can still create strange new bedfellows.
Simpson
Lorna Simpson loves frames—for images, for text, and for American history. Can black experience itself provide the frame?
Sloan
Does realism stand for representational truth, a style and a means of representation, or a period or two in art history? A tour from Giotto and Jan van Eyck to the American Realism of Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, and John Sloan leaves open the puzzles that Bo Bartlett and others are solving today.
Slominski
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.
Smit
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? Guy Richards Smit, Emily Jacir, and others know when to listen, even when the voices get a little crazed.
B. and R. Smith
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, Bob and Roberta Smith offer an Art Amnesty, and Karen Dolmanisth and Deborah Masters mix ritual and performance.
D. Smith
Instead of the mythic American artist, a retrospective marks David Smith as a sculptor firmly in the tradition of European Surrealism. Can either perspective make him relevant for today?
E. E. Smith
Is it painting or photography, staged or observed? E. E. Smith, Gregory Crewdson, Ron Diorio, Anne Hardy, and Sherry Karver all have one guessing.
Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? E. E. Smith, Janine Antoni, Amy Bennett, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, Peter Sarkisian, and David Shapiro put them both to the test.
K. Smith
In a retrospective of Kiki Smith, the work that one sees first contains nothing but air. How does it lead to easily to thoughts of creature comforts, life and death, nature, myth, tradition, and female perception?
T. Smith
Tony Smith leaves a cigarette butt in Central Park, and sculpture parks reinvigorate New York. Which is more open to the commmunity?
Smithson
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.
How did art get from nonsites to Web sites? Christina McPhee moderates a discussion of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and new media.
Snyder
Do some painters nudge art toward the future, while some shape it? Joan Snyder and Elizabeth Murray may have chosen the first course, even with shaped canvas, but they dare one to overlook the influence of women artists.
Sobel
Did Janet Sobel invent drip painting—or perhaps have it come to her? In her hands, it comes with a whole cast of tiny figures, as well as a fresh look at Abstract Expressionism, primitivism, and a woman's role.
Sokal
Should art and Postmodernism keep their hands out of science, and can they? A hoax by Alan Sokal, a physicist, erects a fragile wall between C. P. Snow's two cultures.
Sonnier
What do art and the urban experience have in common, other than real-estate values? Keith Sonnier, "Sprawl," and "In Practice" for 2003 take the issues into a gallery's unsettling interior.
Sontag
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.
Soutine
It takes comparisons to de Kooning to earn Chaim Soutine a retrospective. How many Modernisms are there?
Spauling
Bob Nickas calls his group show "An Ongoing Low-Grade Mystery." Could he be describing, too, the appeal to insiders from Amy Sillman, Reena Spauling, and others near the downtown club scene?
Spear
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 Duston Spear, Makoto Fujimura, Ronnie Landfield, Peter Reginato, and Joseph Stashkevetch.
Stanczak
So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Julian Stanczak, Michal Rovner, Diane Samuels, Mark Sheinkman, and Jennifer Steinkamp, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.
Stashkevetch
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 Joseph Stashkevetch, Makoto Fujimura, Ronnie Landfield, Peter Reginato, and Duston Spear.
Steenwijck
For Harmen Steenwijck, a still-life painting is filled with objects of desire. Is his art a precursor of Modernism and beyond?
Steinkamp
So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Jennifer Steinkamp, Michal Rovner, Diane Samuels, Mark Sheinkman, and Julian Stanczak, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.
Steir
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?
F. Stella
You call this painting? Frank Stella may have given up on paint, but not on the word, while Kurt Schwitters brings to newsprint and collage the texture of an old master.
Did Modernism have a choice, and does the Museum of Modern Art now? In "Making Choices: 1920-1960," Cindy Sherman's shards of an ego, "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor by Frank Stella, and Walker Evans's collision with reality each get to define modern art's first decades of triumph.
J. Stella
Nope, not Frank. What happened to Joseph Stella and American Modernism after they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge?
Sternfeld
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.
Stingel
How can Rudolf Stingel alternate between spareness and glitter, instructions for painting and photorealism, skeptical and sentimental? Call it conceptual Rococo.
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.
Stockholder
When the art scene blends into night life, does art become self-indulgence or directed dreaming? Jessica Stockholder, Tara Donovan, Cao Fei, Jessica Rankin, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, and Salla Tykka each walk the line between light and dark.
Stone
Does painting have critics "Seeing Red"? A survey at Hunter College, influenced by Josef Albers, starts with the psychology of color, but Gregg Stone, Walter Biggs, James Nares, and Nancy Scheinman have something else in mind.
Struth
Photographs by Thomas Struth could pass for snapshots of family gatherings, old Europe, a tropical "paradise," or tourists themselves. With such a connoisseur of chaos, should one see the connoisseur or the chaos?
Stubbs
George Stubbs painted portraits, landscapes, dogs, and lions. Why do people know him as a horse painter, and what does that say about the origins of Romanticism?
Suh
Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Do Ho Suh, Khalif Kelly, Pieter Schoolwerth, and the video artists in "Closer Now" might agree to disagree.
Sullivan
Art seems to collapse right out from under Catherine Sullivan, James Hopkins, Mike Kelley, Jon Kessler, Diana Kingsley, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, and Daniel Rozin. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?
Sussman
Can video aspire to Old Master painting? Eve Sussman evokes the slippery time and space of Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas, and Bill Viola tries to transcend time through Jacopo da Pontormo, but Pontormo's portraits can take care of themselves.
Swartz
Julianne Swartz, David Altmejd, Pipilotti Rist, 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?
SWOON
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.
Sze
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?
Taaffe
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?
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.
Taniguchi
Thanks to Yoshio Taniguchi, MOMA's reopening in Manhattan is breathtaking. But will the rarefied air support a conversation with the work?
What is the Museum of Modern Art doing back in Manhattan? With "Take Two," it adjusts Yoshio Taniguchi's large new galleries and adjusts to contemporary art.
Tansey
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, Elizabeth Murray, and Mark Tansey—a painter who has made art into history.
Taylor-Wood
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.
Sam Taylor-Wood, David Altmejd, Pipilotti Rist, Julianne Swartz, 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?
British artists—such as Sam Taylor-Wood, Damien Hirst, and Chris Ofili—and New York politicians recycle old scripts, nearly a decade after appropriation art held sway. What accounts for the shock of the not so new, and can a savvy analysis by Hal Foster pin it down?
Does the Chelsea gallery scene know where the bodies are bodied? Sam Taylor-Wood, Wim Delvoye, Tracey Emin, Gary Hill, and Daniel Rozin may not get real, but they do get physical.
Temple
After ten years of haberarts.com, what have I learned, and have I still not joined the art world? The 2006 Dumbo "Art Under the Bridge" festival, with work by Mary Temple, makes critical judgment harder than ever.
Tetrode
Did Mannerism's virtuosity offer a pale shadow the past, or did it foreshadow the future? For a postmodern art history, Hendrick Goltzius and Willem van Tetrode suggest a Post-Renaissance.
Thurber
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 Shelburne Thurber, Catherine Opie, and Christoph Morlinghaus.
Thiebaud
Cake after cake, Wayne Thiebaud slathers on the icing. Does that count as Pop Art or realism, and which looks more conservative after all?
D. Tiepolo
What happened when Rococo collided with Enlightenment and revolution? Domenico Tiepolo turned to the New Testament, while Jean Honoré Fragonard literally got drawing off the ground.
G. Tiepolo
Top galleries love those elegant centuries that the public rarely notices. Or could Giambattista Tiepolo's Venice stand for art now?
Tiravanija
Can an artist still break through boundaries, with or without a radio signal? Rirkrit Tiravanija, Katrín Sigurdardóttir, and Susan Hamburger give it a try.
Tolle
Can art find common ground for grieving? A path lies from Ground Zero to Brian Tolle's Irish Hunger Memorial and the BWAC twentieth anniversary of sculpture "Between the Bridges."
Truitt
Does abstraction really have to stand for painting, as if meanings stood still apart from art and culture? Skip over the decades with Anne Truitt, Nell Blaine, Milton Resnick, Sean Scully, and Simon Lee, and see if the whole idea of abstraction is still standing.
Tsao, Tunick, and Turville
When black, white, and color become so visible that one wants to reach out and touch, can one still call it visionary? Richard Tsao, Petah Coyne, and Robert Ryman move beyond debates over formalism and illusion to metaphor, geometry, and goo.
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.
Tunga
It takes only a small step to proceed from chaos to mythos. Can that explain "Organizing Chaos," Tunga, and Jim Shaw's The Donner Party?
Turrell
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.
Art cries out for a great alternative space, but as alternative to what? I find out with the merger of P.S. to become "The Museum of Modern Art at P.S. 1," still with its permanent installation of James Turrell.
Tuttle
You call this Minimalism? Maybe not, when Richard Tuttle shows how to lighten up and Rob Fischer weighs the landscape down again.
Tuymans
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.
Twombly
What happens when the avant-garde becomes a school? With Cy Twombly, the finest paintings even look like a blackboard, but their only message is a scrawl.
Tykka
When the art scene blends into night life, does art become self-indulgence or directed dreaming? Salla Tykka, Tara Donovan, Cao Fei, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Jessica Rankin, and Jessica Stockholder each walk the line between light and dark.
