Pick an Artist

John Haber
in New York City

Haber's Reviews . . . by Artist or Critic

Even after Postmodernism, the best way into art is through its creators and interpreters. So take your pick! I list many group shows as well, all now alphabetized. (A search accepts their names, too.)

I have loved, learned from, and derided all too many artists and critics. Here I list those I rely on most to unravel art history. My articles often spotlight large museum shows, rather than the galleries I more often visit, because others will know them—and because they allow me more space to think and to dream. Need more help? Try this handy glossary of art terms.

Abramovic

Can performance enter the museum without the need for video, and is it then still performance? Marina Abramovic welcomes reenactment while keeping center stage.

For twelve days Marina Abramovic plays, literally, the starving artist. In The House with the Ocean View, do she and gallery visitors share an energy field or a dark complicity?

When does a woman staring back constitute a self-portrait, and when does her sexuality become instead vulnerability or even stardom? Rebecca Horn flies close to death in early videos, Marina Abramovic alleges "erotic rituals," and Roni Horn turns her camera on another woman.

Should one trace motion in painting and new media to illusion, vision, or physical sensation? "<Alt> Digital Media" and "Video Acts" get one thinking, with heavy lifting from Marina Abramovic, Bruce Nauman, and others.

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 John Coplans, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Robert Wogan, and Marina Abramovic—whose art creates a dark politics of memory.

Adams

Did Robert Adams find comfort in walking the night, and where are the clouds by day? He and Richard Misrach photograph a disturbing human presence in the American landscape.

Ai

Have Ai Weiwei, Leslie Hewitt, Jim Hodges, and James Nares reshaped architecture, reinforced it, or challenged it? Their installations move between floor covering, the artist's studio, and a wrecking ball.

Has summer sculpture gone for permanence? New York finds safety in Ai Weiwei, Jaume Plensa, Mark di Suvero, and "VISTA."

Aitken

Terence Koh floods a museum with light and Jesper Just sets off fireworks, while Doug Aitken and Anthony McCall illuminate three sides of a museum tower and the darkness of a gallery. Have they located new media in sensual experience or the multiplex?

Can installation art reveal a hidden New York? Doug Aitken, Carlos Amorales, Mike Nelson, and Reynold Reynolds dig deep.

Akerman

What happens when a Jew and an avant-garde film maker confronts echos of the past? Chantal Akerman looks at Eastern Europe after the Cold War.

Albers

With Homage to the Square, Josef Albers showed how long a painter could persevere in his art. Did American Modernism need his European rigor, and can Sharon Lockhart find it in dance, tapestry, and Noa Eshkol?

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" has one asking, while "Bauhaus: Workshops for Modernity" shows how Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Marcel Breuer shaped modern art.

Does painting have critics "Seeing Red"? A survey at Hunter College, influenced by Josef Albers, starts with the psychology of color, but Walter Biggs, James Nares, Nancy Scheinman, and Gregg Stone have something else in mind.

Allen

In "Headlines," such artists as Jonathan Allen, Carlo Vialu, and Amy Wilson confront, appropriate, and literally make headlines. When art and politics intersect, why must they meet on such contested ground? A second part looks at controversy surrounding the show itself.

Almond

Has photography outgrown planet earth? Amid the impulse to think big, Darren Almond, Thomas Ruff, and Letha Wilson cover Mars, seven continents, and America's geologic present.

Alsoudani

What ever happened to violence in art about Iraq, and what makes it so sexy? Ahmed Alsoudani and Raymond Pettibon.

Altmejd

Does size matter, at least when it comes to installations? Robert Therrien brings up to date the distinction between size and scale, while David Altmejd and his angels burst right through gallery walls.

Alter

Robert Alter praises literary works like the Bible, where there are so many voices that even God may not have the final say. When he too takes up arms against dissenting voices, those left-wing academics, should postmodernists be running for cover—or chortling?

Altfest

"They are amazing," writes John Ashbery in his poem "Some Trees." How can still life from Ellen Altfest, an actual dead tree from Anya Gallaccio, and video by Tacita Dean reach for amazement?

Alvanson

When an artist documents the world, is she engaged in directed dreaming? In an interview, Kristen Alvanson finds "the rigorous bastardization of dream."

Alÿs

Will Maurizio Cattelan give up art or "be back soon"? Either way, he and Francis Alÿs turn relational esthetics into toy stores, ego trips, and "slacker art."

Ambe

Can repetition become mere showmanship and magic tricks? Gwyneth Leech and Stephen G. Rhodes are still drinking coffee, while Noriko Ambe and Simryn Gill have more discretely layered obsessions.

Amorales

Is the personal or political blowing off the Gulf? Carlos Amorales, Yoan Capote, Thornton Dial, and Deborah Luster look past the American South to murder, exile, and community.

Can installation art reveal a hidden New York? Carlos Amorales, Doug Aitken, Mike Nelson, and Reynold Reynolds dig deep.

Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet

Can the experience of a book stretch from one mind to a household and out to an entire public world? A "Medieval Housebook" suggests how, set alongside shows of "the Medieval world" and of controversial works by Giotto and others from Assisi.

Anatsui

Can an installation extend both painting and political art? El Anatsui, Wolfgang Laib, Xin Song, and Lin Yan add local and global color.

Can one conceptual artists from bad boys and museums from big-box stores? Face to face with Gelitin and El Anatsui, Roberta Smith wants to know.

Is the future of painting in breaking boundaries or the scraps of art's past, and do they even differ? El Anatsui, Mark Bradford, Lia Halloran, Jeffrey Kessel, and more are recycling abstraction.

Andre

Had enough of the war on terrorism and struggles over memorials to 9/11? Carl Andre and M. Meshulam lower the volume.

Not long ago Carl Andre took a long last look at the oldest gallery in Soho. Is his Minimalism getting chillier in a postmodern age or even more inviting?

Andrea del Sarto

When Andrea del Sarto paints The Sacrifice of Isaac, should one identify with Abraham's dilemma or the look in Isaac's eyes? A selection of "European Painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art" offers an unusually intimate history of Western art.

Angelico

Can one really reconstruct the art of Fra Angelico from his days as a workshop assistant and without his frescoes or major altarpieces? Maybe not, but one may see the birth of the Italian Renaissance instead.

Antico

Could Renaissance art history lie off the beaten path, with a forgotten sculptor and a town in northern Italy? Antico rediscovers antiquity, while Bergamo holds painting by Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Lorenzo Lotto.

Antonello

Painting is dead, people say every few years, but did it have a birth, too? The Italian Renaissance had to discover oil painting, and Antonello da Messina made that discovery stick.

Antoni

Is there really "The Female Gaze," and what could it look like? Janine Antoni, Alfred Gescheidt, and Juergen Teller parse the elements of desire.

Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? Janine Antoni, Amy Bennett, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, Peter Sarkisian, and David Shapiro put them both to the test.

Arbus

Diane Arbus may make everyone look weird, but she first has to make everyone look. How did she catch you looking, too?

Arcangel

What distinguishes digital art from boys playing with their boy toys? New media looks for definitions in old-fashioned contraptions by Cory Arcangel, Charlotte Becket, and Tim Hawkinson.

With museum shows of artists entering their thirties, has art found a new generation? Cory Arcangel, Laurel Nakadate, and Ryan Trecartin live between video games and the eternal present.

Armstrong

What does this Jackson Pollock mean to you? John Armstrong thinks that art's value lies in something very personal, but the Gere collection, of some sixty early landscape sketches in oil, shows how personal reveries in art took shape not all that long ago.

Artschwager

Richard Artschwager was painting realism on Celotex while a young Wade Guyton preferred video games. Are they two versions of Post-Minimalism?

Atlas

Is Bushwick settling down? Maybe not, but Charles Atlas, Deborah Brown, and Bushwick Open Studios 2012 challenge the art fairs.

Auerbach

Could something as simple as a color chart keep formalism alive—or does it just add another layer of conceptual art? Tauba Auerbach, Jaq Chartier, Kathy Goodall, Harriet Korman, and Catherine Lee turn to dots and dashes for "Ecstatic Alphabets."

avaf

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?

Avedon

Can Modernism accept fashion photography only by denying its aims? Richard Avedon can look pretty classy anyhow.

Bacon

Francis Bacon paints revulsion—against fine art, against the flesh, and against himself. Dis his raw meat ever become Modernism?

Bacher

Is art for the dead or the living? A memorial to Dash Snow lacks much sign of his art, Lutz Bacher hides herself and the subject of her tribute, and Maurizio Cattelan refuses even to die.

Bader

When it comes to gun culture, is political art more about the guns or about culture? Sarah Frost creates a ghostly paper arsenal, while Liz Magic Laser, Henry Taylor, and Darren Bader feel your pain.

Baechler

Can Soho recover memories of modernity? Donald Baechler, Stephen Westfall, Wendell McRae, and Tim Hawkinson take on the construction job—with everything from abstract painting and photography to machine parts.

Baerveldt

Would a feminist display an empty dress and nurse a mannequin like a sick child? Erzstbet Baerveldt reflects movingly on the perplexities of a woman artist.

Bailey

Did the March on Washington demand a response from African American artists? When Romare Bearden helped found "Spiral," he could only dream how Radcliffe Bailey, "Evidence of Accumulation," and Lyle Ashton Harris would spiral outward.

Baldessari

When John Baldessari repeats I Am Making Art over and over, is he making or denying meaning—and is he making art? His conceptual art is cool, detached, ironic, and at ease with popular culture.

Baley

Which will do in art first, gentrification or trashy installations? Jonathan Schipper wants you to drive carefully in Brooklyn, while Lisa Kirk and Sarah Baley look for change to the Brooklyn Naval Yard.

Balincourt

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

Ball

Does art take science—or vice versa? David Hockney cannot keep either one straight, while Philip Ball brings them together in a fascinating history of color.

Banners of Persuasion

Do fabric and tapestry design still stand for multiculturalism, tradition, or women's work? Charles LeDray, "Rags to Richesse," and Banners of Persuasion range from the East Village to North Africa and from myth to a man's sexual coming of age.

Barlow

Should shaped canvas stick to canvas—or the wall? Phyllida Barlow, Charles Hinman, Al Loving, and Artie Vierkant shape alternatives.

Did Minimalism have another, messier, and now largely forgotten history? Phyllida Barlow, Bill Bollinger, and Sheila Hicks anticipate a rediscovery of everyday objects, craft, and chaos.

Barney

One year late, Matthew Barney has finally come out on video, if only at the Guggenheim. Does his five-part cycle gives new meaning to museum blockbusters?

Is Matthew Barney just a shooting star? When it comes to Barney, Lina Bertucci is doing the shooting, and the Morgan Library makes an epic from his drawings alone.

Bartana

For Martha Rosler, Duston Spear, Ardeshir Mohassess, and Yael Bartana, political art after 9/11 conveys urgency, but counts as politics? The answer may differ for those who lived through other wars.

Barth

Are women photographers better off posing or hiding? The subjects of Uta Barth, Irene Caesar, and Rachel Hovnanian include themselves, dolls, empty space, and even me.

B. Bartlett

What defines conservative art—an accessible artist, an academy of fine art, or a sober realist at home in one? William Wegman and his dog emerge from the calendars, the 2006 National Academy Annual from 181 years of torpor, and Bo Bartlett from the American tradition.

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.

J. Bartlett

With Rhapsody, Jennifer Bartlett took painting apart, but could all the king's horses after Modernism put it together again? With "Against the Grain," the Edward R. Broida collection tries to fill a gap, both in the Modern's permanent collection and contemporary art's history.

If painting is not dead, has abstraction survived as mere recitation? Jennifer Bartlett, Brice Marden, Clare Seidl, and Suzan Frecon try recitatives, additions, overlays, and a heart of gold.

Bartolo di Fredi

Were the 1300s a lost century or the missing link from Giotto and Duccio? Bartolo di Fredi finds his way to the Renaissance.

Bas

Can museums set art apart from its commodity value, and if not, who gets to cash in? Brandeis University turns on its donors, with plans to sell off the Rose Museum, while the Brooklyn Museum panders to one, with work by Hernan Bas.

Baselitz

Fifteen years later, can George Baselitz still set the art world on its head? Just try it in the Guggenheim's already titled rooms.

Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat projected countless many words and images onto himself? At his retrospective, does self-expression became one more image of the artist?

Did Jean-Michel Basquiat 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.

Did Andy Warhol decline from artist into celebrity, or was he asking for it all along? A film about Jean-Michel Basquiat—an artist who knew celebrity all too well—does not shy away from Warhol's late work.

Bassano

How can five paintings from the Norton Simon Museum include three dogs, three mothers, and at least twice as many angels? Jacopo Bassano, Peter Paul Rubens, Guercino, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo chart the parallel development of painting in oil and a new secularism.

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 Jacopo Bassano, while Spain and St. John the Divine set aside "Time to Hope."

Batchelor

Can art set color free and design free the mind, without both adding still more stifling constraints? "Color Chart: Reinventing Color," inspired by Donald Batchelor, and "Design and the Elastic Mind" pursue two postmodern utopias.

Baudelaire

If Charles Baudelaire distrusted Impressionism, how can his Paris streets stand for the birth of Modernism? I call it just part of the postmodern paradox.

Baudrillard

Did Leonardo and Paolo Veronese anticipate Beethoven, the discovery of Pluto, and Jean Baudrillard? With Peter Greenaway, the society of the spectacle has a hungering for the real.

Bauer

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?

Bauhaus

Bearden

Romare Bearden identifies with the Renaissance—the one in Harlem and the one in Italy, too. Can one still call his collage Pop Art or an African American voice of the 1960s?

Does a tribute say more about the original or the present? With "The Bearden Project" and a mural, Kira Lynn Harris and others remember Romare Bearden.

Becket

What distinguishes digital art from boys playing with their boy toys? New media looks for definitions in old-fashioned contraptions by Charlotte Becket, Cory Arcangel, and Tim Hawkinson.

Beckmann

Did Max Beckmann disdain Modernism or bring it to Germany? From a brutal, mythic past to a decadent, impoverished present, Beckmann confronts a nation's masks.

How German was German Expressionism? With Max Beckmann and Otto Dix, "German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse" aims to shift the center of Modernism from Paris.

Bellini

In a secular age, is there still room for a miracle? Restoring a painting by Giovanni Bellini sheds some breathtaking light.

Did the Renaissance in Italy rediscover the individual, in profile and in the round? "The Renaissance Portrait" moves from Donatello to Giovanni Bellini and from heads of states to a wider world.

Bellows

When George Bellows captures the brutality of the boxing ring, he means the brutality of the spectators most of all. Could he have played the spectator in his art?

Beloff

When women artists play against stereotype, are they getting hysterical? Zoe Beloff, Nathalie Djurberg, Mika Rottenberg, Carolee Schneeman, and Karen Yasinsky improve on Freud's studies in hysteria.

Benglis

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 and Lee Bontecou prove that a woman artist can make the story more complicated yet.

When Lynda Benglis shares space with Louise Bourgeois, can one tell the good girl from the bad girl? Anna Gaskell and Margaret Murphy prefer not to say.

Bennett

Whose life is this anyway? Amy Bennett, Robert Doisneau, and Neo Rauch 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.

Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? Amy Bennett, Janine Antoni, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, Peter Sarkisian, and David Shapiro put them both to the test.

Benson

Is the revival of abstraction excess or enigma? Trudy Benson, "Pour," Canan Talon, and others pour it on.

Benton

Thomas Hart Benton fled the midwest in the name of art and New York in the name of America. Why did the controversy keep surprising him?

Bernhardt

Is there a direct line from Expressionism to the graphic novel? Joyce Pensato, Katherine Bernhardt, and Takashi Murakami get graphic.

Bernini

If only a great artist could "handle marble as if it were bronze," Gian Lorenzo Bernini handled them both as if they were modeling clay. Did he also leave his fingerprints in clay?

Bertucci

Is Matthew Barney just a shooting star? When it comes to Barney, Lina Bertucci is doing the shooting, and the Morgan Library makes an epic from his drawings alone.

Betancourt

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.

Bhabha

When do terror and loss translate into something spiritual, personal, and true to the present? Huma Bhabha and Zarina Hashmi are of very different generations and hostile nations, but in place and spirit not so very far away.

Bidlo

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. Do these look any different, now that MOMA has bought P.S. 1 lock, stock, and toilet?

Biggs

Biesenbach/Walker

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.

Bingham

From George Caleb Bingham past Winslow Homer, painters have been telling "American Stories." But are they stories of individualism or community, of race or merit?

Bittencourt

Should artists have a natural sympathy for refugees? Maybe not, but "Senso Unico" finds exiles in Italy, "Flow" in and beyond Africa, and Julio Bittencourt in a boarded-up building in Brazil.

Blackmon

Julie Blackmon, Clark and Pougnaud, 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?

Blaine

Does abstraction really have to stand for painting, as if meanings stood still apart from art and culture? Skip over the decades with Nell Blaine, Milton Resnick, Anne Truitt, Sean Scully, and Simon Lee, and see if the whole idea of abstraction is still standing.

N. Blake

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 Michael Heizer, Jenny Holzer, Laurie Simmons, and Nayland Blake—who sees that art has something in common with both sides of a certain kinky philosopher.

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 Nayland Blake, Lewis Carroll, Nan Goldin, Grace Goldsmith, Laurie Simmons, and others ask just that.

W. Blake

Which has the final word—heaven or hell, innocence or experience, text or watercolor? For William Blake, opposites always attract, repel, mingle, and even obliterate each other.

Bleecker

What marks the edge between city and country? Like suburbia and sprawltown, James Bleecker, Tadashi Kawamata, Patrick O'Hare, and "Degrees of Freedom" are learning to forget.

Bloom

Do collecting and mirroring add up to narcissism? Barbara Bloom puts real and imaginary museums through their paces.

Bluemner

Who knew that prewar American art had such an explosion of color? Oscar Bluemner starts as an architect and draftsman, only to reinvent himself in New York, exhibit in some heady modern company thanks to Alfred Stieglitz, and die almost forgotten.

Blum

When Rachel Whiteread casts common objects, does she leave monuments or their absence? She flirts with grandeur, but Sydney Blum restores sculpture to kitchen duty.

Blunt

How many lives had Anthony Blunt? Surely the specialist in Nicolas Poussin and the Cambridge spy have nothing at all in common—beyond the complexities of a life, of scholarship, and of their time.

Boetti

Alighiero Boetti attributed his art to him and his imaginary twin. Had he escaped from Arte Povera and fine art—or found his significant other in himself?

Bois

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.

Bollinger

Did Minimalism have another, messier, and now largely forgotten history? Bill Bollinger, Phyllida Barlow, and Sheila Hicks anticipate a rediscovery of everyday objects, craft, and chaos.

Boltanski

"Be not afeard," Caliban assures himself, though "the isle is full of noises." Why is Susan Philipsz singing, Barbara Kruger shouting, Joachim Koester in a drug-induced trance, Alix Pearlstein auditioning, and Christian Boltanski hearing hearts pounding?

Bonnard

In almost every late interior by Pierre Bonnard, a basket or fruit dish occupies the center or foreground. Why, then, must his wife lurk in the shadows?

Bontecou

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? Lee Bontecou and Lynda Benglis prove that a woman artist can make the story more complicated yet.

Bonvicini

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.

Botero

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.

Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli was not all sweetness and light? But did he influence Lucas Cranach?

Boucher

François Boucher found his models in women, children, and art. Can his drawings rescue for modern eyes a workaholic's confusion of artifice and observation?

Bouchet

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."

Bourgeois

For a self-styled matriarch, Louise Bourgeois makes some of the most approachable art of the twentieth century. Why then does one fear to touch?

When Louise Bourgeois shares space with Lynda Benglis, can one tell the good girl from the bad girl? Anna Gaskell and Margaret Murphy prefer not to say.

Boursier-Mougenot

Does sound art turn a gallery into a nightclub, a cathedral, or a wildlife preserve? While Céleste Boursier-Mougenot hears the buzz, Christian Marclay sees the score.

A bird house by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates an emblem of the postmodern museum, alongside Mike Bidlo's turning Marcel Duchamp into bathroom wallpaper and Tom Merrick's inflatable green dinosaur bird house. Do these look any different, now that MOMA has bought P.S. 1 lock, stock, and toilet?

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.

Boyce

From Minimalism to installation art, how did art get into this mess? With Ugo Rondinone, Martin Boyce, Christoph Draeger, and David Byrne, the star of the show has departed, leaving visitors to rattle around a cluttered but still empty interior.

Bradford

With the cantilevered Institute for Contemporary Arts in Boston, Diller Scofidio + Renfro let a museum take flight toward the harbor. Do they make Mark Bradford, William Cordova, and Robin Rhode models for contemporary art—or just another sacrifice to trendy art and architecture?

Is the future of painting in breaking boundaries or the scraps of art's past, and do they even differ? Mark Bradford, El Anatsui, Lia Halloran, Jeffrey Kessel, and more are recycling abstraction.

Bradley

Slater Bradley, Lucas Samaras, 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?

Brancusi

How many postmodernists can dance on the head of a pedestal? Constantin Brancusi takes sculpture off base.

Brannon

Can art escape the prison house of language? Zen advertising from Matthew Brannon and a labyrinth of quotes from Joseph Kosuth lay a trap of words.

Braque

Was Cubism a movement or a vision? Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in drawing made it more than both.

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.

Brauntuch

For a time Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, and Cindy Sherman shared a Soho gallery. Did they ignite "The Pictures Generation"?

Breton

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.

Breuer

As Renzo Piano unleashes his imagination in the Meatpacking District, will Marcel Breuer be left behind? The Whitney weighs a move to the foot of the High Line.

Breuning

For Robert Storr, conceptual art embodies the excesses of art-world stardom and childish installations. Olaf Breuning, Dan Fischer, and the African Americans in "30 Seconds off an Inch" point instead to conceptual arts in the plural.

Brickley

What happens when abstraction meets the ready-made gesture? Skyler Brickley, Tamar Halpern, and Amy Sillman take painting "Besides, With, Against, and Yet."

Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition

Do summers bring out everyone's inner child or just some childish art? For 2008, Jeff Koons and Chris Burden play hard, while "Waste Not, Want Not" in Astoria and a version of "Between the Bridges" called "Relative Environment" teach one to recycle one's toys.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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."

Bronson

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

Bronzino

How did Mannerism turn from agony to manner? Agnolo Bronzino drawings take him from Pontormo's studio to self-reflection, while "Rome After Raphael" watches the manner die.

Brookner

When Anita Brookner looks at Romanticism, she sees only discontents and infinite longings. So what makes Caspar David Friedrich's Moonwatchers so at home with nature in turmoil, the darkness of night, and the far-away heavens?

Brooks

Must big gestures be macho and empty installations be empty of meaning? David Brooks (with help from Mark Dion), Allyson Vieira, and John von Bergen see Minimalism as urban history.

When Leo Marx wrote The Machine in the Garden, did he have in mind a camera—or a steam shovel preparing earthworks? David Brooks, Justine Kurland, and Erin Shirreff find America on the edge between nature and culture.

C. Brown

What could be more academic these days than abstract art, except maybe turning against it? Cecily Brown has to make one ask, but along with James Hyde and Rebecca Purdum, she may offer too many answers.

D. Brown

Is Bushwick settling down? Maybe not, but Deborah Brown, Charles Atlas, and Bushwick Open Studios 2012 challenge the art fairs.

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

T. Brown

Are Sam Moyer and others in ". . ." haunted by abstraction, including their own? Trisha Brown remembers abstraction's collective dance, while Lilly Ludlow finds it a century ago on the Lower East Side.

Bruce High Quality Foundation

Should one ban the Whitney Biennial, replaced by the "Brucennial" and the Bruce High Quality Foundation? The edgy 2012 Whitney Biennial may not back down, but it is stripped down.

Are artists, any artists, complicit with a venal, oppressive system? Consider three little words—and ask the Bruce High Quality Foundation.

Bruegel

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.

From Jan van Eyck to Pieter Bruegel, can such shimmering, personal art have emerged from a shared workshop? When a museum opens its own back rooms, two institutions come under the spotlight.

Buchloh

Burchfield

Charles Burchfield spent his last quarter century reworking his own visionary watercolors. Had he discovered realism, appropriation, or apocalyptic wallpaper?

Burden

Buren

Does the Guggenheim still have a place for art? Daniel Buren, Hilla Rebay, and Jorge Oteiza take one back to the Museum of Non-Objective Painting and forward once again, to museum empires and empty ramps.

Burr

Can appropriation art still look back? Tom Burr and Gedi Sibony undertake a renovation project for modern art.

Busse

Summer and photography alike promise a window onto nature. How, then, do Dietmar Busse, Roger Ricco, and Sharon Lockhart present "Mutilated/Cultivated Environments"?

Buvoli

Futurism found beauty in "the hood ornament of a speeding automobile," but only before a collision. Must art's bad boys, from Martin Kippenberger to Luca Buvoli, always crash the party?

Byrne

Have social media taken over everything? David Byrne, "Social Media," "Facetime," and "Corporations Are People Too" try something more collaborative, but also impersonal.

Still more names!

jhaber@haberarts.com