Haber's Art Reviews: Browse by Artist (I-M)

Pick from More Artists

John Haber
in New York City

Preceding names!

Ingres

Heir to France's academic traditions, at home with rich surfaces and wealthy patrons, toady to the emperor, J. A. D. 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.

Ja

When does a work on paper become wallpaper? With Wei Ja, Dawn Clements, Claire Pentecost, and Lin Yan, it may well become the wall.

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.

When political art goes wrong, it can get too didactic or too personal. With Emily Jacir, Marlene Dumas, and "The Labyrinth Wall," can it ever be both at once?

Jankowski

Video art cannot imitate Mel Gibson, Federico Fellini, and Alfred Hitchcock all at the same time, can it? Christian Jankowski and Jon Routson 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.

Jaudon

Was there more to women's art in the 1970s than politics? Valerie Jaudon brought pattern and decoration to formalism, while Jackie Ferrara, Nancy Holt, and others created "Decoys, Complexes, and Triggers: Feminism and Land Art."

Jenkins

Should Michael Fried have meant "Art as Objecthood" as a compliment to Minimalism? Bill Jenkins, Hu Bing, Ted Victoria, and Bill Walton look to ordinary objects for drama and realism.

Joannou

Is art trapped in a vicious circle of celebrity artists, curators, and collectors? Jeff Koons curates "Skin Fruit," the Dakis Joannou Collection.

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. With his latest Catenary, is he 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.

Ken Johnson

Would it take a Teabagger to shock the art world? Ken Johnson sees a liberal hegemony beneath pluralism, while Americans embrace Robert Mapplethorpe.

Kysa 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.

R. Johnson

Can art have a private language, and what would it sound like? Rashid Johnson, Anna Craycroft, Michael Portnoy, and Catherine Sullivan pursue studies in hysteria.

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

Does male desire play better in a lonely villa or in East London, with frontal nudity or in suit and tie? Gilbert & George play it as camp, Jesper Just as existential crisis.

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?

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?

Kahn

Was the architecture of Louis I. Kahn about concrete and stone or light, space, and sky? Years after his death, FDR Four Freedoms Park and the expanded Yale University Art Gallery speak to both.

Kandinsky

"The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, wrote Wassily Kandinsky, "is a complicated but definite and easily definable movement forwards and upwards." What makes it so hard to keep up with his pioneering art?

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?

If Wassily Kandinsky hesitated and Pablo Picasso backed off, who gets credit for abstraction? "Inventing Abstraction" describes not movements but networks and connections, including dance and music.

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

Kant

Imagine Immanuel Kant writing weekly reviews for ordinary readers. Rare among philosophers, Arthur C. Danto loves art and says so—enough to take his time getting to artists?

Kaoru

When art aspires to ritual, must it mistake art for religion? Izima Kaoru, Terence Koh, William Lamson, and Ursula von Rydingsvard trace the path of the sun.

Kapoor

Anish Kapoor likes dark interiors and sweeping curves, Mark di Suvero builds wide-open towers, and Joel Shapiro started small, spare, and evocative. Do any of them deserve the label post-Minimalism?

Karver

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

Kassay

What happened to the flatness of abstract art? Jacob Kassay, Cordy Ryman, and "Organic Geometries" subject Modernism to slash and burn.

Kawamata

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

Kelley

Is art devolving into a scary, macho remake of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll? Mike Kelley and Michael Smith take Baby IKKI to Burning Man, "The Horror Show" plays on, and Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman convert a huge gallery into Black-Acid Co-op.

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

Dan Flavin collects the Hudson River School, Ellsworth Kelly draws plants, and Storm King Art Center explores its Hudson River landscape. Guess which show is called "Light and Landscape"?

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.

Kessel

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

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?

Khan

Are east and west only a stone's throw away? Lee Ufan bridges Minimalism and the garden, while Stefana McClure and Idris Khan mix Minimalism, polish, and text.

Kiefer

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?

Robert Hughes and Ada Louise Huxtable set standards, and Michael Kimmelman pays tribute. What does that leave for a critic of art and architecture today?

Has art become a product of museum advertising, one-of-a-kind genius, or just a lucky accident? For Michael Kimmelman, 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?

Kippenberger

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?

Kirchner

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

Kirk

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.

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."

S. Klein

Madonna and Steven Klein try to create a satanic fashion show. Does this leave video art in decent shape—or only the model?

Y. Klein

Were things looking dark for painting in the 1960s? While Mark Rothko pushed to black, and Yves Klein trademarked his blue, Robert Ryman like Richard Pousette-Dart before them choose white.

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.

Koester

"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?

Koh

When art aspires to ritual, must it mistake art for religion? Terence Koh, Izima Kaoru, William Lamson, and Ursula von Rydingsvard trace the path of the sun.

de Kooning

Between abstraction and his women, was Willem de Kooning Abstract Expressionism's second banana or its model for the next century? A retrospective goes about unerasing 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 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?

MOMA has rooms for Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko but not for Willem de Kooning. What defines "Abstract Expressionist New York"?

How many critics does it take to screw up Abstract Expressionism? In "Action/Abstraction," Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg face off, but Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning get along just fine.

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 Willem de Kooning?

It takes comparisons to Willem 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.

In The Tribute Money and in a young man, does Michelangelo see a growing mastery or a choice? He finds them both in "Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich" and "From Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Courtauld Gallery."

Koons

Is art trapped in a vicious circle of celebrity artists, curators, and collectors? Jeff Koons curates "Skin Fruit," the Dakis Joannou Collection.

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.

Korman

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

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?

Do images of Asia always amount to "orientalism"? From James McNeill Whistler to Ann Hamilton and Paul Kos, "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia" looks to the East and finds only religion.

Kosuth

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.

Must art as text always mean the impersonality of Joseph Kosuth? For Mickey Smith it means blood money, for R. Luke DuBois it means American politics, and for David Diao it means a life in painting.

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.

Kraus

Are Kitty Kraus and Urs Fischer minimal, conceptual, or just making a mess? Installations redolent of destruction run into recession austerity.

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.

Kurland

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

Kusama

Was there more to Yayoi Kusama than the summer of love? A career retrospective finds paintings, phalluses, and photographs, most notably of herself.

Kuitca

The Drawing Center returns to Soho, with architecture by Claire Weisz and the diaries, notebooks, or "assembly instructions" of Guillermo Kuitca, José Antonio Suárez Londoño, and Alexandre Singh. How modest (or ambitious) is that?

Labrouste

Is there a politics of postmodern architecture? "9 + 1 Ways of Being Political" finds mostly dystopias and unfinished business, but Henri Labrouste helped create modern Paris by opening architecture to the public long ago.

Lacan

In need of a primer on Jacques Lacan? 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.

Laib

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

Lamson

When art aspires to ritual, must it mistake art for religion? William Lamson, Izima Kaoru, Terence Koh, and Ursula von Rydingsvard trace the path of the sun.

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.

Can abstraction survive only by losing its rigor? Ronnie Landfield, Agnes Martin, Carrie Moyer, Milton Resnick, and Frank Stella have one working to tell the difference.

Lansing-Dreiden

When photography meets abstraction, does the camera have designs on the viewer? Peter Halley haunts mixed media from Lansing-Dreiden, Rory Donaldson, and Raha Raissnia.

Laser

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.

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.

Lebenkoff

"Nothing," Georgia O'Keeffe promised, "is less real than realism." So what if abstraction for Ethel Lebenkoff, Laurel Farrin, or Cyrilla Mozenter includes a pizza box, a foot, or a chair?

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.

LeDray

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.

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?

C. Lee

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

C.-J. Lee

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. . . .

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.

Leech

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.

Léger

Fernand Léger transformed Cubism into a vision of human dignity. Could he have anticipated postmodern criticism of "humanism"?

Leo

When does a therapy session, street photography, a police investigation, or a true confession become a fiction—or a lie? Jana Leo, Andrea Fraser, and Hannah Starkey seek the truth.

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.

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.

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.

Alfred Leslie set aside the brush for the computer and "the lives of some women." Had he, Echo Eggebrecht, Jan Müller, and Helen Verhoeven found male fantasies or acid girls?

Lethbridge

Levine

Sherrie Levine and "Crazy Lady" have no love or fear of a museum. Can she enter it all the same?

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

LeWitt

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.

Lidén

Sharon Hayes and Klara Lidén keep coming at you in performance and on video. Why makes one more self-effacing, while also finding a woman's voice?

Ligon

In conceptual art, can an artist speak of himself? Glenn Ligon finds the text for blackness.

Is jazz closer to abstraction or to African American identity? "Blues for Smoke," with help from Glenn Ligon, has room for both.

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?

Limbourg

Where did the Renaissance begin in earnest? The Limbourg brothers illuminate the International Style, "Pages of Gold" follows progress across Europe, and "Icon Painting in Venetian Crete" takes El Greco from his origins to Italy.

M. Lin

The Museum of Chinese in America brings the past to light when it leaves the galleries to descend underground. Can Maya Lin bridge landscape, architecture, and community?

Lin Yan

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

When does a work on paper become wallpaper? With Lin Yan, Dawn Clements, Wei Ja, and Claire Pentecost, it may well become the wall.

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.

Lippard

Can criticism cross over into art—or conceptual art into criticism? Lucy Lippard charts six years in the emergence of conceptual art, while Eric Doeringer would like to remake it.

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"?

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?

Lombardo

Holland Cotter embraces a museum's claims for Tullio Lombardo as a Renaissance artist, while Roberta Smith criticizes J. M. W. Turner as a flashy expressionist. Does contemporary criticism need art history?

Londoño

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.

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

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.

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.

Love

Can market models distinguish old masters from young geniuses? David W. Galenson applies economics to innovation, but Robyn Love knows the value of art as a gift.

Loving

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

Lowe

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 and Dieter Roth.

Ludlow

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.

Luster

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

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.

Lyall

Can Scott Lyall, Jason Tomme, and "American ReConstruction" find a space between painting, prints, models, and abstraction? Sara VanDerBeek reminds new and old media "To Think of Time."

Madonna

Madonna and Steven Klein try to create a satanic fashion show. Does this leave video art in decent shape—or only the model?

Magid

Art faces lots of traps, from Postmodernism to Sheetrock walls and from gender roles to acts of torture. Jill Magid and Kate Gilmore are breaking out of the box.

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?

Mahalchick

Does appropriation, by definition, run in one cultural dimension? Between installation, architecture, and nature, Michael Mahalchick, Andy Coolquitt, and Sarah Sze pile it on thick and thin.

Maisel

Is art in a state of emergency? Nari Ward calls an ambulance to Harlem, Sterling Ruby parks a prison in Chelsea, Brian Conley stages war games in Brooklyn, and David Maisel photographs the ashes.

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?

When change came to painting and to Paris, were the department stores there first? Berthe Morisot takes out her best dress and her art, Gustave Caillebotte and Pierre-Auguste Renoir their umbrellas, and Edouard Manet and Claude Monet their brush for "Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity."

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, Edouard Manet, to check out such artists as Cindy Sherman, Richard Tsao, castaneda/reiman, Deborah Turville, and Scott Tunick.

An exhibition puts "The Origins of Impressionism" back in the Salon. Can it dispel the air of mystery and adventure around Edouard Manet and 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.

Mantegna

Mapplethorpe

Would it take a Teabagger to shock the art world? Ken Johnson sees a liberal hegemony beneath pluralism, while Americans embrace Robert 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.

Marclay

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.

"What, then, is time?" Saint Augustine wondered, but for Christian Marclay in The Clock, Leslie Thornton, and Stephen Vitiello, time is on their side.

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?

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.

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?

Martin

Can abstraction survive only by losing its rigor? Agnes Martin, Ronnie Landfield, Carrie Moyer, Milton Resnick, and Frank Stella have one working to tell the difference.

Marx

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.

When art looks at disaster, can it see more than the picturesque? Diana Thater, Adriane Colburn, Cheryl Molnar, Ed Osborn, and Leonardo Silaghi find what Leo Marx called the machine in the garden and love among the ruins.

Masaccio

The Italian Renaissance is supposed to begin with Giotto and burst out with Masaccio, right? Art in Florence wants to prove me half wrong.

Masheck

When Joseph Masheck collects his Texts on (Texts on) Art, has art and criticism given way to an obsessive chain of influence? Not when Marcel Duchamp, Ad Reinhardt, Andy Warhol, Arthur C. Danto, and others embraced the dangers.

Masley

Is there a deconstructive architecture of the gallery? Caitlin Masley, Allyson Vieira, Ishmael Randall Weeks, and Kevin Zucker hint at its politics but barely find the architecture.

Mather

Must a museum expansion extend to the art? Rick Mather at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts stresses civic spaces, but Artemisia Gentileschi fights back.

Matisse

Henri Matisse worked on a single painting for ten years, until Fauvism's color had faded. Was it a "radical invention"?

"I never retouch," Henri Matisse boasted, but often he did—and hired someone to photograph every step of the way. Like the stained canvas of Helen Frankenthaler, he challenges myths of Modernism, spontaneity, and an artist in immediate touch with himself and nature.

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.

With Tod Williams and Billie Tsien as architects, has the Barnes Foundation sold out or found itself? In Philadelphia now, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and a ton of Pierre-August Renoir are still getting the "hang" of modern art.

Gertrude and Leo Stein shared a Paris apartment and, with their brother and sister-in-law, a growing flock of artists. When the Steins collect Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, who is teaching whom?

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.

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.

McCall

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?

D. McCarthy

Doreen McCarthy loves plastics, Lisa Hoke recycles, and "Notes on 'Notes on Camp' " recalls Susan Sontag. For all the theater, can the art object still slip out from within quotes?

P. McCarthy

Can prefabricated homes remake modern living or just offer the same old parts? "Home Delivery" builds for speed, but Paul McCarthy slams the door.

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.

McClure

Are east and west only a stone's throw away? Lee Ufan bridges Minimalism and the garden, while Stefana McClure and Idris Khan mix Minimalism, polish, and text.

McCoy

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

McElheny

When did modern architecture give way to colors and curves? Josiah McElheny, Charles Gwathmey, and Eero Saarinen each give the International Style a different terminus.

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.

McGrath

After traditional representation and abstraction, can painters still map space? Tom McGrath, Corinne Wasmuht, and "Inside Out, Outside In" negotiate the panoramas of airports and cities at night.

McMillian

What it mean to act African American? Rodney McMillian, Rico Gatson, and Clifford Owens mix media and performance.

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.

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

What's Hecuba to him and she to Goldman Sachs? With Julie Mehretu and Elliott Hundley world finance meets Greek tragedy on a mural scale.

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

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

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

Metzger

Is there an art of Eastern Europe? Memories for Gustav Metzger run from the Holocaust to riots in London, but for "Ostalgie" art still lies behind the Berlin Wall.

Michelangelo

What were you doing at age twelve? If you were Michelangelo, says the Met, you were painting devils in the sky, while James Hall thinks you had a problem with your body.

Maryalice Huggins in Aesop's Mirror struggles to authenticate the object she loves, while the Met boasts of a newly discovered Michelangelo. What explains the politics of attribution?

Mies

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 Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Marcel Breuer shaped modern art.

Mik

Can video art mean more than a dark, empty room? The X-Initiative strands Keren Cytter, Luke Fowler, and Tris Vonna-Michell in Chelsea, while Aernout Mik shoots up eight floors of a museum on video.

Miller

Is "shock art" bad art? In The Crucible, Arthur Miller took on good and evil, leaving only the bad.

Mingwei

When does drawing stop and calligraphy or weaving begin? Lee Mingwei, Cui Fei, Paul Glabicki, Léon Ferrari, and Mira Schendel leave art hanging by a thread.

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.

Miró

From 1927 to 1939, Joan Miró vowed to assassinate painting. But did his "painting and anti-painting" instead keep bringing it back to life?

Misrach

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.

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.

Mohassess

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.

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

Molinier

Is there more to Surrealism than sex and violence? When Pierre Molinier manipulated photography and gender, his own life was on the line.

Molnar

When art looks at disaster, can it see more than the picturesque? Cheryl Molnar, Adriane Colburn, Ed Osborn, Leonardo Silaghi, and Diana Thater find what Leo Marx called the machine in the garden and love among the ruins.

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 Piet Mondrian and Ad Reinhardt side by side shows their parallel growth as painters. How many Modernisms are there?

Do "December" and the solstice stand for a promise or for dark nights? Marianne Vitale poses much the same question to Minimalism and Melissa Gordon to Piet Mondrian.

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?

Claude Monet outlived Post-Impressionism and even Cubism. Does his late work belong most with Seurat's precision, Cézanne's struggle, or van Gogh's imagination.

An exhibition puts the origins of Impressionism back in the Salon. Can it dispel the air of mystery and adventure around Claude Monet and 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.

Moore

In 1927, Ford Motor Company welcomed Charles Sheeler. Should a critic still care decades later, when Andrew Moore finds Detroit in decay?

Morandi

For a lifetime, Giorgio Morandi lived with family and worked in the same room. Does his still life set him apart from Modernism or play out its psychic tensions?

Morisot

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.

C. Moyer

Can abstraction survive only by losing its rigor? Carrie Moyer, Ronnie Landfield, Agnes Martin, Milton Resnick, and Frank Stella have one working to tell the difference.

S. Moyer

Mozenter

"Nothing," Georgia O'Keeffe promised, "is less real than realism." So what if abstraction for Cyrilla Mozenter, Laurel Farrin, or Ethel Lebenkoff includes a pizza box, a foot, or a chair?

Mueck

How big can art get, and will it then outgrow its own myths? Ron Mueck, Dana Schutz, Neo Rauch, and Tom Thayer see art as a matter of life and death.

Müller

Alfred Leslie set aside the brush for the computer and "the lives of some women." Had he, Jan Müller, Echo Eggebrecht, and Helen Verhoeven found male fantasies or acid girls?

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, by Edvard Munch, in August 2004, did they really get the goods, or did they just miss the version from another museum in Oslo ten years before? A show of "The Unfinished Print" discovers how the same word—and the same art—can mean both raw and just one more step in a series.

Martha Rosler holds a garage sale, lines form for Edvard Munch, and Yoshio Taniguchi makes the permanent collection seem a thing of the past. So which one commercializes the Museum of Modern Art?

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.

Murakami

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

Murillo

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.

Murphy

When Lynda Benglis shares space with Louise Bourgeois, can one tell the good girl from the bad girl? Margaret Murphy 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 onto the scene.

Mthethwa

Zwelethu Mthethwa confronts African migrant labor, while Rineke Dijkstra cherishes children on the verge of self-discovery. What, then, makes their photography so ruthless?

Still more names!

jhaber@haberarts.com