Haber's Art Reviews: Browse by Artist (N-R)

Pick from More Artists

John Haber
in New York City

Nadar

If Nadar is so brutal and dispassionate, why do his portraits and his sitters seem to be putting on a pose? Their haunting mix of plainness and pretense foretells Modernism.

Nadelman

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.

Nader

Anne Katrine Senstad and Firelei Báez fill a room with blue, while Marta Minujín takes you from room to room through a neon tunnel, for what Zach Nader calls psychic pictures. Is just one installation about color and another about African American history?

Nakadate

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

Napier

Does computer art offer anything at all new, and is anyone buying? After a gallery tour and panel discussion, Mark Napier, Kirsten Geisler, John Klima, and John F. Simon suggest that old news from art and software can still create strange new bedfellows.

Nardo

A great Madonna by Nardo de Cione shares a museum with decorative portraits by Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Must art always worship women?

Nares

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

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

Remember when art took time? James Nares, Simone Bailey, Janaye Brown, Claudia Joskowicz, Jorge Macchi, Joseph Zito, and "Long Takes" experience the gallery and the brink of revolution in real time.

Nasatir

Willa Nasatir opens with swirls of color and black crashing into white, Everett Kane with half-remembered technology and films, Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber with the fall of imagined cities. When photography penetrates indoors, is it safe to enter?

Natal-San Miguel

Must feminist art face men down? Clarity Haynes, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, and Katarina Riesing present altars, poses, fabric, and flesh.

Nathanson

When abstract painting was out of fashion, what other than gender held Emily Mason and Deborah Remington back? Jill Nathanson and Rebecca Purdum answer for today.

Nauman

Can irony, refusal of sentiment, and a stunning range of media get along with macho posturing? Bruce Nauman has a major museum talking dirty.

Boys will be boys, right? That may excuse Bruce Nauman, but Eileen Brady Nelson and Kate Shepherd do not just indulge in girl talk.

Naumann

"In the end lies prevail." Barbara Kruger may seem to say so, but just who is speaking, and would Henrike Naumann confronting the "radical center" or Lesia Khomenko in Ukraine agree?

Neel

Alice Neel made portraiture look easy—or uneasy. Was she a political artist all along, and what of Rick Barton, with gay desire and a restless pen?

Nelligan

Is there more to landscape than a moment in time and point in space? Jodi Hays and Michi Meko find change coming to the New South, while Jake Berthot carries his darkness from abstraction to landscape, and Emily Nelligan returns to Maine and impending darkness.

E. Nelson

Boys will be boys, right? That may excuse Bruce Nauman, but Eileen Brady Nelson and Kate Shepherd do not just indulge in girl talk.

M. Nelson

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

Did Mike Nelson deliver the most dangerous exhibition of the year or just the sternest warning to visitors? Consider the "Best of 2007" and the year in review.

Neshat

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?

What happens when video art becomes as familiar as art-world stardom and home movies? Shirin Neshat casts aside her split-screen explorations of gender and exile for grand narratives.

Neto

If Dan Graham has performed naked, what makes his work so cool and detached? Graham moves from rock concerts to glass houses, while Ernesto Neto asks kids with a stocking fetish to move right in.

Neuenschwander

Rivane Neuenschwander treats everything as an occasion for brightness and the fulfillment of wishes, and Brion Gysin has his Dreammachine. Can I still be wishing for more?

Neukamp

Remember when hybrids were postmodern? Like Albert Oehlen before them, Anne Neukamp, Jonathan Gardner, Zachary Leener, and Vanessa Maltese ask when diversity and excess become academicism.

Neuman

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?

Neumann

Did you know that an artist was involved in the first desktop computer? "Thinking Machines" and "Experiments in Electrostatics" find art in the modern office—and Daniel Neumann and Julianne Swartz in the mix.

Neustein

Is that an actual work of art, a view out the window, or the skylight? Joshua Neustein, Diana Cooper, and Sabine Hornig leave one stranded between the gallery and distant places.

Nevelson

How did a women turning sixty become an emerging artist of the 1960s? With her sculpture, Louise Nevelson takes the long view.

Is contemporary art no longer at home? "Home Is a Foreign Place" finds Jasper Johns and his flag still flying, while Louise Nevelson on paper finds dark closets of the imagination.

Newbegin

Can a bustling city offer empty pleasures? Katherine Newbegin, Christopher Culver, Duane Michals, and Holly Zausner look to landmarks, subways, and fire escapes for a sense of home.

Newkirk

If there is a post-black identity, does it allow a photographer to pose his subject? Kori Newkirk finds it in hair gel and curtains, Kehinde Wiley in pop musicians and Africa, and Demetrius Oliver in his own studio, but the emerging artists in "New Intuitions" discretely look away.

B. Newman

When Barnett Newman wrote "The Sublime Is Now," was he, along with Jackson Pollock and others, returning to Romantic myths or looking past them to now—and how quaint does that look after Postmodernism? Find out how New York stole the idea of the sublime.

Must Jewish collectors stay true to their heritage? The Sassoons cultivated portraits by John Singer Sargent and friends in high places, while the Newman Foundation sees Barnett Newman in art today.

M. K. S. Newman

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.

Newsom

Can art recreate nature? John Newsom, Hilary Lorenz, David McQueen, Tom Pnini, "Recapturing the Scenic Wilds," and Wave Hill settle for museums of natural history.

Nguyen

What is an artist's inheritance? "Inheritance" sees it in family, diversity, and art itself, while Tuan Andrew Nguyen confronts a nation's contested heritage, and Pepón Osorio brings a community of his own making to the museum.

Nickas

Bob Nickas calls his group show "An Ongoing Low-Grade Mystery." Could he be describing the appeal to insiders from Amy Sillman, Reena Spaulings, and others near the downtown club scene?

Niemeyer

Can architecture sustain a revolution? "Latin America in Construction" looks past such names as Oscar Niemeyer to a continent under construction, but photography still sees "The Light in Cuban Eyes."

Nilsson

Did it take a woman to guide painting through the 1980s? Elizabeth Murray did so more than anyone, as seen in her drawings, while Gladys Nilsson stayed closer to her roots in Chicago and Marisa Merz to the role of a woman in Arte Povera.

Nisenbaum

Photography goes global, and so does Queens. What memories will "New Photography 2023" preserve of Lagos, An-My Lê of Vietnam, Tracey Rose of South Africa, and Aliza Nisenbaum of Corona?

Nitegeka

If Cubism arose today, would it be painting, sculpture, photography, or computer graphics? Serge Alain Nitegeka, Laura Letinsky, and Alyson Shotz explore the possibilities and then some.

Nix

Noguchi

As a child in Japan, Isamu Noguchi tended his mother's garden. For Saburo Hasegawa and Gabriel Orozco, was he always a child in the garden?

Did Isamu Noguchi achieve inner peace or just worldly success, and which amounts to a greater evasion? The twin poles of his art—and the former factory and studio that holds it—suggest the paradoxical strength of Modernism's utopias.

Can sound art become visible and a memorial reside underground? Christian Boltanski captures sunlight in the forest, while Isamu Noguchi looks beneath to "Subscapes" and remembers the atomic dead.

What did Isamu Noguchi learn from Buckminster Fuller—art, design, or a vision of the future? "Best of Friends" recovers Fuller for modern art.

Is fine art a relic of a less cynical age? Gonzalo Fonseca builds on Isamu Noguchi and Nancy Graves on relics and mappings, while "Fossil Tales" refuses to see artist books as extinct even as a gallery passes.

Can anything spoil the serenity of the reopened Isamu Noguchi Museum? For summer 2009, sculpture tumbles everywhere thanks to Roxy Paine, Jessica Stockholder, "Between the Bridges," and "State Fair."

Nolde

What made people line up to see Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and the Bauhaus? Rather than relying solely on censorship, the Nazis put on display "Degenerate Art."

Nonas

Is it painting or construction—and an object in space or in history? Richard Nonas, Christian Haub, Jannis Kounellis, Jim Osman, Marianne Vitale, and others are defining a Neo-Minimalism for today.

Novros

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

Nozkowski

Obadike

Are American Cypher and African-American art a formal experiment or a history lesson? For Mendi + Keith Obadike, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Robin Rhode, the real cipher is race in America.

Obering

Can art still aspire to a window onto nature? Mary Obering and Patrick Wilson treat abstraction as a window, to which Peter Halley adds his customary bars, while Pádraig Timoney and Claire Kerr multiply the languages of art.

Odita

If there were a uniquely black or Latin American art, would it have room for quilting or abstraction? Odili Donald Odita, Sanford Biggers, Dawn Williams Boyd, and José Parlá question identity and community.

Can abstraction still set off fireworks? Odili Donald Odita finds the other in color, while Mark Wiener turns in the end to black and white.

O'Donnell

"Art Fairs: An Irresistible Force in the Art World?" If the answer seems too obvious for words, Nicholas O'Donnell, Elizabeth Dee, Richard Lehun, and Ed Winkleman tally up the financial and ethical implications, while Dee looks for an answer in Independent Projects.

Odutola

What is there to do when the war has no end? "But a Storm Is Blowing in Paradise" brings art from the Middle East and North Africa, while Toyin Ojih Odutola finds pleasure and pain in black and white.

Toyin Ojih Odutola has American savvy and wealthy African protagonists, Naeem Mohaiemen the run of an airport, and Juan Antonio Olivares the comforts of childhood and a place in a wider universe. So why are they stuck between continents?

Oehlen

Remember when hybrids were postmodern? Like Albert Oehlen before them, Jonathan Gardner, Zachary Leener, Vanessa Maltese, and Anne Neukamp ask when diversity and excess become academicism.

Ofili

When Chris Ofili painted a Madonna in pushpins and elephant poop, did he deserve the scandal? The Young British Artist juggles blackness and belief.

British artists—such as Chris Ofili, Damien Hirst, and Sam Taylor-Wood—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?

O'Grady

When it comes to race and gender, has anything changed in thirty years? Lorraine O'Grady frames the lives of others in Harlem, while Cy Gavin puts a gay black male at the center of the frame.

Ohanesian

As wealthy galleries like Pace rise higher and higher and higher, Andrew Ohanesian puts a long-time survivor up for rent. Can Alexander Calder in the very first Chelsea multiplex keep his balance?

O'Hare

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

Oiticica

Hélio Oiticica in Brazil moves from abstraction to a sandbox, while Lygia Pape moves between book art and a happening. Have they found a tropical paradise?

O'Keefe

Is the resurgence of abstract painting more than a show? Erin O'Keefe, Michael Rouillard, Marjorie Welish, and Yun Hyong-keun build on small differences.

O'Keeffe

Did Alfred Stieglitz create Georgia O'Keeffe or just use her? Probably neither one, and with her abstractions O'Keeffe recreated American Modernism and herself.

Did Georgia O'Keeffe discover abstraction by looking or by doing? Her drawings show an artist doing both, but with a personal connection to what she saw and did, while Alberto Giacometti and Barbara Chase-Riboud meet to reinvent modern sculpture.

Was American Modernism ambivalent about Modernism and America? From Edward Hopper to Georgia O'Keeffe, "American Modern" finds space for MoMA's permanent collection, while Eliot Porter points to what it leaves out.

Oldenburg

Is Claes Oldenburg getting soft? His early happenings and soft sculpture with Coosje van Bruggen create a retrospective with little more a museum's permanent collection.

Olitksi

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 Makoto Fujimura, Ronnie Landfield, Peter Reginato, Duston Spear, and Joseph Stashkevetch.

Olivares

D. Oliver

M. Oliver

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

Olivier

Do galleries and museums still need social distancing? Lucy Raven may catch you by surprise with others, past a wall of concrete and light, while Karyn Olivier remakes architecture from its seeming collapse, and Amanda Williams cordons off the chairs.

Is Mire Lee out to turn you away? Karyn Olivier and Dana Powell run into obstacles, in industrial landscapes and a road at night, but Marta Minujín puts out soft sculpture to welcome you in.

Wood should allow one to climb its fragile beams. Why, then, do Karyn Olivier, Ursula von Rydingsvard, "Trace," and "Quid Pro Quo" make playgrounds such eerie places to play?

Oller

Danish Romanticism includes the harbor in sunlight and moonlight, portraits, and palaces. Is it also "Beyond the Light," and could Francisco Oller see past the Latin American sunlight to Impressionism?

Olmsted

Which is the true garden community, the suburbs or the city? "The Romantic Garden" follows their origins from Alexander Pope and the picturesque to Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, while Mike and Doug Starn create their own forest overlooking Central Park.

Ono

Did Yoko Ono break up the Beatles, or did the Beatles break up a unique blend of conceptual and sensual art? A retrospective has her reaching for the sky.

Why is everyone having so much fun? Yoko Ono has her bed-in for peace.

What unfolds between nature and performance? Yoko Ono, Andy Goldsworthy, Mary Simpson, and Sarah Sze discover cracks in Minimalism's garden.

Conceptual art takes art's leaps of the imagination seriously? Have Charles Ray and Yoko Ono become too serious to pull it off?

When Yoko Ono made her Painting for the Wind, did she anticipate earthworks? "Expo 1: New York," including Olafur Eliasson, asks what remains today of earth art and the earth.

Onofre

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

Opie

Where have all the people gone? Catherine Opie photographs the emptiness of American cities, Mary Ellen Mark the hidden life of Bombay and the slow return to a ravaged New Orleans.

Gillian Wearing just wants to tell the truth about you, or does she? She and Tacita Dean, Brigitte Lacombe, and Catherine Opie in "Face to Face" suggest how much of women in photography lies behind a mask.

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 Catherine Opie, Shelburne Thurber, and Christoph Morlinghaus.

D. Oppenheim

Can anyone take the measure of art? Josephine Halvorson brings her own measuring stick, but Dennis Oppenheim just lets himself go crazy.

M. Oppenheim

Meret Oppenheim showed Surrealism a dark continent of the imagination. How far could she go beyond the fur-lined teacup, and could Surrealism have room as well for folk art and Morris Hirshfield?

Opper

How good are they? Galleries force the question, with rediscoveries of John Opper, Claire Falkenstein, Raymond Hendler, and Milton Resnick.

G. Orozco

Gabriel Orozco dredges up a whale skeleton and thousands of objects from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. But has he found life?

As a child in Japan, Isamu Noguchi tended his mother's garden. For Saburo Hasegawa and Gabriel Orozco, was he always a child in the garden?

J. C. Orozco

After the Mexican revolution, a revolution came to Mexican art. Did such muralists as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros shape Jackson Pollock and American art as well?

Ortiz

Can destruction be a step toward the authentic? It is for Raphael Montañez Ortiz and El Museo del Barrio, while others take the toll of Puerto Rican art after Hurricane Maria.

Osborn

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

Osman

Phyllida Barlow plays the Post-Minimalist, Anna Maria Maiolino the global traveler, Bernard Kirschenbaum the mad geometrician, Jim Osman the modernist, and Mateo López the designer and architect. Whose world, then, is still under construction?

Is it painting or construction—and an object in space or in history? Jim Osman, Christian Haub, Jannis Kounellis, Richard Nonas, Marianne Vitale, and others are defining a Neo-Minimalism for today.

Osorio

Osterburg

If any city were to follow to Ezra's Pound's directions to "make it new," it ought to be New York. Lothar Osterburg, Paul Graham, and Seher Shah still invent their city of dreams.

Ostoya

Are you a feminist artist? Mira Schor wants to know, and Anna Ostoya wants revenge.

Is it still painting? James Hyde calls it "Public Sculpture," but he, Anna Ostoya, Melissa Brown, and Sarah Crowner have something else in mind.

Oteiza

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

Otero

Arturo Herrera paints convincingly with collage, Mariah Robertson with photograms, and Angel Otero with spattered fabric. Can abstraction relive its "Geometric Days"?

Ottinger

Does photography capture the truth or just a freak show? Ulrike Ottinger draws from the madness of her own movies, Vivian Maier has her eye-opener with people and color, and Ray K. Metzger finds a strange beauty in black and white.

Ourahmane

Did Africa give birth to art? Lydia Ourahmane finds cave art in scorched earth, but Andy Coolquitt, Michael Mahalchick, and "In Practice" for 2022 insist that ruin need not mean collapse.

Outerbridge

While early Diane Arbus stepped out of commercial photography, Paul Outerbridge kept returning to it. Did she find only a freak show, and did he find art?

Overton

Who would dare treat the city's sacred green space as a parking lot? Virginia Overton takes a truck to Socrates Sculpture Park, Huma Bhabha huddles on the Met roof, and Diana Al-Hadid kneels in Madison Square Park for 2018 summer sculpture.

Can a tea ceremony come to Mars, a vision of heaven to New Jersey, and gardens to the Meatpacking District? Tom Sachs, Rachel Harrison, and Virginia Overton are not expecting miracles.

B. Owens

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.

C. Owens

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

L. Owens

Does painting still have room for bathers, bedrooms, and Sundays off along with irony? Michael Hurson, Laura Owens, and Byron Kim have their pleasures.

Ozkaya

Does Peter Saul owe more to MAD magazine than to Marx? Serkan Ozkaya and Joseph Beuys could well pull their activism right out of a cereal box, but it is meant for adults.

Did Modernism find inspiration in the unconscious, Mexican temples, or the camera obscura? Max Ernst, Josef Albers, and Serkan Ozkaya speaking on behalf of Marcel Duchamp take them all to the max.

Packer

Jennifer Packer paints those she knows well, Adam Pendleton records the toppling of a Confederate monument, and Afrofuturism gets a period room at the Met. So why is the African American eye still not satisfied?

Can art create an ecosystem? Steffani Jemison, Cullen Washington, Jr., and Jennifer Packer hold the fort after Hurrican Sandy, while Dionisio Gonzáles and Mary Mattingly haul out the waste of globalization, and "Un/Natural Occurrences" seeks a climate for art.

Pagès

Has conceptual art made sculpture a thing of the past? Edgar Calel, Tania Pérez Córdova, Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik, R. I. P. Germain, and Claudia Pagès bring earth and a sense of the neighborhood to Queens.

Paik

Should can his work single- or multiple-channel video, performance or Pop Art assemblage, Minimalist or excessive, installation art or just playing around? Nam June Paik presents both a fitting icon of the 1960s and an inventor who left his mark everywhere today.

Just what video art did Nam June Paik spawn? "Inner and Outer Space" and "Into the Light" trace two, treacherously intertwined traditions.

Did Nam June Paik invent video art? Charlotte Moorman and Carolee Schneemann had their hand in performance and Lillian Schwartz her computer art, but Looking Glass would rather invoke arcade games.

Paine

Where Robert Gober crafts cribs, easy chairs, kitchen sinks, a wood-burning fireplace, and a perfectly made bed, Roxy Paine carves an entire airport security checkpoint. Which illusion comes closest to an artist's obsessions and fears?

Not all sculpture looks better as an outdoor monument. How can Roxy Paine, Joel Shapiro, and others in Socrates Sculpture Park or the 2007 "Between the Bridges" look so graceful?

Can anything spoil the serenity of the reopened Isamu Noguchi Museum? For summer 2009, sculpture tumbles everywhere thanks to Roxy Paine, Jessica Stockholder, "Between the Bridges," and "State Fair."

Pape

Hélio Oiticica in Brazil moves from abstraction to a sandbox, while Lygia Pape moves between book art and a happening. Have they found a tropical paradise?

Parker

Could that structure on the Met's roof be the set of a horror movie—or the psychodrama of American art? Along with Martin Puryear and others, Cornelia Parker (a Brit, actually) joins summer sculpture 2016 in New York.

Parks

The camera, wrote Gordon Parks, was his weapon, and he would not spare himself the weight. Would the family in his "A Harlem Family" care?

Did magazine photography diminish art? For "Modern Look," it was a collaboration with an industry that asked only to "astonish me," but Gordon Parks had his doubts.

Parlá

If there were a uniquely black or Latin American art, would it have room for quilting or abstraction? José Parlá, Sanford Biggers, Dawn Williams Boyd, and Odili Donald Odita question identity and community.

Parmigianino

Praised as the very incarnation of Raphael, Parmigianino did more than almost anyone to confuse his legacy. Did that make him a man of his time?

With La Schiava Turca, Parmigianino may have painted an inspiration for poetry or a poet herself. Yet is it a portrait at all, and who wants to know?

In Antea, does Parmigianino depict a real person or an ideal beauty? Sometimes the ideal comes with tantalizing hints of wealth, taste, and especially sex.

Party

Is art just another show of wealth? "Tudor England" may think so, for all the skill of Hans Holbein the Younger, while Rosalba Carriera and Nicolas Party make the most of Rococo pomposity and piety.

Patterson

Think struggling artists have it bad? After gentrification and displacement, Ebony G. Patterson, Nicole Awai, Julie Becker, Devin Kenny, and the artists in residence in Harlem in "MOOD" seek a place to call home.

Pauline

Has the information age raised the specter of political oppression? Mark Pauline, Edmund Clark, Chris Dorland, and Survival Research Laboratories explore new and old media, pleasure, and terror.

Paulson

Is there a point of intersection between African American and Jewish Art? With "We Fight to Build a Free World," Jonathan Horowitz fights the good fight, but Ward Shelley and Douglas Paulson see American politics as the scene of a crime.

Pausova

Can outsider art be political? Cecilia Vicuña survives the Pinochet regime and Nellie Mae Rowe a woman's work in the rural South, while Veronika Pausova in the Czech Republic takes up where Anna Zemánková and Art Brut left off.

Pavia

Has modern sculpture settled into scrap, monumentalism, or both? Antony Gormley, Nancy Rubins, and the fate of a New York landmark by Philip Pavia navigate between Modernism, Minimalism, and the junkyard.

Peale

When artists like Susan Hiller, Charles Willson Peale, and Ed Ruscha take "The Museum as Muse," have they made the ultimate critique—or given in to the museum institution? Just when postmodern critics thought they knew, the Modern takes itself as muse, too.

Pearlstein

"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?

Peirovi

Shahzia Sikander sees her life and her future as a painting in miniature. How do she, Asal Peirovi, and Cindy Ji Hye Kim reconcile contemporary art and tradition?

Pelton

Did Modernism have its romantic visions? Agnes Pelton, Charles Burchfield, and Mary Frank chart a fiery, dangerous world replete with natural histories.

Pendleton

Penn

Where does commercial photography end and personal work begin? Irving Penn on the streets of New York stops just short of exposure.

Penner

Should realism make the landscape look familiar? Rod Penner, Yvonne Jacquette, Domingo Milella, Levan Mindiashvili, and Antonio Murado trace a strange evolution in New York City, cemeteries, and the open road.

Penone

Clodion and Jean-Antoine Houdon shared a certain Enlightenment reserve. Did their sculpture, like that of Giuseppe Penone in white porcelain today, still err on the side of excess?

Pensato

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

Pentecost

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

Pepe

How do you get from the pyramids to the parks? Start with summer sculpture by Lauren Halsey on the Met roof, but do not forget Mary Mattingly, Sheila Pepe, and Phyllida Barlow in the great outdoors.

Pérez Córdova

Has conceptual art made sculpture a thing of the past? Tania Pérez Córdova, Edgar Calel, Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik, R. I. P. Germain, and Claudia Pagès bring earth and a sense of the neighborhood to Queens.

Perl

Is there a need for "slow art," and would it look any different from good art already? Jed Perl blames the need on Andy Warhol and "Warholism," but even the spectacle of Oscar Murillo can have serious intentions.

"Is the art market making us stupid?" Jerry Saltz worries, and Jed Perl is dead certain, but "Private Treasures" look smart.

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

Can one judge a young artist while swallowing contemporary art? Jed Perl fears wealthy collectors and compliant academics, but constructive, historically aware criticism pays off.

Persson

When did subjectivity become the new black? Kerstin Persson, John Divola, León Ferrari, Andrea Longacre-White find depths where a group show insists on "Black."

Pesce

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

Peterman

Is there more to African American culture than divas and mass incarceration? Jamaal Peterman and "This Longing Vessel" have their doubts, but Garrett Bradley recovers a century-old film history.

Petersen

Has abstraction maxed out? Gary Petersen, Sarah Cain, Reed Danziger, Joanne Greenbaum, David Rhodes, and Ryan Wallace make room for excess.

Has painting recovered its energy? Michael Goldberg takes Abstract Expressionism into the millenium, while Gary Petersen, Gianna Commito, and Robert Kushner turn up the heat.

Pettibon

Should the combination of art and text push toward politics or confession? Raymond Pettibon has his obsessions, Jackson Mac Low a bridge to abstraction.

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

Petrus

Among the great painters of the early Renaissance, Petrus Christus is the most approachable, but his career is shrouded in mystery. What happens when a museum helps a scholar rewrite his and art's history?

When Jan van Eyck and Petrus Christus painted Bruges, did they see a Renaissance city or the spiritual? Both painted a monk as patron and the Virgin within and apart, but "Hidden Faces" casts a veil over what they reveal.

When Mary puts the church behind her for the Annunciation, she stands at the threshold of the Renaissance as well. Should one thank Jan van Eyck, his brother Hubert, or Petrus Christus?

When is a public collection a public responsibility? A visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts finds both, including work by Peter Paul Rubens, Frederic Edwin Church, Caravaggio, Pieter Bruegel, Jan van Eyck, and Petrus Christus.

Peyton

Roberta Smith asks why artists trade up to new galleries, while Edward Winkleman asks why a gallery like his own cuts artists. When Elizabeth Peyton paints American royals, has she figured out what it takes to play insider?

Pfaff

Judy Pfaff and Lucy Kim raise painting off the wall, in every sense of the term. Was Sari Dienes there first, between Pop Art and Surrealism?

Pflieger

Can photography find its subject slipping away? Joe Pflieger, Wijnanda Deroo, Sarah Jones, and Andrew Moore look from museums to movie houses and from the open road to a shadowy garden.

Philipsz

Can site-specific art look behind the wall? Susan Philipsz, Anne Libby, Philip Seibel, and Jan Tichy penetrate the gallery's light, sound, and infrastructure.

Piano

Is the Whitney's new home in the Meatpacking District, designed by Renzo Piano, an eyesore or an eye-opener? Maybe both, but then, as the inaugural exhibition has it, "America Is Hard to See."

Does the future of the Whitney lie in a great atrium or simply light and space? Renzo Piano has museum experience and his own ideas of public space.

Is Columbia University marching on Harlem? The Lenfest Center for the Arts, by Renzo Piano, opens with "Uptown" and a centerpiece by Nari Ward, while "We Wanted a Revolution" tracks black radical women decades before them.

Renzo Piano adds a glass box to the Morgan Library, and his "cube" houses another library from long ago, of Federico da Montefeltro. Does the all-seeing eye belong to Renaissance perspective, Modernism, or the robber barons?

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.

Picabia

If "The Revolutionary Impulse" shows the Russian avant-garde as open to anything, Francis Picabia went from abstraction to Dada, Surrealism, fascism, and back. Was he postmodern before his time or the Zelig of modern art?

Picasso

Could Pablo Picasso get away from Cubism? He took a summer in Fontainebleau, but he never made it to Brooklyn.

A young Pablo Picasso in Paris and Blaise Cendrars looked to modern art and Montmartre to make it new, but Hannah Gadsby has her doubts when it comes to women. Are we there yet?

With Still Life with Chair Caning, Cubism took on the real thing. Does that place Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris within the trompe l'oeil tradition?

Was Pablo Picasso at his best in sculpture? It allowed him a dialog with painting, monumentality, and himself.

Did Pablo Picasso get his best thoughts together in black and white? An attempt to set aside the color sets aside his best work instead.

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.

Why did Cubism so love newsprint and the headlines? In the Leonard A. Lauder collection, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Fernand Leger keep making news.

When Pablo Picasso hung a guitar on the wall and called it art, what was it? Like Card Players by Paul Cézanne, it transformed still life into portraiture and back again.

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

What color is a striped dress? Even after a thorough cleaning, Edouard Manet piles on brushstrokes and enigmas, while Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Pablo Picasso pick up portrayals of women and the origins of Modernism.

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.

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?

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.

Is there a direct line from Pablo Picasso to fascism? "Chaos and Classicism" sees his postwar Neoclassicism in everything from Magic Realism to collaboration.

After decades of feminist criticism, why does MoMA display so few women artists? Jerry Saltz asks, just when late Pablo Picasso draws praise for Modernism's most famous dead white male.

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

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?

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

How did Pablo 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.

Long after Pablo Picasso and Adolph Gottlieb's alchemy, can one still take "the primitive" or the shock of the avant-garde seriously? A new Web magazine locates Modernism's "Primitive Discord."

When Paul Gauguin says he likes his women fat and stupid, do his attitudes strike to the core of modern art? Griselda Pollock notices that he and Pablo Picasso have a problem, but Modernism may yet play its feminist gambits.

Out in Brooklyn, Thomas Wilmer Dewing's decorative portraits were worshiping women. What about Pablo Picasso and his loving, angry women?

Piero della Francesca

A small-town artist brought an otherworldly calm to early Renaissance humanism and, ultimately, to modern art. An altarpiece by Piero della Francesca recovers some of its parts.

Piero della Francesca can seem inapproachable, even in what the Met calls "Personal Encounters." Was that essential to his humanity?

Pindell

What connects gentle abstraction to prejudice and violence? Howardena Pindell finds a history of America and African Americans, while painting by Sam Gilliam spans the gallery.

Pinkel

Remember when photography was a science experiment? For Sheila Pinkel, Harold Edgerton, Barbara Kasten, and László Moholy-Nagy, Modernism was itself an experiment.

Piper

Adrian Piper leaves her calling card as an African American woman. Should you take it?

Is a show of black performance art unfair to African Americans? Adrian Piper passes on it, and "Rituals of Rented Island" turns to Soho, but "rAdicAl preEsEncE" makes better sense of history.

Pippin

Horace Pippin, like Jacob Lawrence, uses folk imagery to create a black man's art. Which is truer to Modernism and the African-American experience?

Piranesi

A year before his death, Giovanni Battista Piranesi found ancient ruins bathed in Italian sunlight. Had he finally broken out of prison?

Pissarro

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

Camille Pissarro was also a Jew. Does it matter, and what kind of changing artistic identity led him toward modern painting?

Plensa

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

Plumb

Can a feminist still laugh at fashion and celebrity? Shannon Plumb, Carla Gannis, Rachel Harrison, and Tracey Moffatt dress for success.

Does contemporary art offer an endless, impersonal shopping mall or that special moment of intimacy with the artist, the work, and oneself? Try the extremes of the 2004 Armory Show and "One on One in Video," including Shannon Plumb.

Pnini

Were so many of today's Americans once refugees on the high seas? Tom Pnini, Lisa Alvarado, and Ficre Ghebreyesus navigate a treacherous crossing.

Can art recreate nature? Tom Pnini, Hilary Lorenz, David McQueen, John Newsom, "Recapturing the Scenic Wilds," and Wave Hill settle for museums of natural history.

Poitras

For Laura Poitras and Anri Sala, politics meets immersive new media. Can documentary filmmaking and classical music adapt to a museum retrospective?

Polke

Between World War II and the Cold War, could artists escape a culture in ruins? Sigmar Polke turned from Neo-Expressionism to irony, while Heidi Bucher felt art as her skin.

G. Pollock

When Gauguin says he likes his women fat and stupid, do his attitudes strike to the core of modern art? Griselda Pollock notices that he and Picasso have a problem, but Modernism may yet play its feminist gambits.

J. Pollock

How did a tortured blowhard, drunk, and inept landscape painter accumulate such mythic stature? With Jackson Pollock, one comes to forget the performance, for paint itself learns to dance.

What caused Jackson Pollock to think big? Peggy Guggenheim and Mural take Pollock away from the easel, while "Knotted, Torn, Scattered" takes sculpture off the wall.

Must Lee Krasner remain in the shadow of Jackson Pollock? A retrospective and a show of Krasner and Pollock together find her breaking free time and time again.

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.

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

After the Mexican revolution, a revolution came to Mexican art. Did such muralists as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros shape Jackson Pollock and American art as well?

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.

Can lousy vision explain away Rembrandt's enigmatic gaze, or can fractal geometry quantify the symmetry in a Jackson Pollock? Art demands close technical analysis but deserves more than a reduction to acts of nature.

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

When Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner lived and worked together, who learned more? A fine postscript to Krasner's own retrospective has insights.

Pontormo

What if the witnesses to a miracle were looking at you? They do for Jacopo da Pontormo in his Visitation, but do not be too quick to congratulate yourself on your godliness.

Did the Medici make Florence a cultural capital in the 1500s? Michelangelo and Sandro Botticelli might disagree, but Agnolo Bronzino, Jacobo da Pontormo, and Francesco Salviati show their influence on portraits and politics.

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.

Pope.L

What does it take to fill the expanded MoMA? "Sur Moderno" journeys from Latin America to abstraction, Pope.L crawls more than its length, and Betye Saar looks through a black girl's window.

Porter

Portnoy

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

Pousette-Dart

In the late 1970s, one might have called Richard Pousette-Dart an exponent of Pattern and Decoration. What, then, makes him both an Abstract Expressionist and a new beginning?

Was postwar expressionism a bold from the blue? With Richard Pousette-Dart and, thirty years later, Georg Baselitz, it knocked the human figure off its feet.

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.

Potter

Was Beatrix Potter an environmentalist before her time? She looked to nature and to children, while Wanda Gág saw ghosts.

Poussin

Nicolas Poussin painted landscapes as "Arcadian visions." Does that make him a naturalist or a visionary?

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.

American museums have two nearly identical versions of a Holy Family, but which did Nicolas Poussin paint? Even the experts keep changing their mind.

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

Powell

Is Mire Lee out to turn you away? Karyn Olivier and Dana Powell run into obstacles, in industrial landscapes and a road at night, but Marta Minujín puts out soft sculpture to welcome you in.

Powhida

Can the system still work for artists, and who gets to laugh when it does not? Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida make it hard to cut "#class."

Poyer

Does fine art sound elitist compared to popular culture? With Jean Poyer (or Jean Poyet) and Donatello, the Renaissance has an interchange between "high" and "low."

What was medieval time? With an assist from the Master of Catherine of Cleves and Jean Poyer, "Now and Forever" and "Medieval Monsters" step out of time and space.

Prager

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

Preheim

If a photograph never lies, how can it quote Magritte, Duchamp, and Freud? Agata Olek Oleksiak and Naomi White, "Strange Magic," and Peggy Preheim dream up their own answers.

Price

How do you get from Ebony and training in ceramics to deep-sea creatures and bursts of color? For Ellen Gallagher and Ken Price, a sense of life lurks behind alluring surfaces.

Prince

Does Richard Prince still prefer the Marlborough Man to fine art? Irony of ironies, he finds his real audience in a museum.

What happened to the Guggenheim Museum's collection? Richard Prince, Cai Guo-Qiang, Paul Chan, Jenny Holzer, Julie Mehretu, and Carrie Mae Weems are granted "Artistic License" to find out, but the Whitney's collection looks downright new as well.

Did Richard Prince deliver the worst exhibition of the year or the best case for women in the arts? Consider the "Best of 2007" and the year in review.

Probst

Can a woman's photographs be truer to women? Marianna Rothen asks where the bodies are buried in film noir, Barbara Probst in the studio, and Ming Smith in Harlem.

Provosty

How often can painting come back from the dead? Carrie Moyer and others are back in posher surroundings, now joined by Anna Leonhardt, R. J. Messineo, and Nathlie Provosty.

Purdum

When abstract painting was out of fashion, what other than gender held Emily Mason and Deborah Remington back? Rebecca Purdum and Jill Nathanson answer for today.

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 Rebecca Purdum and James Hyde, she may offer too many answers.

Puryear

Martin Puryear takes Modernism to the woodshed. Should one call its identity Post-Minimal, post-black, or simply sculpture?

Quinlan

Sometimes art aspires to a science experiment. With Eileen Quinlan, David Fried, Antony Gormley, Jeppe Hein, and Mark Sheinkman, is it all done with smoke and mirrors?

Can art be too smart for its own good, and what about too beautiful? Scott Reeder and "New Photography 2013," including Eileen Quinlan, pull off both, and they are not alone.

Qureshi

Is there an art of war? Even in the Mideast, Cyprien Gaillard and Imran Qureshi find the picturesque, John Gerrard and Elektra KB a slow or frenetic dance.

I. Raad

As painting roars back, can it take too many shortcuts? Not for Iman Raad, Clare Grill, or Kes Zapkus.

W. Raad

Can abandoned Brooklyn and Beirut bring an end to the pain of war? Bettina WitteVeen speaks for the injured and Walid Raad for the anonymous and displaced.

Rafferty

Is art a window onto the world? Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Samara Golden, and "Everything, Everyday" stop at the stage door.

Raimes

Is poured paint a revelation of the artist or a step beyond the visible? Alison Raimes starts a Critical Inquiry into Chaos.

Raissnia

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

Rakowitz

Through words or photos, one can imagine oneself a traveler in exotic lands. Do Michael Rakowitz, Simon Lee, and Michael Waugh make one a tourist or a voyeur?

Rama

When does madness end and theater begin? Carol Rama in Italy, Alan Vega in the punk scene, and "Delirious" go for sex, madness, and rock 'n' roll

Ramírez-Figueroa

Can a dead civilization live on in contemporary art? With "Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay," Manuel Mendive, and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, the peoples of the Americas survive in a continuous chain of the living.

Rand

Must literature be lost in translation? Archie Rand commemorates the loss, while Hollis Sigler finds poetry and the devil in a sampler, and Frédéric Bruly Bouabré in West Africa supplies the alphabet.

Random International

With Rain Room and Random International, is the art of artificial lights now just a light show? Laddie John Dill, Santiago Taccetti, and Leo Villareal mirror the darkness.

Rankin

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

Raphael

How could a painter of sweetness and light like Raphael leave such a mark on the High Renaissance? The Colonna Altarpiece shows his ambition and his learning curve.

Did Raphael die for love or for his art? A controversial portrait and his final easel painting, La Fornarina, shows his legacy living on as, of all things, Mannerism.

What are two substitutes for the eye and two ways to break a museum's silence? Consider a magnifying glass aimed at Raphael, amid a show of "The Draftsman's Art," and a videotaped scream in the darkness from Gary Hill.

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.

Rasdjarmrearnsook

Were the Crusades a mere puppet show—or a lecture gone wrong? In video by Wael Shawky and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, the encounter between east and west becomes deadly.

Rashid

Can black art aspire to the universal? Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints private moments with imaginary friends, Teju Cole mixes photography and poetry, and Umar Rashid recalls a mythical Kingdom of Harlem.

Umar Rashid, Jumana Manna, and Frieda Toranzo Jaeger look to the past and future, the true revolutionaries for Christopher Myers are prophets and storytellers.

Ratcliffe

From Havana to Tehran and Angola, do Yoan Capote, Farideh Sakhaeifar, and Jo Ratcliffe fear censorship? They worry more about the people playing along.

Rauch

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

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

Rauschenberg

If Postmodernism exists, when did it start—and must it be so shocking? If Robert Rauschenberg and his long career are any clue, Postmodernism and its shocks must be invented over and over again.

They say that good artists borrow, but great artists steal. Could "Among Friends" be right in seeing Robert Rauschenberg as not just borrowing from others but repaying with interest?

Did I walk into a Robert Rauschenberg, or did that mirror simply reflect someone else back? In his breakthrough "combines" of the 1950s, the artist gets physical, even when the images of others vanish before one's eyes.

Seven years after a massive expansion designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, can a museum—or late Modernism—as institution survive? Roberta Smith revisits MoMA, while the provokes Robert Rauschenberg estate Holland Cotter.

Raven

Ravitch

Which is more Orwellian, to overlook how propaganda controls thought, to mistake language for reality? Diane Ravitch finds textbooks crippled by censorship, but all too often she is on a witch hunt of her own directed against the living language.

C. Ray

Conceptual art takes art's leaps of the imagination seriously? Have Charles Ray and Yoko Ono become too serious to pull it off?

E. Ray

Is landscape painting, photography, and video about light or lives? Eleanor Ray, Matt Bollinger, and Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly encompass both.

M. Ray

With "Alias Man Ray," a museum tells the story of a Jew's constant reinvention. Was Man Ray a traditionalist or a modernist, an American or Parisian, a cosmopolitan or an exile?

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

Reafsnyder

Can artists still leave their mark in paint? Andrea Belag, Grace Carney, and Michael Reafsnyder can with motifs, imagery, and surfaces while Trudy Benson catalogues the result.

Reas

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 Computers and their metaphors help connect the dots for Casey Reas, Kysa Johnson, and Sol LeWitt.

Rebay

Is the Guggenheim's vision gone for good? "Visionaries" looks back to Wassily Kandinsky, Hilla Rebay, and creating a modern Guggenheim, while Maurizio Cattelan brings a tawdrier gold toilet.

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

Rebhuhn

Is assemblage a threat, to art or to you? Addie Wagenknecht smells blood, but Bob Smith plays around in the darkness, and Christine Rebhuhn feels right at home.

Redl

Can fences make good neighbors after all? Ai Weiwei fences in New York to open it to refugees, while Erwin Redl makes his grid of lights, and Gillie and Marc pile on the rhinos.

Redon

Too often one thinks of prints as small and self-effacing. Can Odilon Redon and "New York/Paris Dialogue Paris/New York," a show of artist's books curated by Maddy Rosenberg, at last give the media their due?

D. Reed

Can painting this lavish play postmodern games with film culture? David Reed has P.S. 1 showing motion pictures, alongside group shows of "Animal.Animus.Anima" and contemporary Irish art in Britain.

S. Reed

Can appropriation ruin Cindy Sherman or entire neighborhoods? James Franco and Urs Fischer treat it as the privilege of wealth, but "The Real Estate Show" and Shelley Reed look to a more savvy past.

Reeder

Can art be too smart for its own good, and what about too beautiful? Scott Reeder and "New Photography 2013," including Eileen Quinlan, pull off both, and they are not alone.

Reeves

Since abstraction and appropriation, what happened to drawing and painting objects? Jennifer Wynne Reeves, Anne Geoffroy, and E. E. Smith remember the little things in life.

Reginato

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 Peter Reginato, Makoto Fujimura, Ronnie Landfield, Duston Spear, and Joseph Stashkevetch.

Reingold

Do trees, as John Ashbery hinted, "tell us who we are"? For Babs Reingold and Mary Hrbacek, they tell of the fate of civilizations and human loves, while photographs by Kris Graves and Terry Evans give the human landscape a context in time and space.

Reinhardt

"Purer and emptier," Ad Reinhardt wrote, and he pushed himself to some of the most austere works of art ever made. How, then, does Michael Corris link them to political cartoons?

Was Ad Reinhardt most passionate in his cartoons and art comics or his black paintings? Meanwhile Robert Motherwell and Hans Hofmann had their own routes to Abstract Expressionism and austerity, the first through collage.

Abstract art may seem to belong to the past the more it asserts its authority. Can James Turrell, Ad Reinhardt, Michael West, Albert Kotin, and Lynne Drexler recover a neglected past and present?

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.

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

Reis

Art cries out for a great alternative space, but as alternative to what? I find out at the reopened P.S 1, especially in rooms by Marina Abramovic, John Coplans, Robert Wogan, and Pedro Cabrita Reis—who makes one wrestle with the debris of an institution's past.

Reiss

Did it take New York to see the city of the future? Winold Reiss found Modernism in Harlem, while Kwame Brathwaite and Ming Smith found black power on the streets and in jazz and fashion.

Relvas

John Dante Bianchi and Monika Zarzeczna make abstract art, Elizabeth Jaeger and Bruce M. Sherman ceramics, Lee Relvas wood craft, and Elaine Cameron-Weir lab equipment. So who do they all appear to fragment or to extend human flesh?

Rembrandt

What is it like to speak face to face with God? Maybe only Rembrandt could ask, in painting the life of Abraham, but he already finds both inward states and theater in perhaps his first masterpiece.

Is there more to Rembrandt than an artist's decline and fall into greatness? "Rembrandt and His School" tells another story as well, of his rise in popularity in the late nineteenth century, while "Rembrandt's World" tells of the Dutch art around him.

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

Was Tintoretto a dramatist of mass movements or a "face painter"? Works on paper and portraits from Renaissance Venice make the case for Tintoretto's century, while the Met also rehangs a famed Rembrandt and Dutch painting.

Is there more to Girl with a Pearl Earring than the movie? Dutch painting from the Mauritshuis gives Jan Vermeer pride of place beside Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Carel Fabritius.

Only the Met would celebrate a big Rembrandt birthday by celebrating itself. What does the history of its Dutch collection say about "The Age of Rembrandt"?

A girl at a window by Rembrandt leans casually into the light. Does the Dulwich Picture Gallery represent Regency calm or a more Romantic future, and does a late self-portrait from Kenwood House close the circle?

When a committee officially demotes The Polish Rider from a Rembrandt to a workshop production, should we care? If there is a difference between artistic genius or intellectual beauty, it is not just looking?

The notion of originality has taken quite a beating from critics—not to mention from TV. Can the Met find the real Francisco de Goya and Rembrandt?

Could Rembrandt paint faces? If it sounds silly faced with the most famous portraitist ever, a tourist's innocent remark raises provocative questions about surface, reticence, and modernity.

Can lousy vision explain away Rembrandt and his enigmatic gaze, or can fractal geometry quantify the symmetry in a Jackson Pollock? Art demands close technical analysis but deserves more than a reduction to acts of nature.

Remington

When abstract painting was out of fashion, what other than gender held Emily Mason and Deborah Remington back? Rebecca Purdum and Jill Nathanson answer for today.

Renoir

Did Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Modernism make up a single revolution? Drawings follow Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Chassériau, Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, and revolutionary France, decades before Pierre-Auguste Renoir paints fashion at full length.

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."

Resnick

How good are they? Galleries force the question, with rediscoveries of Milton Resnick, Claire Falkenstein, Raymond Hendler, and John Opper.

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

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

Reverón

Does "Primitivism Revisited" describe modern or even contemporary art? Armando Reverón and others journey between Europe and the Americas.

Reynolds and Jolley

Art seems to collapse right out from under Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, James Hopkins, Jon Kessler, Diana Kingsley, Daniel Rozin, and Catherine Sullivan. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?

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

Rezac

If anything goes, can that include Minimalism? In a hyperactive art world, Richard Rezac, Gedi Sibony, and Jan Tichy display restraint, if only on the surface.

Rhizome

Can art keep up? With "Art Happens Here," Rhizome brings its Net Art Anthology to the Web and a museum, while "New Order" finds a material side to art and technology.

Rhode

Are American Cypher and African-American art a formal experiment or a history lesson? For Robin Rhode, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Mendi + Keith Obadike, the real cipher is race in America.

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 young and old models for contemporary art—or just another sacrifice to trendy art and architecture?

D. Rhodes

Has abstraction maxed out? David Rhodes, Sarah Cain, Reed Danziger, Joanne Greenbaum, Gary Petersen, and Ryan Wallace make room for excess.

S. G. Rhodes

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

Ribera

Can Caravaggio in Italy lay claim to a painting attributed to Jusepe de Ribera in Spain, and can Cristóbal de Villalpando ascend the heights of a cathedral in Mexico? Behold the money.

Riboud

Linnaeus Tripe traveled to Asia in search of architecture and a cultural heritage, and later Marc Riboud found a continent at a crossroads. When did documentation give way to imperialism or fantasy?

Riccio

Was Andrea Riccio a Renaissance master or a scholar in bronze? His sculpture bridges sculpture and the decorative arts, the High Renaissance and Mannerism.

Did the Renaissance and Neoclassicism aim for rationality and perfection? With Antonio Canova, David d'Angers, and "Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes" by Andrea Riccio and others, sculpture goes to extremes that anticipate Romanticism and today.

Ricco

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

E. Richards

Can photography face matters of life and death? Eugene Richards sees them through individual histories, Fred Herzog a red-light district in living color, and Helen Levitt the masks of the Depression.

M. Richards

Richard Hunt takes his public sculpture indoors, while "inHarlem" for 2016 heads for the parks and Michael Richards for Governors Island. Which owes more to monumentality or community?

Richter

Can Gerhard Richter bury his traces? Blur and squeegee in hand, he grows over a career from cleverness into irony and a brush with the past.

Gerhard Richter reflects not just on art's or Germany's history, but also his own. Where can painting begin?

What does MoMA's 2020 "fall reveal" reveal? The museum rehangs its permanent collection, including series by Gerhard Richter and Carrie Mae Weems.

Riedel

Must art comment only on itself, and must installations grow ever larger? Michael S. Riedel, "The Studio Visit," "Site 92," and Pierre Huyghe take the artist's working space as their muse.

Riemenschneider

While Dürer brought Germany the Renaissance, what happened to sculpture? Tilman Riemenschneider made the same change part of common experience, carving limewood Virgins, altars, and even chandeliers.

Riesing

Must feminist art face men down? Clarity Haynes, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, and Katarina Riesing present altars, poses, fabric, and flesh.

Rifka

Is it long past time to take women artists seriously. Judy Rifka, Mary Bauermeister, and Miriam Schapiro add up to more than a few all by themselves.

B. Riley

How does Bridget Riley make one's head spin, and how could Jacob Samuel as a collaborator and printmaker make an impact, too? It takes stepping back and taking care.

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

D. Riley

Does New York still have room for life? "Life Between Buildings" and "Designing Peace" bring a touch of humanity and greenery, but Duke Riley does not need art to save New York waterways.

Ringgold

For an African American, can anything stop the bloodshed? Faith Ringgold has come a long way from The American People to The French Collection, while Dewey Crumpler finds it only a short hop from museums to extraterrestrials and the Klan.

Riopelle

The Whitney calls a show of abstract art "Remote Viewing: Invented Worlds in Painting and Drawing." With Julie Mehretu and, in the galleries, Ingrid Calame, and Jean-Paul Riopelle need one even think of abstract art as painting and drawing?

Rist

"Dreamlands" sees the moving image as changing "how we see and experience the world." Like video by Pipilotti Rist, is it immersive cinema or art?

Pipilotti Rist keeps inviting one into her private world, but how can her world keep getting larger? At least her video installations do, while her own space floats comically out of reach.

With Pipilotti Rist, Daniel Canogar, Mika Rottenberg, and Jennifer Steinkamp, have new media become an obsession? The New York Electronic Arts Fair invades Governors Island, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster invades Chelsea.

C. Ritchie

Charles Ritchie calls his intimate sketches drawings and journals, and what could be more intimate and inviting? For "The Feverish Library," art and books intersect when it comes to words and ideas as well.

M. Ritchie

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

Rivera

Did Diego Rivera turn to fresco to take on the weight of history? His murals for the Museum of Modern Art connect Mexico and revolution to the architecture of New York City.

After the Mexican revolution, a revolution came to Mexican art. Did such muralists as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros shape Jackson Pollock and American art as well?

Rivlin

Is the earth a disaster area—or the gallery? Jacob Kirkegaard dives into dirty places, while Bat-Ami Rivlin offers the means of escape, and Madeline Hollander finds just that in a cricket's wings.

Robertson

Arturo Herrera paints convincingly with collage, Mariah Robertson with photograms, and Angel Otero with spattered fabric. Can abstraction relive its "Geometric Days"?

Robinson

Has contemporary painting entered an atemporal world? "The Forever Now" has emerging art thinking big, but Walter Robinson sees only "zombie formalism."

Roche and Dinkeloo

Can private architecture thrive on public access, and can emerging artists live up to the challenge of site-specific art? The 2018 Governors Island Art Fair and the Socrates Annual find them learning the hard way, but the Ford Foundation by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo still brings the outside in.

Can growth make a city less urban? With sculpture by Thomas Heatherwick and a tower by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, Hudson Yards asks one to step up and apart from the grid.

Do the High Line, contributions to Hudson Yards by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, and the Museum of Modern Art with help from Diller Scofidio + Renfro represent New York's worst or its hopes for the future? Architecture enters a new decade with choices ahead.

Rockburne

Can painting and drawing combine mathematics and the materials of art, astronomy and sensory experience? Dorothea Rockburne pays homage to the Milky Way.

Did abstraction depart from Minimalism with shaped canvas, crude oil, and glass microspheres? Dorothea Rockburne, Mary Corse, and Lynn Umlauf still sought sensuality, stillness, and light.

Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko could stand for government-supported art at its most thrilling—and terrifying. How would he enjoy shopping instead in Herald Square?

When did Modernism become propaganda? "The Power of Pictures" follows early Soviet photography, including including El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko, but earlier still Alfred Stieglitz joined photojournalism and experiment.

Rodin

Why did Amedeo Modigliani go to the Louvre, and why did Auguste Rodin admire more conservative art? One may never find Rodin behind the gestures and Modigliani unmasked.

Are twisting bodies and multiple casts by Auguste Rodin 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.

Rogier

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

Roland

Have African American art and abstraction become old friends? Melvin Edwards, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Kianja Strobert, and Sherrill Roland make abstraction a monument to black history.

Roma

Marc Yankus photographs buildings you only thought you knew and Thomas Roma the shadows of Brooklyn, while Paul Anthony Smith sees the city beyind barriers and a beach in Puerto Rica. Which is the real New York?

Rommel

Who has the right to abstraction? "Searching the Sky for Rain" puts it in question, but Julia Rommel, Paul Loughney, and Richard Roth demonstrate its diversity.

Rondinone

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.

Has summer sculpture left the parks behind? With Orly Genger, Ugo Rondinone, "do it (outside)," and Thomas Houseago at Storm King Art Center it has becomes the fabric of New York.

Rorty

Richard Rorty could be America's first epistemologist to go for the public eye and political commitment. Is there room for male philosophers in feminism?

Rose

Photography goes global, and so does Queens. What memories will "New Photography 2023" preserve of Lagos, An-My Lê of Vietnam, Tracey Rose of South Africa, and Aliza Nisenbaum of Corona?

Rosen

Try mapping Minimalism, with Anne Truitt and Mary Corse on the coasts, Michael Snow and Kay Rosen in the "central regions." Can a map of a map have firm borders or only light?

H. Rosenberg

M. Rosenberg

When art includes gargoyles, prisons, a tale of two cities, and "the secret of the sex," should one call it a graphic novel? Maddy Rosenberg calls it an artist's book.

How will climate remake a port city? "On the Waterfront," curated by Maddy Rosenberg, maps Brooklyn, while Wave Hill and Lovid see a more idyllic or high-tech Hudson.

Is book art a display of text, images, or the sculptural object? A panel on "Content Through Structure" led by Maddy Rosenberg examines the aims of art criticism and the artist's book.

Rosengarten

Luigi Ghirri surveys Europe and Ruth Rosengarten a family in transit. Just whose memories do their photographs preserve?

Rosenquist

How can anyone take billboards so seriously? With his shifting images, James Rosenquist could belong with Pop Art, political rebellion, or Surrealism.

Rosheger

Where were those voices? "In Practice" for 2021 makes them and the way home hard to find—like an ocean crossing and a way out of climate change for Rindon Johnson and digital displays of the perfect storm for Rachel Rosheger.

Rosler

Can Martha Rosler keep bringing it all back home? She turns from combat to cooking and class, while Sarah Lucas cracks a few eggs.

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?

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.

Ross

Did the Great Migration carry African Americans north to freedom? A museum sees instead "A Movement in Every Direction," while William Christenberry and RaMell Ross keep returning to Hale County, Alabama.

Rosso

Is the Holy Family by Rosso Fiorentino truly strange or simply unfinished? Along with twenty drawings, it illuminates Mannerism in sixteenth-century Florence.

D. Roth

Art may or may not come out of fashion, but what makes it go out of fashion? Guess which applies to Dieter Roth and Lee Lozano.

R. Roth

Who has the right to abstraction? "Searching the Sky for Rain" puts it in question, but Richard Roth, Paul Loughney, and Julia Rommel demonstrate its diversity.

Rothberg

Where did the cows go? Rem Koolhaas looks into "Countryside, the Future," while Marina Zurkow and Sarah Rothberg explore the limits to growth in plain old water.

Rothen

Can a woman's photographs be truer to women? Marianna Rothen asks where the bodies are buried in film noir, Barbara Probst in the studio, and Ming Smith in Harlem.

Rothko

In just one year, from 1948 to 1949, Mark Rothko found his trademark color, shape, and symmetry. Had he made his mark at last or let himself go?

Mark Rothko seems to demand a hushed respect for painting. In a postmodern age, can a museum visitor sit and live with a work of art?

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.

Are galleries more like public spaces or luxury retailers? Jean Dubuffet treats sculpture as an urban plaza, while Bosco Sodi evokes cracked earth and the Rothko Chapel in white.

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

When Barnett Newman wrote "The Sublime Is Now," was he, along with Mark Rothko, returning to Romantic myths or looking past them to now—and how quaint does that look after Postmodernism? Find out how New York stole the idea of the sublime.

Rothenberg

With her horses, Susan Rothenberg found her "new image." But did she revive or negate painting, and why did Louise Bourgeois give it up?

Boys will be boys. But do Joan Mitchell and, in the galleries, Susan Rothenberg, Eileen Brady Nelson, and Kate Shepherd really just indulge in girl talk?

Rothman

When painting comes off the wall, does it become sculpture? Not necessarily in this hybrid age, and not for Henry Rothman, Iva Gueorguieva, and Charles McGill.

Rottenberg

Are they all out to get you? "Everything Is Connected" connects art and conspiracy, while Adelita Husni-Bey, Mariana Castillo Deball, and Mika Rottenberg turn for hope to more ancient myths, maps, theater, Third World workers, and lawyers.

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

Can a celebration of African Americans help overcome very real dangers? Arthur Jafa and "The Body Politic" (with Steve McQueen, David Hammons, and Mika Rottenberg) make the body in question a part of black history and culture.

With Mika Rottenberg, Daniel Canogar, Pipilotti Rist, and Jennifer Steinkamp, have new media become an obsession? The New York Electronic Arts Fair invades Governors Island, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster invades Chelsea.

Rouillard

Is the resurgence of abstract painting more than a show? Michael Rouillard, Erin O'Keefe, Marjorie Welish, and Yun Hyong-keun build on small differences.

Rousseau

When did plein-air painting leave Romanticism behind? English and German drawings engage in "A Dialogue with Nature," before the untamed landscape of Théodore Rousseau and the Barbizon school.

Routson

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

Rovner

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

So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of 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.

Rowe

Roydson

Do the stumps of Hudson River Park attest to New York as an arts scene or port city? Every Ocean Hughes (formerly Emily Roydson) and Jimmy DeSana trace sites of queer identity.

Rozin

Art seems to collapse right out from under Daniel Rozin, James Hopkins, Jon Kessler, Diana Kingsley, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, and Catherine Sullivan. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?

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

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.

Rubens

Only a great draftsman could seem so effortless as Peter Paul Rubens. How can drawings reveal so little about an artist's hesitations—and so much of his influence?

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.

Is that an aristocrat or an artist? For Anthony van Dyck, portraiture was an image of society unconcerned for mere detail, and he, Peter Paul Rubens, and Jacob Jordaens shine in Flemish Baroque drawing.

Rubins

Has modern sculpture settled into scrap, monumentalism, or both? Nancy Rubins, Antony Gormley, and the fate of a New York landmark by Philip Pavia navigate between Modernism, Minimalism, and the junkyard.

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?

Rubinstein

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.

Ruby

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.

Ruff

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

Ruisdael

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

Ruscha

You call this a monument? Ed Ruscha traces the course of empire, while "Monuments for the USA" seeks a nation worth remembering.

Ruttenberg

Tired of tossing and turning? Kathy Ruttenberg, Elizabeth Glaessner, Siobhan Liddell, and Linda Matalon take a woman's body through times of crisis.

Now that anything goes, where can it stop? Helen Marten and, at a gallery with Kathy Ruttenberg, Lily Wong reach beyond conceptual art and fantasy to painting, while Elizabeth Schwaiger all but paints herself out of her studio.

von Rydingsvard

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

Wood should allow one to climb its fragile beams. Why, then, do Karyn Olivier, Ursula von Rydingsvard, "Trace," and "Quid Pro Quo" make playgrounds such eerie places to play?

C. Ryman

Can painting step out into architecture? It can for Cordy Ryman, but in sculpture.

Have squares lost their magic? Cordy Ryman, Regina Bogat, and Hassan Sharif are maximizing Minimalism.

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

R. Ryman

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.

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

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 Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, Richard Serra, Andy Warhol, and many more, Dia:Beacon assumes control.

Still more names!

jhaber@haberarts.com