What ‘Costume Art’ Gets Wrong About the Body

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute spring exhibition, featuring nearly 400 objects, pairs garments and ensembles with Western figurative artworks from the museum's permanent collection in dyadic, associative displays. The show eschews traditional art-historical timelines and context in favor of visual and thematic parallels—comparing, for example, Rudi Gernreich's Pubikini with an Egyptian statuette, or Ying Gao's sound-responsive dress with a David Hockney drawing. The exhibition is sponsored by Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

Todd Gray Reframes Black Diasporic History

Todd Gray's exhibition "Portals" at Perrotin in Los Angeles features multi-paneled photo assemblages that juxtapose images of slavery with European art, architecture, and formal gardens, exploring the evolution of Black history and identity. The show coincides with the opening of his commissioned installation "Octavia's Gaze" (2025) at the new David Geffen Galleries of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gray's works incorporate his own photographs alongside sources like Hubble Space Telescope imagery, creating layered visual puzzles that invite viewers to find connections and ask questions about African diasporic identity.

Fantastic visions and cosmic rhythms: how Whistler is making me see – and hear – differently

The article explores how the James McNeill Whistler exhibition at Tate in London prompts a reconsideration of the relationship between music and visual art. Whistler titled his works using musical terms like "Arrangement," "Symphony," and "Nocturne," arguing that painting should be abstract and independent of narrative, much like instrumental music. The exhibition, reviewed by Jonathan Jones, highlights Whistler's radical art-for-art's-sake philosophy, which influenced composer Claude Debussy, whose orchestral Nocturnes were directly inspired by Whistler's paintings of light and atmosphere.

Winston Churchill: The Painter review – We will daub them on the beaches

The Guardian reviews "Winston Churchill: The Painter," an exhibition of nearly 60 paintings by the former British prime minister, curated by Xavier Bray and Lucy Davis. The show assembles works from across the UK and private collections, depicting scenes from Churchill's travels, stately homes, and leisure moments, painted as an amateur Sunday painter for stress relief rather than artistic acclaim. The review notes Churchill's use of techniques borrowed from Walter Sickert, including projectors and monochrome underlayers, and describes his style as charmingly amateurish with a vivacity in seascapes but weakness in figures and architectural luminosity.

James McNeill Whistler review – a luscious, seductive blockbuster for the painter who scandalised Britain

Tate Britain has opened a major retrospective dedicated to James McNeill Whistler, the American painter who scandalized Victorian Britain. The exhibition centers on his iconic work *Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1* (commonly known as *Whistler's Mother*), lent by the Musée d'Orsay, and traces his evolution from raw realist scenes of London's docks to radical, abstract celebrations of color and pattern. It includes a reconstruction of *The Peacock Room* and highlights his rivalry with critic John Ruskin, who accused him of 'flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.'

The Black American Artists Who Dazzled Post-War Paris

An exhibition titled "Paris in Black: Internationalism and the Black Renaissance" at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center in Chicago celebrates the Black American artists, writers, and performers who moved to Paris after World War II to escape American racism. Curated by Danny Dunson, the show features over 100 artworks from the museum's permanent collection, including paintings by Archibald J. Motley Jr., sculptures by Richmond Barthé, Augusta Savage, and William Artis, and ephemera related to Josephine Baker. It traces the global influence of the Harlem Renaissance and the cross-pollination between Paris and U.S. cities like Chicago.

Zurbarán: a ‘magnificently choreographed’ showing of the Spanish ‘genius’

The article reviews the first-ever British exhibition dedicated to Spanish Baroque painter Francisco de Zurbarán, held at the National Gallery in London. The show brings together 40 works from collections spanning Seville to San Diego, featuring his hyper-real religious paintings and radiant still lifes, described as a 'magnificently choreographed' trawl through his oeuvre. Critics praise the exhibition for its dramatic lighting and revelatory presentation, though some note uneven quality in his later works.

The Christophers review – Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel are the double act of the year

Steven Soderbergh's new film "The Christophers" is a London-set movie about contemporary art, starring Ian McKellen as Julian Sklar, a once-dominant but now outmoded English painter, and Michaela Coel as Lori Butler, a former art student hired as his assistant. The plot revolves around a series of hidden paintings called "The Christophers" that Julian's grasping adult children want to find and potentially forge for profit. The film is described as fast, literate, and funny, with McKellen and Coel delivering a compelling double act.

Body as Device. Guide and Reflection on the Performances of the Venice Biennale

Corpo come dispositivo. Guida e riflessione sulle performance della Biennale di Venezia

The article analyzes the role of performance art at the 2026 Venice Biennale, arguing that performance is no longer a rediscovered genre but a structurally institutionalized primary form of experience production. It examines how the body reemerges not as an alternative to image-based works but as an internal interruption of the artwork system, preventing closure and reintroducing instability. Key pavilions are discussed: Austria's Florentina Holzinger with "Sancta" draws on 1970s radical performance and feminist body art, creating an immersive environment of continuous movement; Belgium's Miet Warlop with "IT NEVER SSST" engages post-dramatic theater and postmodern dance repetition; Japan's Ei Arakawa-Nash with "Grass Babies, Moon Babies" activates Gutai avant-garde legacies through viewer interaction with soft dolls.

The Politics of In-action: Review of In-action: Viennese Actionism and the Passivities of Performance Art

Caroline Lillian Schopp's new book *In-action: Viennese Actionism and the Passivities of Performance Art* (2025) offers a revisionist history of Viennese Actionism, a movement retroactively named in 1970 by Peter Weibel and Valie Export. Schopp introduces the term "in-action" to describe a politics of artistic action that emphasizes intimacy, hesitation, and vulnerability rather than the violent or liberatory extremes typically associated with the movement. She expands the canon to include women artists such as Anna Brus, Hanel Koeck, and Ingrid Wiener, and reexamines the work of Rudolf Schwarzkogler, whose death was mythologized as a suicide by self-castration but was actually a fall from a window. Through close readings of photographs, Schopp argues that Schwarzkogler's performances were characterized by passivity and "in-sincerity," challenging the dominant narrative of actionism as aggressive or heroic.

Why is contemporary art afraid of the present?

Warum fürchtet sich die Gegenwartskunst vor der Gegenwart?

The article critiques the 2024 Whitney Biennial, which emphasizes themes of compassion, vulnerability, and community. It argues that the exhibition feels like a capitulation to reality, failing to confront the rise of contemporary fascism and the political urgency of the present moment.

New film about forgers is ‘Miami Vice’ for the art-world crowd

The article reviews 'Forge', a new crime thriller directed by Jing Ai Ng, which follows Chinese American siblings Coco and Raymond Zhang who forge early 20th-century landscape paintings and sell them as authentic works in South Florida. The film features FBI agent Emily (Kelly Marie Tran) investigating the scheme, while the forgers navigate a world of wealthy collectors, a hurricane-destroyed art collection, and a family legacy of deception. The movie is described as 'Miami Vice' for the art-world crowd, with a dusky palette and pulsing soundtrack set against the backdrop of Art Basel Miami Beach's booming art market.

Art Review: "The Rip in Her Sleeve" and "Iliana Arocho: Drawings" at Maiden Lane Gallery in Kingston

Maiden Lane Gallery in Kingston is hosting two concurrent exhibitions curated by Matt Moment: "The Rip in Her Sleeve," featuring pigment print photographs by Alicia Schirrmeister and Ruth Lauer Manenti, and "Iliana Arocho: Drawings," a solo show of ethereal drawings and metalpoint works by Iliana Arocho. The shows occupy two floors of a brick building that serves as an outpost for Headstone Gallery, run by Lauren Aitken and Chase Folsom, marking Moment's first collaboration with the gallery as a guest curator.