Art News. Vasari Codex

rate_review review schedule Apr 8, 2026 visibility 55 link 12 artists

Are We Too Reverent of Marcel Duchamp?

The Museum of Modern Art has launched a major retrospective of Marcel Duchamp, co-organized with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition tracks the artist's evolution from his early Cubist experiments and the scandal of 'Nude Descending a Staircase' to his radical invention of the readymade, exemplified by the infamous urinal, 'Fountain'. The show presents a comprehensive look at 'The Duch' through a reverential, church-like atmosphere, concluding with his later years as a dapper, enigmatic figure of the avant-garde.

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rate_review review schedule Oct 2, 2025 visibility 6 link 1 artist, 1 gallery

p staff david zwirner review 1234755199

P. Staff's current exhibition at David Zwirner in New York transforms the gallery's Upper East Side townhouse into a haunting, body-centric experience. The show features a new video titled *Penetration* (2025), split across three floors, depicting a person with a laser beamed at their bare stomach, alongside sculptures with wood spikes under latex drapes and ambient sounds of a beating heart. The installation evokes a dread of having a body, with jaundiced yellow window films and disjointed sensory elements creating an uncomfortable, dysphoric atmosphere.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Apr 8, 2026 visibility 27 link 11 artists

Review: The new LACMA is divisive. It’s also ambitious, disorienting — and radically alive

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has unveiled its $724-million David Geffen Galleries, a massive concrete structure designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor that spans Wilshire Boulevard. Replacing several older pavilions, the new building rejects traditional museum conventions like white-cube galleries and encyclopedic organization in favor of a sinuous, organic form that emphasizes light, atmosphere, and a visceral connection to the surrounding landscape.

newspaper Los Angeles Times open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Aug 22, 2025 visibility 8 link 8 artists, 1 gallery

Comment | Monet might have seen Venice, but his paintings suggest he didn’t feel it

The article compares J.M.W. Turner's and Claude Monet's depictions of Venice, arguing that Turner's watercolors capture the city's innate melancholy and atmosphere, while Monet's paintings feel unfulfilling and lack emotional depth. The author reflects on Turner's sublime Venice watercolours, particularly 'San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, at Sunset' (1840), and contrasts them with Monet's works, which are the subject of a major upcoming show at the Brooklyn Museum. The piece also touches on Francesco Guardi's visceral views versus Canaletto's more pleasing but superficial ones, and Howard Hodgkin's later, elegiac response to the city.

newspaper The Art Newspaper open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Mar 4, 2026 visibility 3 link 26 artists

art 2026 whitney biennial review artists

The 2026 Whitney Biennial, curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, features 56 artists and collectives without a unifying theme or title. The review describes the exhibition as intentionally incoherent, reflecting America's current state of irrationality and violence. Notable works include Oswaldo Maciá's scent-based 'Requiem for the Insects', Zach Blas's apocalyptic AI installation, Emilie Louise Gossiaux's sculptures honoring her guide dog, Ash Arder's multimedia works exploring ecology and infrastructure, and Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien's politically charged diorama 'For a Just War Against America'. The show's atmosphere is dominated by clanging percussion, ominous drones, and discordant sounds, with a general tenor of unease.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Nov 27, 2025 visibility 9 link 9 artists

Comment | Turner gets all the kudos, but it was Constable who was the truly radical painter

A commentary argues that John Constable, not J.M.W. Turner, was the truly radical painter, despite Turner receiving far greater public recognition through a museum, a prize, and a place on the £20 note. The article highlights a new exhibition, "Turner and Constable," opening at Tate Britain (until 12 April 2026), which recreates their 1831 Royal Academy display and contrasts Constable's English pastoral scenes with Turner's dramatic, un-British visions. It contends that Constable's full-size oil sketches, such as those at the Victoria and Albert Museum, had a deeper and more lasting effect on modern painting than Turner's work.

newspaper The Art Newspaper open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Apr 16, 2026 visibility 17 link 6 artists

The Unnameable Artists of the Canton Trade System

Art historian Winnie Wong’s new book, *The Many Names of Anonymity: Portraitists of the Canton Trade*, investigates the lives and legacies of 18th and 19th-century Chinese artists who produced works for Western traders under the Canton system. These artists, often dismissed by history as mere copyists or left anonymous in museum "tombstone" labels, created complex works that blended European techniques with Chinese traditions. Wong challenges the reductive category of "Asian export art," proposing instead the term "Canton trade painting" to better reflect the unique atmosphere of cultural exchange in Guangzhou.

newspaper Hyperallergic open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule May 7, 2026 link 3 artists

Beyond the body: Jess Self’s emotive power at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art

Jess Self, a Decatur-based sculptor and educator, presents *Celestial Perspectives* at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art, an immersive textile environment that explores autobiography through figurative form. The exhibition features works in resin, plaster, felted wool, fiber, and rope, including the large-scale installation *The Veil* and the compelling *She Who Ties Magic Knots*, a resin and plaster cast of the artist's pregnant torso. Self's practice draws on Jungian archetypes and spiritual traditions, and the show communicates themes of connectivity, motherhood, bodily experience, and transcendence without relying on wall text.

newspaper ARTS ATL open_in_new Read original