christian marclay one hit wonder clocks doors brooklyn museum 1234747681

Christian Marclay's latest supercut film, "Doors," is now on view at the Brooklyn Museum after stops in Boston and Europe. The 50-minute looped video compiles scenes of famous actors opening and closing doors from various movies, following the success of Marclay's 2011 hit "The Clock," a 24-hour video-clock that synchronizes on-screen timepieces with the viewer's actual time. The article critiques "Doors" as a less profound, more self-obsessed work that lacks the emotional resonance of its predecessor.

10 Art Books for Your Spring Reading List

Hyperallergic has published a curated list of ten art books recommended for spring reading. The selection emphasizes historical retellings through an artistic lens, featuring works such as a memoir by activist-artist Susan Simensky Bietila, a chronicle of the Jewish Bund by Molly Crabapple, and the first major catalog on artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha in 25 years. The list also includes exhibition catalogs like "Chicano Camera Culture" and a monograph on painter Ewa Juszkiewicz.

8 Books We’re Looking Forward to in April

ARTnews previews eight notable art and culture books scheduled for release in April 2026. The list includes Ben Lerner's novel "Transcription," a dual biography of artists Peter Hujar and Paul Thek by Andrew Durbin, Luke Goebel's art-world satire "Kill Dick," and an academic study of Alberto Giacometti's 1930s work by Joanna Fiduccia. Also featured are a memoir by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, a book on Dorothea Tanning, and Julia Langbein's unconventional book about Monica Lewinsky.

carol bove guggenheim museum retrospective review 1234775914

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has launched a major retrospective of Carol Bove, filling the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda with approximately 100 works spanning her career. The exhibition showcases Bove’s evolution from her early assemblages of driftwood, peacock feathers, and vintage books to her more recent large-scale, brightly colored steel sculptures. A defining feature of the show is Bove’s inclusion of "para-artworks"—pieces by other artists such as Lionel Ziprin, Agnes Martin, and Arnaldo Pomodoro—integrated into her own installations to highlight the influences and histories that inform her practice.

The Enigma of Alison Knowles

Lauren Moya Ford reviews the only book dedicated to Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, who died six months ago. The book, "Performing Chance: The Art of Alison Knowles In/Out of Fluxus" by Nicole L. Woods (2026), attempts to illuminate Knowles's life and work, but Ford notes that much of her personal life remains mysterious despite the author's efforts. The article is part of a broader books newsletter that also features new tomes on Hans Holbein’s portraits, Jan Staller’s photographs of Manhattan construction sites, and a discussion of a Black Panther family album at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Haroutiun Galentz: The Form of Colour

Haroutiun Galentz: The Form of Colour

A new English-language monograph, *Haroutiun Galentz: The Form of Colour*, repositions the Armenian-Lebanese painter as a major cosmopolitan modernist. The book assembles his work from international collections, arguing his career—spanning formative years in Beirut's pre-war art scene and a later period in the Soviet Union—must be understood beyond national art historical frameworks.

future of the art world andras szanto review 1234757915

András Szántó has published the third volume of his trilogy on the future of museums and the art world, titled "The Future of the Art World." The book compiles 38 interviews conducted between April 2024 and June 2025 with a wide range of art-world stakeholders, including artists, curators, collectors, dealers, auctioneers, art fair directors, sociologists, philosophers, and policymakers. Unlike his previous books, which focused on museum directors and architects, this volume gives significant voice to artists, who offer provocative critiques and predictions about the future of museums, art education, and digital art.

Ruminations on Rashid Johnson’s “A Poem for Deep Thinkers”

The article is a reflective review of Rashid Johnson's exhibition "A Poem for Deep Thinkers" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The author describes standing before Johnson's work "Falling Man" (2016), a piece incorporating broken mirrors, burned wood, and personal objects like a copy of Harry Haywood's "Black Bolshevik" and shea butter, which prompts meditations on visibility, identity, and Frantz Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks." The review also examines Johnson's large-scale installation "Antoine's Organ" (2016/2026), which fills a gallery typically reserved for Ellsworth Kelly's minimalist canvases, transforming the space with scaffolding, plants, books, and video monitors.

chaim soutine biography celeste marcus 1234757163

A new biography titled *Chaïm Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art*, written by Celeste Marcus, explores the life and work of the early 20th-century painter Chaïm Soutine. Marcus argues that Soutine’s intensely visceral paintings—featuring dizzying landscapes, bloody carcasses, and penetrating portraits—are the key to understanding the artist, who left behind few personal records. The book challenges the tendency to read historical tragedy, particularly Soutine’s identity as an Eastern European Jew before WWII, into his turbulent brushwork, instead emphasizing the life force and internal logic of his compositions.

Pleasure, parody and propaganda: rethinking the art of illustration in a new history of the genre

D.B. Dowd's new book "Reading Pictures" offers a sweeping 400-page history of illustration, tracing the genre from the Diamond Sutra frontispiece in Tang China (AD868) to Molly Crabapple's Gaza reports in 2015. The book examines key works such as Jules Chéret's 1891 poster for the Alcazar d'Été Club, Stuart Davis's caustic covers for The Masses, and Duong Ngoc Canh's Vietnamese propaganda poster, arguing that illustrations are meant to be "read" rather than admired like museum paintings.

‘Transcription’ by Ben Lerner Review: No Phones

Ben Lerner’s latest novel, Transcription, marks a departure from his previous sprawling autofiction like The Topeka School, opting instead for a spare, three-part structure set during the COVID-19 pandemic. The narrative unfolds through three pivotal conversations involving the protagonist, his aging mentor Thomas, a curator, and Thomas’s son Max. Central to the plot is the protagonist’s failure to record a final interview with Thomas due to a broken phone, forcing a reliance on fallible memory and reconstruction.

The Big Review

Tate Britain has launched a major survey dedicated to the visionary artist and poet William Blake, marking one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of his work in London. The show brings together his intricate watercolors, prints, and prophetic books, offering a deep dive into his unique mythological universe and radical political views.

February Book Bag: from Tracey Emin’s conversations about painting to a catalogue of Lucian Freud’s drawings

The article presents a selection of recently published art books, highlighting new releases on artists Tracey Emin, Beatriz González, and Lucian Freud, as well as a second volume on Arab Modernist artists. It details the content of each book, including personal reflections, career overviews, and connections to upcoming exhibitions.

Comment | I used to think it wasn’t cool to like Andy Goldsworthy—now I see how he helps us appreciate the natural world

Mia maxima culpa. For many years I felt it wasn’t cool to like Andy Goldsworthy. The British artist’s interventions in and workings with nature, while highly skilful and often very beautiful, seemed out of kilter with an increasingly hardcore, conceptually underpinned and urban-orientated art world. It also didn’t help that most of his work could only be experienced at one remove. Books and photographs were the only record of the ephemeral pieces he’d created from ice, leaves, sticks and stones; as well as of the more lasting installations—walls, sheepfolds, cairn paths and giant arches—he’d make in situ, usually in remote locations across the world.

White Girls and the Global South

The article is a curated list of art books for spring reading, featuring a diverse range of subjects. It highlights two main critical reviews: one critiques a new novel, *Flat Earth* by Anika Jade Levy, as another navel-gazing story about disaffected white women, while the other praises a scholarly work, *Non-Aligned: Art, Decolonization and the Third World Project in India* by Atreyee Gupta, which examines the international solidarity networks of Indian modernist painters long before the term "Global South" became popular.

‘I had all kinds of altercations’: the photographer who captures humanity at close quarters

A new book titled 'Trespass' introduces the work of photographer Mark Cohen, known for his invasive, close-quarters street photography primarily in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Cohen's method involved using flash and fast color film to capture unsuspecting subjects, often leading to physical altercations, and his images are characterized by extreme blur and sudden points of sharp focus.