Do You Stretch and Squeeze?

Artists who work from observation have a basic desire to make something look “right”, which means accurately capturing the true shapes and colors of our subject. However, we may also have other competing desires: The desire to complete an artwork

Continue Reading

The banal spectacle of buying a Beckmann


Max Beckmann’s Selbstbildnis gelb-rosa (Self-portrait yellow-pink), 1943, was sold at Grisebach in Berlin on Thursday.* Photo: Urban Zintel.

IT TOOK TWO MINUTES and forty-eight seconds to settle on twenty million euros as the hammer price of the most expensive artwork

Continue Reading

Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner | London

“Cuteness,” writes the theorist Sianne Ngai, “hinges on a sentimental attitude toward the diminutive and/or weak… [it’s] a sadistic side to a tender emotion.” The cuties in Marcel Dzama’s artworks are out for revenge on the viewer. In surreal vignettes,

Continue Reading
1 2 3 67