Visual Arts

A Revolution of Mexican Art in America

The Whitney’s show, “Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art,” is a study in revisionism, recasting the standard story so that those formerly disregarded and excluded from the canon of modern American art are instead given a place in it.

July 20, 2020

Francisco Goya: The Pilgrimage to San Isidro, 1820–1823

Julian Bell

‘Teeming with Things Unknown’

October 8, 2020 issue

Panels from Count Screwloose of Tooloose by Milt Gross, April 5, 1931

Art Spiegelman

Foolish Questions

The subversive joy and nonsense of comics

March 12, 2020 issue

Susan Tallman

The Master of Unknowing

Gerhard Richter is contemporary art’s great poet of uncertainty; his work sets the will to believe and the obligation to doubt in perfect oscillation.

May 14, 2020 issue

Ingrid D. Rowland

The Master’s Master

Andrea del Verrocchio epitomizes what the Renaissance of art in Florence was all about.

December 19, 2019 issue

Martín Ramírez: Untitled, 45 1/2 x 31 inches, circa 1948–1952

Sanford Schwartz

Band of Outsiders

“Memory Palaces: Inside the Collection of Audrey B. Heckler” at the American Folk Art Museum

December 5, 2019 issue

Jacopo Tintoretto: The Last Supper, 87 x 162 5/8 inches, circa 1563–1564

Colm Tóibín

Tintoretto’s Wildness

‘Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice’ at the National Gallery of Art, through July 7, 2019

May 9, 2019 issue

Charline von Heyl: Dunesday, 62 x 60 inches, 2016

David Salle

Houdini with a Brush

May 9, 2019 issue

The Latest

Lewis Hyde

The Powerful Reticence of Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Rather than presenting himself overtly as a gay artist in the age of AIDS, he preferred to work as a secret agent in the house of culture.

November 22, 2020

Colin B. Bailey

Suffering, Unfaltering Manet

Even in ill health, the painter continued to shock his audience.

December 3, 2020 issue

Boyd Tonkin

Turner, Critic of the Anthropocene

A new show at Tate Britain foregrounds the painter’s tragic, if beguilingly beautiful vision of a world marred by cruel industrial might.

November 11, 2020

Jehad al-Saftawi

Framing Life in a Conflict Zone

“I miss the warmth and kindness of the people in Gaza,” says the young Palestinian photojournalist, now living in exile.

November 7, 2020

Jehad al-Saftawi

The Gaza I Grew Up In

Working as a photojournalist there is like walking barefoot in a field of thorns. You must always watch where you step.

November 6, 2020

Valeria Luiselli

Things as They Are

Dorothea Lange created a vast archive of the twentieth century’s crises in America. For years her work was censored, misused, impounded, or simply rejected.

November 19, 2020 issue

Lucas Adams

Gayleen Aiken’s Self-Made Vermont

A new online exhibition showcases Aiken’s joyous artwork.

October 28, 2020

Jacob Lawrence: Massacre in Boston, 12 x 16 inches, 1954–1955; panel 2 from Struggle: From the History of the American People

Sanford Schwartz

The Revolutionary Jacob Lawrence

‘Struggle: From the History of the American People’ charts the strife of early US history in a fierce Cubist/Expressionist style.

November 5, 2020 issue

Emmanuel Iduma

On Photography, Colonial History, and Collective Memory

“I want photographs to bring me closer to storytelling, to help me understand tragedy.”

October 3, 2020

Dawit L. Petros's 12. Untitled (Epilogue II), Catania, Italy

Emmanuel Iduma

Italy's History in Africa Reframed

By juxtaposing photographs from Catania and Nefasit, artist Dawit L. Petros suggests a connection between the migration of East Africans to Italy and the legacy of colonialism.

October 3, 2020