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Pick from More Artists
John Haberin New York City
Saarinen
When did modern architecture give way to colors and curves? Eero Saarinen, Charles Gwathmey, and Josiah McElheny each give the International Style a different terminus.
Saenredam
Will the age of the virtual museum dispel the aura of art—or add a new veneration of images? Something other than religion can go on anyway in painting, even within the confines of majestic seventeenth-century cathedrals by Pieter Saenredam.
Saint-Aubin
Can a little-known Rococo artist find a home in the age of graphic novels? Gabriel de Saint-Aubin cannot stop drawing.
Salle
I came to New York to look at modern art, only to watch it fall apart. Early David Salle and late Andy Warhol were both painting the death of painting.
Do David Salle, Dosso Dossi, and Julião Sarmento all spin postmodern allegories? Something funny happens to fables without a subtext.
Saltz
After decades of feminist criticism, why does MOMA display so few women artists? Jerry Saltz asks, just when late Pablo Picasso draws praise for Modernism's most famous dead white male.
Has the Web made theory obsolete? Jerry Saltz asks Facebook "friends" for their favorite critic, but I vote for myself.
Angered by a critic of art as mainstream as Rockefeller Center, Jerry Saltz tells him to make his own damn art. When Tino Sehgal creates performances by others, including the viewer, does he really invite just that?
When so many Chelsea galleries jump-start their fall openings, has contemporary art lost the "battle for Babylon"? Jerry Saltz finds hope on the margins, but Bill Owens and others leave one unsure.
"Is the art market making us stupid?" Jerry Saltz worries, and Jed Perl is dead certain, but "Private Treasures" look smart.
"Not for Sale" takes work that artists have kept for themselves, but has P.S. 1 managed not to sell out? Jerry Saltz has his doubts.
Samaha
After five years in Iraq, can art have mere intimations of disaster? Lucien Samaha, Deborah Brown, Paul Chan, Joy Garnett, and Meg Webster reveal the anxious artist.
Samaras
Lucas Samaras, Slater Bradley, and John F. Simon, Jr., remake their image and surrender the copyright. With Macs so expensive and bytes so cheap, what else is a digital artist to do?
Cindy Sherman exposes Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lucas Samaras keeps exposing himself. Who does that leave for a photograph to discover?
Samuels
So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Diane Samuels, Michal Rovner, Julian Stanczak, and Jennifer Steinkamp, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.
How long will Chelsea offer a mix of warehouses, idealism, chic, and big money? In late 1999 it at least has room for Postmodernism, laughter, and laser-cut tears, including Andreas Slominski, Gary Hill, Eric Magnuson, Diane Samuels, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.
Sanaa
The New Museum, in architecture by Sanaa, promises a rebirth on the Bowery, but its opening show, "Unmonumental" (parodied by Howard Saunders as "URmonumental"), promises to retain the spirit of the Lower East Side. Which will win out?
Sandback
Symmetry is back, but are artists opening or shutting doors? Fred Sandback, Ron Gorchov, Mark Grotjahn, Ellsworth Kelly, and Catherine Yass start knocking.
Can anyone still follow the thread of art history into Minimalism and beyond? With the flimsiest acrylic thread, Fred Sandback can seem to alter the very air in which one moves.
Sargent
John Singer Sargent returned again and again to portraits of children. How many adults haunt those images, and how many of them are alive today?
When Napoleon turned his cannons on Spain, he also stirred up art, with a new taste for the Spanish Baroque. What happens when art history rolls out the canon, from Diego Velázquez and Francisco ea Goya all the way to Edouard Manet and John Singer Sargent?
Stung by Salon criticism, Edouard Manet did the editing that left a great painting or two. Was he less of a modern after all than John Singer Sargent, who gave up society portraits for landscape?
Sarkisian
Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? Peter Sarkisian, Janine Antoni, Amy Bennett, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, David Shapiro, and E. E. Smith put them both to the test.
Postmodernism calls practically everything text, including casual words and creative acts. Can Maureen Conner, Ronald Jones, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Sarkisian, Mark Sheinkman, and others avoid reprint corrections with a hand-made book?
Can digital art make a revolution while appropriating the same old world? Compare "BitStreams" and "Data Dynamics" to the obsessions, intimacy, and invasions of privacy in such gallery artists as Peter Sarkisian and Gary Hume.
Sarmento
Do Julião Sarmento, Dosso Dossi, and David Salle all spin postmodern allegories? Something funny happens to fables without a subtext.
Saunders
The New Museum, in architecture by Sanaa, promises a rebirth on the Bowery, but its opening show, "Unmonumental" (parodied by Howard Saunders as "URmonumental"), promises to retain the spirit of the Lower East Side. Which will win out?
Savedoff
Will people maintain their trust in photography, as a passive trace of real, in the digital age? Barbara Savedoff has her doubts, but Walker Evans and Sylvia Mendel may put that trust in question in the first place.
Saville
For "Sensation" in Brooklyn, British artists and New York politicians recycle old scripts, nearly a decade after appropriation art held sway. With Jenny Saville, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Damien Hirst, and Chris Ofili, to name just a few, what accounts for the shock of the not so new, and can a savvy analysis by Hal Foster pin it down?
Schapiro
Is modern art a fake? Despite such eloquent defenders as Meyer Schapiro, it was still fighting that charge when Postmodernism turned up to agree.
Who is that couple in Jan van Eyck's most famous painting, face front and hands joined, as if for a solemn ceremony? Three books seek the truth in painting and a new art history, just as Meyer Schapiro once had faced an enigmatic pair of shoes by Vincent van Gogh.
Cézanne and Pollock both started off as expressionists, and then both created a classicism teeming with emotion. But what in Jackson Pollock carries the sensuality that Meyer Schapiro found in Paul Cézanne's apples?
(Note: if you meant David or Joel Shapiro, look down.)
Scheinman
Does painting have critics "Seeing Red"? A survey at Hunter College, influenced by Josef Albers, starts with the psychology of color, but Nancy Scheinman, Walter Biggs, James Nares, and Gregg Stone have something else in mind.
Schendel
When does drawing stop and calligraphy or weaving begin? Cui Fei, Paul Glabicki, Lee Mingwei, Léon Ferrari, and Mira Schendel leave art hanging by a thread.
Schiele
Are Egon Schiele and Expressionism the ancestors of today's "shock art"? It depends on who is shocking whom.
How German was German Expressionism? With Egon Schiele and Otto Dix, "German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse" aims to shift the center of Modernism from Paris.
Schipper
Which will do in art first, gentrification or trashy installations? Jonathan Schipper wants you to drive carefully in Brooklyn, while Lisa Kirk and Sarah Baley look for change to the Brooklyn Naval Yard.
Schnabel
What lies between self-expression and postmodern theater? Probably sex, smashed dishes, and broken promises, plus a visit to Soho along with Sandro Chia, Tracey Emin, Julian Schnabel, and Philip Taaffe.
Did Andy Warhol decline from artist into celebrity, or was he asking for it all along? A film by Julian Schnabel—an artist who knew celebrity all too well—make an eerie backdrop for yet more of Warhol's late work.
Schneeman
When women artists play against stereotype, are they getting hysterical? Carolee Schneeman, Zoe Beloff, Nathalie Djurberg, Mika Rottenberg, and Karen Yasinsky improve on Freud's studies in hysteria.
Schnitger
"Cursed be forever the useless dreamer"—but what about the artist? Lara Schnitger and Fred Tomaselli deal in curses, rituals, and dreams, but George Condo knows that phony transgression may prove safer after all.
Schoolwerth
Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Pieter Schoolwerth, Do Ho Suh, Khalif Kelly, and the video artists in "Closer Now" might agree to disagree.
Schutz
How big can art get, and will it then outgrow its own myths? Ron Mueck, Dana Schutz, and Neo Rauch see art as a matter of life and death.
Schwitters
You call this painting? Frank Stella may have given up on paint, but not on the word, while Kurt Schwitters brings to newsprint and collage the texture of an old master.
Scully
Sean Scully and Brice Marden still treat a painting as both an object and a study in studio light. Why, then, does their abstraction cherish the cracks in a wall of light?
Does abstraction really have to stand for painting, as if meanings stood still apart from art and culture? Skip over the decades with Sean Scully, Nell Blaine, Milton Resnick, Anne Truitt, and Simon Lee, and see if the whole idea of abstraction is still standing.
Segal
As a humanist and Jew, George Segal probes art's conscience. Do his body casts only bury it in their whiteness?
Sehgal
Angered by a critic of art as mainstream as Rockefeller Center, Jerry Saltz tells him to make his own damn art. When Tino Sehgal creates performances by others, including the viewer, does he really invite just that?
Seidl
Can one play at once abstract painter, architect, and voyeur? Cordy Ryman, Claire Seidl, David Ersser, and Christoph Morlinghaus can, but somehow using sculpture or photography.
If painting is not dead, has abstraction survived as mere recitation? Jennifer Bartlett, Brice Marden, Clare Seidl, and Suzan Frecon try recitatives, additions, overlays, and a heart of gold.
Serra
Everyone coming to Richard Serra will have that special moment, when the light bulb comes on and for a time everything seems so clear. At his retrospective and a retrospective of Serra drawings, should you trust it?
What does one do with twelve-ton sculpture disguised as Minimalism? When it comes to Richard Serra, take a walk through it and surrender to the difference.
With Minimalism, does art surrender to experience, or does the viewer surrender to the art? With a factory redesign by Robert Irwin, 300,000 square feet, and big shows for Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, Andy Warhol, and many more, Dia:Beacon assumes control.
Serrano
Which opens art most to the masses, Chelsea in September 2008 or Damien Hirst at auction? Either way, it entails a fascination with toilet jokes and Andres Serrano.
Seurat
Can one have Impressionism without the color? In his drawings, Georges Seurat finds luminosity in shades of black.
Did followers of Georges Seurat miss the boat to Modernism? From Paul Signac to Helen Frankenthaler and her Lighthouse series, his independence of color has had a sustained influence.
Shah
If any city were to follow to Ezra's Pound's directions to "make it new," it ought to be New York. Seher Shah, Paul Graham, and Lothar Osterburg still invent their city of dreams.
Shakespeare
If I claim to be a feminist and postmodernist, what am I doing sending a valentine from Romeo and Juliet? I must have been lost in Juliet's words.
D. Shapiro
Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? David Shapiro, Janine Antoni, Amy Bennett, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, Peter Sarkisian, and E. E. Smith put them both to the test.
J. Shapiro
Anish Kapoor likes dark interiors and sweeping curves, Mark di Suvero builds wide-open towers, and Joel Shapiro started small, spare, and evocative. Do any of them deserve the label post-Minimalism?
Not all sculpture looks better as an outdoor monument. How can Joel Shapiro, Roxy Paine, and others in Socrates Sculpture Park or the 2007 "Between the Bridges" look so graceful?
(Note: if you meant Meyer Schapiro, look up.)
Shaw
It takes only a small step to proceed from chaos to mythos. Can that explain "Organizing Chaos," Tunga, and The Donner Party by Jim Shaw?
Sheeler
In 1927, Ford Motor Company welcomed Charles Sheeler. Should a critic still care decades later, when Andrew Moore finds Detroit in decay?
Sheinkman
Sometimes art aspires to a science experiment. With Mark Sheinkman, David Fried, Antony Gormley, Jeppe Hein, and Eileen Quinlan, is it all done with smoke and mirrors?
Postmodernism calls practically everything text, including casual words and creative acts. Can Maureen Conner, Ronald Jones, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Sarkisian, Mark Sheinkman, and others avoid reprint corrections with a hand-made book?
Shepherd
Boys will be boys. But do Joan Mitchell and, in the galleries, Kate Shepherd, Eileen Brady Nelson, and Susan Rothenberg really just indulge in girl talk?
Sherman
Does that photo seem familiar? For Cindy Sherman, call it a self-portrait, a pose, or simply an image to remember.
Untitled Film Stills showed Cindy Sherman as infinitely malleable. How could she or "Fashioning Fiction" find anything left to change?
For a time Cindy Sherman, Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, and Robert Longo shared a Soho gallery. Did they ignite "The Pictures Generation"?
Cindy Sherman exposes Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lucas Samaras keeps exposing himself. Who does that leave for a photograph to discover?
Did Monderism have a choice, and does the Museum of Modern Art now? In "Making Choices: 1920-1960," Cindy Sherman with her shards of an ego, "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor by Frank Stella, and Walker Evans's collision with reality each get to define modern art's first decades of triumph.
Shiota
Is there a thread connecting Chiharu Shiota, Amy Cutler, Cui Fei, and Jonah Groeneboer? Their weave catches added dimensions, female communities, private writing, and the viewer.
Shirreff
When Leo Marx wrote The Machine in the Garden, did he have in mind a camera—or a steam shovel preparing earthworks? Erin Shirreff, Robert Adams, and Justine Kurland find America on the edge between nature and culture.
SHoP
Can art, as Dave Hickey demands, still "civilize us"? The enormous futon that Klaus Biesenbach and Wendall Walker call Volume, manic sculpture from SHoP garden by the name of Dunescape, and "Around 1984" with its look at the 1980s do their best, but Barbara Kruger wittily refuses to try.
Shore and Fisher
Can fall in Chelsea start any sooner? Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher, Jules de Balincourt, Liset Castillo, Dean Monogenis, and others pack the city.
Shotz
When Terry Winters paints his Knotted Graphs, is he doing math or illustrating it? Alyson Shotz, "Measure for Measure, and Winters raise questions about art and mathematics.
Sibony
Can appropriation art still look back? Tom Burr and Gedi Sibony undertake a renovation project for modern art.
Signac
Did followers of Georges Seurat miss the boat to Modernism? From Paul Signac to Helen Frankenthaler and her Lighthouse series, his independence of color has had a sustained influence.
Sigurdardóttir
Can an artist still break through boundaries, with or without a radio signal? Rirkrit Tiravanija, Katrín Sigurdardóttir, and Susan Hamburger give it a try.
Sillman
What happens when abstraction meets the ready-made gesture? Amy Sillman, Skyler Brickley, and Tamar Halpern take painting "Besides, With, Against, and Yet."
Bob Nickas calls his group show "An Ongoing Low-Grade Mystery." Could he be describing, too, the appeal to insiders from Amy Sillman, Reena Spauling, and others near the downtown club scene?
Silver
If art is going to cut through the market's chaos and complicity, it needs a map. Could abstraction from Marjorie Welish, Larry Silver, or the 2008 National Academy Annual supply one?
G. Simmons
When Gary Simmons looks at blackness, he finds degrees of whiteness in need of erasure. Can an artist recover America's past by effacing it?
L. Simmons
Gillian Wearing shows the stages of a woman's life as wrought with guilt, Robin Hill places art in a hospital, and Laurie Simmons moves in with a love doll. How can manufactured bodies suffer anxiety and decay.
Did Laurie Simmons and other artists of the 1980s sell out, get forced out, or aspire to move out all along? "East Village USA" evokes a scene of experiment and entrepreneurship, like a trial run for art today.
Is it just a few years ago that Soho felt like a carnival? I offer a light, off-the-cuff summer 1994 tour, with the most space to Nayland Blake, Michael Heizer, Jenny Holzer, and Laurie Simmons—an artist for whom women are more than living dolls.
When I think of sex, violence, and sheer play, am I talking about childhood or art? "Visions of Childhood" at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center lets Laurie Simmons, Nayland Blake, Lewis Carroll, Nan Goldin, Grace Goldsmith, and others ask just that.
Simon
John F. Simon, Jr., Slater Bradley, and Lucas Samaras remake their image and surrender the copyright. With Macs so expensive and bytes so cheap, what else is a digital artist to do?
Does computer art offer anything at all new, and is anyone buying? After a gallery tour and panel discussion, John F. Simon, Jr., Kirsten Geisler, John Klima, and Mark Napier suggest that old news from art and software can still create strange new bedfellows.
Simpson
Lorna Simpson loves frames—for images, for text, and for American history. Can black experience itself provide the frame?
Sloan
Does realism stand for representational truth, a style and a means of representation, or a period or two in art history? A tour from Giotto and Jan van Eyck to the American Realism of Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, and John Sloan leaves open the puzzles that Bo Bartlett and others are solving today.
Slominski
How long will Chelsea offer a mix of warehouses, idealism, chic, and big money? In late 1999 it at least has room for Postmodernism, laughter, and laser-cut tears, including Andreas Slominski, Gary Hill, Eric Magnuson, Diane Samuels, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.
Smit
Why should one trust a journalist more than an artist, when it comes to events as charged with political and human meaning as 9/11? Guy Richards Smit, Emily Jacir, and others know when to listen, even when the voices get a little crazed.
B. and R. Smith
Art can carry on after 9/11, but can it return to normal? A group show seeks sincerity in "Extreme Existence" while, over in Brooklyn, Bob and Roberta Smith offer an Art Amnesty, and Karen Dolmanisth and Deborah Masters mix ritual and performance.
D. Smith
Instead of the mythic American artist, a retrospective marks David Smith as a sculptor firmly in the tradition of European Surrealism. Can either perspective make him relevant for today?
Was David Smith an Abstract Expressionist or Minimalist? "Cubes and Anarchy" hopes to rescue his late Cubi by setting aside both.
E. E. Smith
Is it painting or photography, staged or observed? E. E. Smith, Gregory Crewdson, Ron Diorio, Anne Hardy, and Sherry Karver all have one guessing.
Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? E. E. Smith, Janine Antoni, Amy Bennett, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, Peter Sarkisian, and David Shapiro put them both to the test.
K. Smith
In a retrospective of Kiki Smith, the work that one sees first contains nothing but air. How does it lead to easily to thoughts of creature comforts, life and death, nature, myth, tradition, and female perception?
M. Smith
Is art devolving into a scary, macho remake of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll? Mike Kelley and Michael Smith take Baby IKKI to Burning Man, "The Horror Show" plays on, and Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman convert a huge gallery into Black-Acid Co-op.
Must art as text always mean the impersonality of Joseph Kosuth? For Mickey Smith it means blood money, for R. Luke DuBois it means American politics, and for David Diao it means a life in painting.
P. Smith
What does a photo album become a lie, and when does it become art? Walker Evans collects postcards, Jem Cohen Polaroids of the city, Patti Smith the veils of Basque country, and Jane Hammond an imaginary tour of Europe.
R. Smith
Can one conceptual artists from bad boys and museums from big-box stores? Face to face with Gelitin and El Anatsui, Roberta Smith wants to know.
Roberta Smith worries about the fate of art "made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand." Can conceptual art and the handmade learn to get along?
Seven years after a massive expansion designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, can a museum—or late Modernism—as institution survive? Roberta Smith revisits MOMA, while the Robert Rauschenberg estate provokes Holland Cotter.
Roberta Smith asks why artists trade up to new galleries, while Edward Winkleman asks why a gallery like his own cuts artists. When Elizabeth Peyton paints American royals, has she figured out what it takes to play insider?
Holland Cotter embraces a museum's claims for Tullio Lombardo as a Renaissance artist, while Roberta Smith criticizes J. M. W. Turner as a flashy expressionist. Does contemporary criticism need art history?
S. Smith
Barkley L. Hendricks mixes academic portraiture, clashing colors, quotes from art history, and African-American identity. Can he and Shinique Smith have it all?
T. Smith
Tony Smith leaves a cigarette butt in Central Park, and sculpture parks reinvigorate New York. Which is more open to the commmunity?
Smithson
When Manhattan Island gets an island of its own, should one call it a site, a nonsite, or gentrification? With the assistance of Nancy Holt, Floating Island makes a provocative addition to a suitably systematic and entropic Robert Smithson retrospective—and a striking contrast to New York earth art by Walter de Maria.
How did art get from nonsites to Web sites? Christina McPhee moderates a discussion of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and new media.
D. Snow
Is art for the dead or the living? A memorial to Dash Snow lacks much sign of his art, Lutz Bacher hides herself and the subject of her tribute, and Maurizio Cattelan refuses even to die.
M. Snow
Try mapping Minimalism, with Anne Truitt and Mary Corse on the coasts, Michael Snow and Kay Rosen in the "central regions." Can a map of a map have firm borders or only light?
Snyder
Do some painters nudge art toward the future, while some shape it? Joan Snyder and Elizabeth Murray may have chosen the first course, even with shaped canvas, but they dare one to overlook the influence of women artists.
Sobel
Did Janet Sobel invent drip painting—or perhaps have it come to her? In her hands, it comes with a whole cast of tiny figures, as well as a fresh look at Abstract Expressionism, primitivism, and a woman's role.
Was Janet Sobel an Abstract Expressionist or a primitive? The 2009 Outsider Art Fair shows how both ideas helped to create outsider art.
Sokal
Should art and Postmodernism keep their hands out of science, and can they? A hoax by Alan Sokal, a physicist, erects a fragile wall between C. P. Snow's two cultures.
Sonnier
What do art and the urban experience have in common, other than real-estate values? Keith Sonnier, "Sprawl," and "In Practice" for 2003 take the issues into a gallery's unsettling interior.
Sontag
Does art still have the power to shock or only to numb the senses? "Into Me / Out of Me," inspired by Susan Sontag on raw experience—along with subsequent shows of "Defamation of Character," "Silicone Valley," and Vic Muniz—can make one overlook the difference.
Doreen McCarthy loves plastics, Lisa Hoke recycles, and "Notes on 'Notes on Camp' " recalls Susan Sontag. For all the theater, can the art object still slip out from within quotes?
Soutine
It takes comparisons to de Kooning to earn Chaim Soutine a retrospective. How many Modernisms are there?
Spaeth
When people talk about art after the end of art, do they mean that conceptual art has outlived the art object? Edward Winkleman, Catherine Spaeth, Carol Diehl, and "The Shallow Curator" make the virtual case against the anti-esthetic.
Spauling
Bob Nickas calls his group show "An Ongoing Low-Grade Mystery." Could he be describing, too, the appeal to insiders from Amy Sillman, Reena Spauling, and others near the downtown club scene?
Spear
For Martha Rosler, Duston Spear, Ardeshir Mohassess, and Yael Bartana, political art after 9/11 conveys urgency, but counts as politics? The answer may differ for those who lived through other wars.
Artists never truly paint like their influences, right? Yet the influence of Abstract Expressionism lingers on, not just with Jules Olitski and the late Neil Welliver, but in younger artists who seem almost to channel them—including Duston Spear, Makoto Fujimura, Ronnie Landfield, Peter Reginato, and Joseph Stashkevetch.
Stanczak
So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Julian Stanczak, Michal Rovner, Diane Samuels, and Jennifer Steinkamp, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.
Starkey
When does a therapy session, street photography, a police investigation, or a true confession become a fiction—or a lie? Hannah Starkey, Andrea Fraser, and Jana Leo seek the truth.
Starn
Which is the true garden community, the suburbs or the city? "The Romantic Garden" follows their origins from Alexander Pope and the picturesque to Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, while Mike and Doug Starn create their own forest overlooking Central Park.
Stashkevetch
Artists never truly paint like their influences, right? Yet the influence of Abstract Expressionism lingers on, not just with Jules Olitski and the late Neil Welliver, but in younger artists who seem almost to channel them—including Joseph Stashkevetch, Makoto Fujimura, Ronnie Landfield, Peter Reginato, and Duston Spear.
Steenwijck
For Harmen Steenwijck, a still-life painting is filled with objects of desire. Is his art a precursor of Modernism and beyond?
Steichen
Alfred Stieglitz had ten years on Edward Steichen and Paul Strand, not to mention pioneering galleries of modern art. Which, though, stood at the center of a new American photography?
Stein
Gertrude and Leo Stein shared a Paris apartment and, with their brother and sister-in-law, a growing flock of artists. When the Steins collect Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, who is teaching whom?
Steinkamp
So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Jennifer Steinkamp, Michal Rovner, Diane Samuels, and Julian Stanczak, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.
With Jennifer Steinkamp, Daniel Canogar, Pipilotti Rist, and Mika Rottenberg, have new media become an obsession? The New York Electronic Arts Fair invades Governor's Island, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster invades Chelsea.
Steir
The Whitney calls a show of abstract art "Remote Viewing: Invented Worlds in Painting and Drawing." With Julie Mehretu and, in the galleries, Pat Steir and Ernst Haas, need one even think of abstract art as painting and drawing?
F. Stella
You call this painting? Frank Stella may have given up on paint, but not on the word, while Kurt Schwitters brings to newsprint and collage the texture of an old master.
Can abstraction survive only by losing its rigor? Frank Stella, Ronnie Landfield, Agnes Martin, Carrie Moyer, and Milton Resnick have one working to tell the difference.
Did Modernism have a choice, and does the Museum of Modern Art now? In "Making Choices: 1920-1960," Cindy Sherman's shards of an ego, "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor by Frank Stella, and Walker Evans's collision with reality each get to define modern art's first decades of triumph.
J. Stella
Nope, not Frank. What happened to Joseph Stella and American Modernism after they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge?
Sternfeld
Where was Joel Sternfeld before "American Prospects"? Where Jill Freedman in the late 1970s finds tabloid New York, his first pictures find color, a more innocent decade, and four other Americas.
Will the High Line preserve an overgrowth of wild flowers and urban history, with sculpture by Sarah Sze, or will it tower over Chelsea as one more dark, utopian vision? Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in association with Field Operations and with photographs by Joel Sternfeld, offer a look down upon the art world.
Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz had ten years on Edward Steichen and Paul Strand, not to mention pioneering galleries of modern art. Which, though, stood at the center of a new American photography?
Did Alfred Stieglitz create Georgia O'Keeffe or just use her? Probably neither one, and with her abstractions O'Keeffe recreated American Modernism and herself.
Who knew that prewar American art had such an explosion of color? Oscar Bluemner starts as an architect and draftsman, only to reinvent himself in New York, exhibit in some heady modern company thanks to Alfred Stieglitz, and die almost forgotten.
Stingel
How can Rudolf Stingel alternate between spareness and glitter, instructions for painting and photorealism, skeptical and sentimental? Call it conceptual Rococo.
Can summer sculpture vanish into carpeting and thin air? Unlike typical summer sculpture, Rudolf Stingel and Janet Cardiff with George Bures Miller take the great outdoors inside.
Stockholder
When the art scene blends into night life, does art become self-indulgence or directed dreaming? Jessica Stockholder, Cao Fei, Jessica Rankin, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, and Salla Tykka each walk the line between light and dark.
Can anything spoil the serenity of the reopened Isamu Noguchi Museum? For summer 2009, sculpture tumbles everywhere thanks to Roxy Paine, Jessica Stockholder, "Between the Bridges," and "State Fair."
Stone
Does painting have critics "Seeing Red"? A survey at Hunter College, influenced by Josef Albers, starts with the psychology of color, but Gregg Stone, Walter Biggs, James Nares, and Nancy Scheinman have something else in mind.
Storr
For Robert Storr, conceptual art embodies the excesses of art-world stardom and childish installations. Olaf Breuning, Dan Fischer, and the African Americans in "30 Seconds off an Inch" point instead to conceptual arts in the plural.
Strand
Alfred Stieglitz had ten years on Edward Steichen and Paul Strand, not to mention pioneering galleries of modern art. Which, though, stood at the center of a new American photography?
Struth
Photographs by Thomas Struth could pass for snapshots of family gatherings, old Europe, a tropical "paradise," or tourists themselves. With such a connoisseur of chaos, should one see the connoisseur or the chaos?
Stubbs
George Stubbs painted portraits, landscapes, dogs, and lions. Why do people know him as a horse painter, and what does that say about the origins of Romanticism?
Suh
Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Do Ho Suh, Khalif Kelly, Pieter Schoolwerth, and the video artists in "Closer Now" might agree to disagree.
Sullivan
Can art have a private language, and what would it sound like? Catherine Sullivan, Anna Craycroft, Rashid Johnson, and Michael Portnoy pursue studies in hysteria.
Art seems to collapse right out from under Catherine Sullivan, James Hopkins, Mike Kelley, Jon Kessler, Diana Kingsley, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, and Daniel Rozin. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?
Sussman
Can video aspire to Old Master painting? Eve Sussman evokes the slippery time and space of Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas, and Bill Viola tries to transcend time through Jacopo da Pontormo, but Pontormo's portraits can take care of themselves.
Must one see Iran and the Old Silk Road through western eyes—or the west through the eyes of others? "Iran Inside Out" manages both, while Eve Sussman rides the transcontinental railroad in search of the space race.
Swartz
Julianne Swartz, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Jane and Louise Wilson are back, Jonathan Cramer channels Jackson Pollock, and Bjorn Melhus changes the channels on Jerry Springer. Is Chelsea truly over the top?
SWOON
Has graffiti art returned to fashion? At an outpost of chic in Soho, Barry McGee and SWOON return to the streets and bring the action indoors.
Sze
Does appropriation, by definition, run in one cultural dimension? Between installation, architecture, and nature, Sarah Sze, Andy Coolquitt, and Michael Mahalchick pile it on thick and thin.
Zaha Hadid gives a brusque welcome to Postmodern architecture, and Sarah Sze and Caroline McCarthy look everywhere at once. Which represents the future of New York City?
Will the High Line preserve an overgrowth of wild flowers and urban history, with sculpture by Sarah Sze, or will it tower over Chelsea as one more dark, utopian vision? Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in association with Field Operations and with photographs by Joel Sternfeld, offer a look down upon the art world.
Taaffe
Philip Taaffe erects totems, John Bauer ghostly architecture, Julian Lethbridge textbook Pollocks, and Jonathan Lasker abstraction as a kind of graphic novel. Has abstract art really gotten over irony?
What lies between self-expression and postmodern theater? Probably sex, smashed dishes, and broken promises, plus a visit to Soho along with Sandro Chia, Tracey Emin, Julian Schnabel, and Philip Taaffe.
Taniguchi
Thanks to Yoshio Taniguchi, MOMA's reopening in Manhattan is breathtaking. But will the rarefied air support a conversation with the work?
Seven years after a massive expansion designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, can a museum—or late Modernism—as institution survive? Roberta Smith revisits MOMA, while the Robert Rauschenberg estate provokes Holland Cotter.
What is the Museum of Modern Art doing back in Manhattan? With "Take Two," it adjusts the large new galleries designed by Yoshio Taniguchi—and adjusts, too, to contemporary art.
Tansey
Is there any art left in Soho? I offer a light, off-the-cuff spring 1997 tour, with the most space to Mark di Suvero, Elizabeth Murray, and Mark Tansey—a painter who has made art into history.
Taylor
When it comes to gun culture, is political art more about the guns or about culture? Sarah Frost creates a ghostly paper arsenal, while Liz Magic Laser, Henry Taylor, and Darren Bader feel your pain.
Taylor-Wood
When artists bring death to the style pages, have they created a fourth-wave feminism? A slippery slope to suicide haunts video by Sue de Beer, paintings by Rachel Howard, and a sell-out by Sam Taylor-Wood.
Sam Taylor-Wood, Julianne Swartz, and Jane and Louise Wilson are back, Jonathan Cramer channels Jackson Pollock, and Bjorn Melhus changes the channels on Jerry Springer. Is Chelsea truly over the top?
British artists—such as Sam Taylor-Wood, Damien Hirst, and Chris Ofili—and New York politicians recycle old scripts, nearly a decade after appropriation art held sway. What accounts for the shock of the not so new, and can a savvy analysis by Hal Foster pin it down?
Does the Chelsea gallery scene know where the bodies are bodied? Sam Taylor-Wood, Wim Delvoye, Tracey Emin, Gary Hill, and Daniel Rozin may not get real, but they do get physical.
Teller
Is there really "The Female Gaze," and what could it look like? Juergen Teller, Janine Antoni, and Alfred Gescheidt parse the elements of desire.
Temple
After ten years of haberarts.com, what have I learned, and have I still not joined the art world? The 2006 Dumbo "Art Under the Bridge" festival, with work by Mary Temple, makes critical judgment harder than ever.
Tetrode
Did Mannerism's virtuosity offer a pale shadow the past, or did it foreshadow the future? For a postmodern art history, Hendrick Goltzius and Willem van Tetrode suggest a Post-Renaissance.
Thek
Is there more to Paul Thek and David Wojnarowicz than abjection? Peter Hujar captures their moments away from the furor.
Therrien
Does size matter, at least when it comes to installations? Robert Therrien brings up to date the distinction between size and scale, while David Altmejd and his angels burst right through gallery walls.
H. W. Thomas
Are "The New Black Heavies" post-post-black? Hank Willis Thomas and Mickalene Thomas make everything uncertain in African American identity but gender.
M. Thomas
Are "The New Black Heavies" post-post-black? Hank Willis Thomas and Mickalene Thomas make everything uncertain in African American identity but gender.
Thornton
"What, then, is time?" Saint Augustine wondered, but for Leslie Thornton, Christian Marclay in The Clock, and Stephen Vitiello, time is on their side.
Thurber
Can critics still judge art, and should they? Raphael Rubinstein points to "A Quiet Crisis in Art," but more critical noise might well drown out some seriously quiet art—including the photographs of Shelburne Thurber, Catherine Opie, and Christoph Morlinghaus.
Thiebaud
Cake after cake, Wayne Thiebaud slathers on the icing. Does that count as Pop Art or realism, and which looks more conservative after all?
D. Tiepolo
What happened when Rococo collided with Enlightenment and revolution? Domenico Tiepolo turned to the New Testament, while Jean Honoré Fragonard literally got drawing off the ground.
G. Tiepolo
Top galleries love those elegant centuries that the public rarely notices. Or could the Venice of Giambattista Tiepolo stand for art now?
Tiravanija
Can an artist still break through boundaries, with or without a radio signal? Rirkrit Tiravanija, Katrín Sigurdardóttir, and Susan Hamburger give it a try.
How did participatory art and "relational esthetics" become installations by celebrity artists? Rirkrit Tiravanija, Douglas Gordon, and "theanyspacewhatever" take over the Guggenheim.
Titian
Could Renaissance art history lie off the beaten path, with a forgotten sculptor and a town in northern Italy? Antico rediscovers antiquity, while Bergamo holds painting by Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Lorenzo Lotto.
Toguo
Can art about Africa engage politics rather than the primitive? "Négritude" sees a hybrid, global culture in Modernism, and Bathélémy Toguo bears its burdens.
Tolle
Can art find common ground for grieving? A path lies from Ground Zero to the Irish Hunger Memorial by Brian Tolle and the twentieth anniversary of sculpture "Between the Bridges."
Tomaselli
"Cursed be forever the useless dreamer"—but what about the artist? Fred Tomaselli and Lara Schnitger deal in curses, rituals, and dreams, but George Condo knows that phony transgression may prove safer after all.
Tomme
Can Jason Tomme, Scott Lyall, and "American ReConstruction" find a space between painting, prints, models, and abstraction? Sara VanDerBeek reminds new and old media "To Think of Time."
Tooker
How can political art look so otherworldly? George Tooker brings magic realism back from the dead.
Trecartin
With museum shows of artists entering their thirties, has art found a new generation? Ryan Trecartin, Cory Arcangel, and Laurel Nakadate live between video games and the eternal present.
Truitt
Try mapping Minimalism, with Anne Truitt and Mary Corse on the coasts, Michael Snow and Kay Rosen in the "central regions." Can a map of a map have firm borders or only light?
Does abstraction really have to stand for painting, as if meanings stood still apart from art and culture? Skip over the decades with Anne Truitt, Nell Blaine, Milton Resnick, Sean Scully, and Simon Lee, and see if the whole idea of abstraction is still standing.
Tsao, Tunick, and Turville
When black, white, and color become so visible that one wants to reach out and touch, can one still call it visionary? Richard Tsao, Petah Coyne, and Robert Ryman move beyond debates over formalism and illusion to metaphor, geometry, and goo.
Do Chelsea's once idealistic galleries now form a business district—or a theater district? Michael Fried argued that "theatricality" precedes and follows modern art, and he could have been arguing with me as I checked out such artists as Richard Tsao, castaneda/reiman, Deborah Turville, and Scott Tunick.
Tunga
It takes only a small step to proceed from chaos to mythos. Can that explain "Organizing Chaos," Tunga, and Jim Shaw's The Donner Party?
Turner
Was J. M. W. Turner the first action painter? His Romanticism made observing itself an extreme sport.
Holland Cotter embraces a museum's claims for Tullio Lombardo as a Renaissance artist, while Roberta Smith criticizes J. M. W. Turner as a flashy expressionist. Does contemporary criticism need art history?
Turrell
Was Minimalism all along about familiar objects or perception? James Turrell, David Novros, and "Aspects, Forms, and Figures" all have one asking.
Art cries out for a great alternative space, but as alternative to what? I find out with the merger of P.S. to become "The Museum of Modern Art at P.S. 1," still with its permanent installation of James Turrell.
Tuttle
You call this Minimalism? Maybe not, when Richard Tuttle shows how to lighten up.
Tuymans
As plans for culture at Ground Zero stagnate, can political art respond? The backlash definitely is setting in, with exhibitions of the key architects, plus Luc Tuymans, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Sam Durant.
Twombly
What happens when the avant-garde becomes a school? With Cy Twombly, the finest paintings even look like a blackboard, but their only message is a scrawl.
Tykka
When the art scene blends into night life, does art become self-indulgence or directed dreaming? Salla Tykka, Cao Fei, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Jessica Rankin, and Jessica Stockholder each walk the line between light and dark.
Ufan
Are east and west only a stone's throw away? Lee Ufan bridges Minimalism and the garden, while Stefana McClure and Idris Khan mix Minimalism, polish, and text.
