Posts Tagged ‘art’

James Baldwin at David Zwirner

I worked with Hilton Als on a James Baldwin show; now Als has curated an exhibit about him

The cultural destruction of war in the Middle East

My beloved Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo may not be a total loss but much is elsewhere

Portraits of African elites in India 500 years ago

Who knew Africans ruled parts of India, including Bengal, centuries ago?


The Jeff Koons show at the Whitney is a failure

This exhibit will not change any minds about Koons so what was the point of mounting it?

On the Mario Testino exhibit in Buenos Aires

In Mario Testino’s work everyone always looks like they’re having fun

Dennis Hlynsky starlings video

Flying things as you have never seen them before

Tracing the patterns of birds and bugs results in something very cool and almost abstract


My favorite museum in Cairo damaged by a car bomb

Terror attack on Egyptian police HQ badly damages the Museum of Islamic Art, an overlooked marvel

Shooting an elephant at MoMA

Douglas Gordon’s “Play Dead; Real Time” is terrific, even the way MoMA has installed it

Why James Turrell is perfect for the Guggenheim

Turrell turns Wright’s building — already a work of art — into a new and different work of art


My exhibit at the Hermès gallery in Bombay

The response was even better than I could have hoped at Bombay’s first-ever photography festival

An upcoming exhibit of my photographs in Mumbai, India

Prints and an unusual still/motion projection about how urban space around the world is inhabited

On viewing the Tatzu Nishi Columbus Circle project

Tatzu Nishi inverts Surrealism and makes you see a public landmark as if for the first time


Latest in the battle over the Mohamed Mahmoud mural

The New York Times blog The Lede picks up the battle over street art in Cairo

The amazing mural on Mohamed Mahmoud that was just painted over

What a loss for Cairo, artistically as much as politically

Christian Marclay’s The Clock and the essence of film

The most powerful exploration since Sergei Eisenstein of the way in which edits create meaning


Art = money, surprise!

The Barnes Foundation and a Gerhard Richter show make an old point about art and money in a new way

Cultures of Independence, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2007

A scrap book, of sorts, of a cool, modernizing Cambodia in the 1960s that few realize ever existed

Retna graf going up on the Deitch wall

It’s slow work but the graffiti artist Retna is dancing on the sidewalk along Houston St


Did the Renaissance invent individuality in portraiture?

Andrew Butterfield says yes; the Fayum portraits suggest no

Weegee: self-promotion is his business

An exhibit at the ICP shows Weegee’s New York was gritty in the most unreal possible way

Ahmed Basiony and the cost of revolution

The protesters in Tahrir Square preached non-violence, but the Mubarak regime did not


One year on in Egypt: Art, Politics and Power

The Egyptian revolution happened in the middle of my Egypt novel and I didn’t know what to do about it

Beirut Art Center at the New Museum in New York

Lebanese artists address how art is changed or destroyed by its display

Photographer Martin Klimas and the color of sound

Marrying Abstract Expressionism to every heavy metal kid’s discovery that speakers produce air waves