"Loftiness against Impersonality" Slawomir Marzec The gallery BWA Lublin presents (February 2003) the exhibition that can be challenging at the moment, especially for the younger generation–it shows painting treated with an unusual seriousness. It is large retrospective of Ryszard Lis (1935—97), one of the most interesting–but still not sufficiently recognized–Polish painter. It is possible to […]

Magritte Show Nina Zivancevic It is rather boring to repeat oneself or to repeat other people’s interests and comments. It is equally uninteresting to get always and exclusively involved with the tradition in art; however, when the whole town talks about a show it is impossible not to get involved in a discussion. Partly also […]

UNREASONABLE ENGAGEMENTS. Perry McPartland At its high water mark of acceptance and supererogation, some marks of malaise seems to occur within the reigning cultural form. In its unchallenged authority, now stabilized and institutionalized, the rude vitality which originally fired it appears spent. Its forms cease to pulse and act merely as promulgation for their sponsoring […]

Nina and Torsten Roemer–Infinite Justice David Riff and Viktor Kirchmeyer After September 11th, once the dust cloud over Lower Manhattan had settled, the Bush administration’s paralyses gave way to a firm resolve: the Pentagon immediately began to draft plans for a military response, which it dubbed "Infinite Justice". This initial name was soon replaced by […]

The Light and the Eye Tony Zaza Had it not been for Sidney Janis, there would be no film culture to speak of. At the dawn of the 1960s, Janis, one of a seminal group of extremely influential New York gallery owners that included Leo Castelli, Andre Emmerich , and Tibor De Nagy, determined that […]

THE CREMASTER CYCLE The Ancient Greeks had a  word for it, schmaltz, (that’s loosely translated from the vulgate). Indeed, after a cursory viewing of The Cremaster Cycle mounted at the Guggenheim Museum, one is supremely aware of the debt Matthew Barney owes to the Greeks, as well as, to the Romans of Antiquity, 1960’s underground […]

Phalanges Aaron Birk "PHALANGES," an exhibition of small works by seventeen artists, opened on February 13th in twin gallery spaces at lower Manhattan’s center of chic commerce. Not thirty-six hours before the greatest single day of protest in global history, ravenous twenty-something hipsters drained Sapporo beer and popped cheese cubes among the wartime collections of […]

Beyond Media Piri Halasz The notion that painting may be going the way of the dodo finds some substantiation in the latest positions listings booklet of the College Art Association. It had fifty-five openings for "artists," but only twelve of them were for painters, drawing teachers, or artists who could teach both painting and drawing. […]

Gerrymandering John Perreault Some films are intended as movies and others are intended as art. Clear cinema categories come to mind: experimental films, art films (once synonymous or overlapping with foreign films), midnight films, underground films, cult films and mass-market movies. Art may occur in any of these categories. The divisions are more about market […]

First Steps Emerging Artists from Japan at P.S. 1 P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents First Steps: Emerging Artists from Japan, a biennial exhibition established in 1995 by Philip Morris K.K., the Japanese subsidiary of Philip Morris International Inc., as a vehicle for discovering and supporting emerging Japanese artists and introducing them to the international art […]