By ARTHUR WHITMAN Even though Stop. Look. Listen. represents the culmination of a half-decade’s worth of dedicated video-collecting at the Johnson, it has the feel of something out of the blue. Moving images fill most of the modest museum’s temporary…
If you are a regular art-blog reader, you are probably already aware of the ever-expanding response to Peter Plagens’ roundtable discussion in the new Art In America with (and about) some of the most prominent art bloggers. Based on the…
By ARTHUR WHITMAN To those well-versed in contemporary art, the selection of work in “Recent Acquisitions” is likely to have a wearisome familiarity. Many or perhaps most of the artists will be familiar. Most of the art seems to fall…
By ARTHUR WHITMAN Currently up at the DeCordova, Big Bang! Abstract Painting For The 21st Century, surveys the current state of the venerable genre. The best work in the show feels classic but not pedantically backward-looking, mindful of history while…
By ARTHUR WHITMAN Drawings and “works on paper” are popular these days, not simply as a medium, but also as an artistic, and perhaps more significantly, a curatorial theme. For example, in the winter of 2002 and 2003, the Museum…
By ARTHUR WHITMAN Among the many paradoxes that pervade Gerry Bergstein’s life and art (and these interpenetrate in myriad ways), perhaps the most central is that of his status in the world of art. He is at once a classic…
By ARTHUR WHITMAN The main problem with the 2006 DeCordova Annual Exhibition, aside from its predictable unevenness, is that the work within doesn’t interrelate very well. Each of the thirteen artists selected (counting a two artist team) presents a body…