Artblog | performance art

July 19, 2019 by Beth Heinly

Ask Artblog’s Beth Heinly responds to a question about millennial burn out and its relation to social media and endurance performance.

July 1, 2019 by Matt Singer

‘Phantom Frequencies’ at Wheaton Art Center, Martha McDonald and Laura Baird’s Victorian parlor piece

Matt Singer visits Wheaton Arts to experience an enchanting musical and artistic performance, “Phantom Frequencies” by collaborators Martha McDonald and Laura Baird.

April 11, 2019 by Andrea Kirsh

Artists united by opposition in ‘Artists Respond, American Artists and the Vietnam War 1965-1975’ at Smithsonian American Art Museum

Andrea Kirsh reviews “Artists Respond: American Artists and the Vietnam War 1965-1975” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on view from March 15, 2019 – August 18, 2019.

June 27, 2018 by Andrea Kirsh

Books on powerful art by African American women, part 2

For part 2 of Andrea Kirsh’s new catalog roundup featuring African American women artists, she looks at “Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush,” from the painter’s 10-year retrospective at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of art, as well as at the double-volume publication that resulted from last year’s blockbuster “We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-1985” at the Brooklyn Museum. Kirsh reflects on generational shifts and on all the work yet to be done.

December 6, 2017 by Andrea Kirsh

Books for the Holidays 2017 Part 1

Andrea reports on four books you might consider getting for the bibliophile/art-loving person in your life. Two of the books, one on painter Alice Neel, and one on photographer Richard Avedon, are well-designed and richly illustrated exhibition catalogs of recent exhibitions; one, also a show catalog, well-organized and attractive, with a Barkley Hendricks image on the cover, aggregates scholarship and imagery of art made by African Americans in the Black Power era (1960s-70s); and one is an extremely alluring and seductive design anthology of African design — interior, architecture, household furnishings, fashion — that will have you running to the Internet to make immediate purchases! Read on.

December 1, 2017 by Catherine Rush

Serendipitous Organization, Jim Strong reflects on Human Festival 01 and anti-curatorial curation

Catherine Rush attends Human Fest 01 at the Icebox and interviews its creator, and budding performance impresario, Jim Strong. Though the events he improvises often playfully defy description, Strong, who also paints and makes musical instruments, has built a solid reputation as a connector of people through his unwavering commitment to openness and generosity.

August 27, 2017 by Andrea Kirsh

Two books on American Art from the 1950s to the Present

Andrea reviews two recently published books about art made in America over the last 70 years, and shares with us her short list of books she’s eagerly awaiting to be published. The first book she reviews analyzes and debunks common misperceptions about the work of artists from the American Indian Movement. The second book chronicles the many artists living in New York City after the Abstract Expressionist movement, which is the product of a traveling art exhibition first seen at Grey Art Gallery. Though Andrea says, this book “is valuable as considerably more than a catalog to an exhibition.”

May 29, 2017 by Andrea Kirsh

Collecting the ephemeral, performance art in the museum, Part 2

In the second part of a two-part series, Andrea reviews two books that tackle the status of performance art in the museum. Intended to be ephemeral, fleeting, time-bound, how does performance art fit in museum collection, which are by their very nature static?