Author: Arden McKenna
In a new book, art historian Jack Hartnell reconsiders the gruesome image as “one of the period’s most sophisticated repositories of medical hope.” Even safely contained on the page, the Wound Man is deeply unnerving. The many versions of the image produced between the late Medieval and early modern periods vary, but they all depict a nude (or mostly nude) man riddled with weapons, everyday injuries, and signs of disease. Between the blunt trauma to his head and the buboes at his groin, the Wound Man’s prognosis doesn’t look good. And yet, the figure appears indifferent. Some Wound Men meet our…
For anyone interested in poetry (not the same as verse); underknown art and artists; the artists and poets of the New York School after the death of Franz Kline and Frank O’Hara; collaboration; collage; a do-it-yourself spirit; the Lower East Side (particularly from the late 1960s until the late ’80 For anyone interested in poetry (not the same as verse); underknown art and artists; the artists and poets of the New York School after the death of Franz Kline and Frank O’Hara (in 1962 and ’66, respectively); collaboration; collage; a do it yourself spirit; the Lower East Side (particularly from…
An exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum includes works by Tewa Pueblo artists, helping dispel the problematic “O’Keeffe Country” narrative. SANTA FE During a recent tour of Georgia O’Keeffe’s house in Abiquiu, New Mexico, I looked out a window and recognized the view of the highway snaking up the mesa toward Española. I felt a little uneasy when I realized that my familiarity came primarily from the artist’s paintings of the landscape. O’Keeffe’s renderings of Northern New Mexico which do not include Tewa people or culture and the lore of her independent settler spirit are ingrained in the history of Western Modernism, and…
OASIS OF ART. Located near the cracked, dried remnants of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, the I.V. Savitsky State Art Museum (aka the Nukus Museum) in Nukus is a hidden treasure. As the Art Newspaper reports, it houses nearly 100,000 works from the mid-20th century, spanning canvases, etchings, and sketches of rural life, alongside regional folk art and textiles. In 2025, the museum has gained unprecedented attention. A few years ago it made the headlines for a scandalous leadership feud after one of its directors accused the culture ministry of advertising her job behind her back, but after exhibitions in Florence and Venice in 2024, the…
Former studio assistants for Tom Sachs have alleged that the workplace environment created by the artist was “destabilizing and scary,” Curbed reported in an exposé published on Monday. Curbed said that it spoke with over a dozen former employees, almost all of whom requested anonymity due to nondisclosure agreements or fear of retaliation. The former assistants alleged that Sachs threw objects or screamed at employees, labeled a storage room “the rape room” (and then later changed it to “the consent room”), dispensed gifts of different values to, in Curbed‘s words, “demonstrate one’s standing” in the studio, and routinely made comments about employees’ appearance and sex life.…