Review Roundup

Action/Abstraction at the Jewish Museum (-Sept. 21)

"...more a perambulatory essay than an art exhibition... Something epochal is afoot: a dovetailing of raw personal emotion and disinterested aesthetic experiment, Dionysus and Apollo. Those opposed qualities became the magnetic poles of Abstract Expressionism (which was named in 1946 by the New Yorker art critic Robert Coates) and also the virtual battle stations of the movement’s great, mutually hostile critics, Harold Rosenberg (1906-78), who interpreted the new art rather exclusively in terms of existential drama, and Clement Greenberg (1909-94), who exalted formal invention as an end in itself. ... The result suggests, to me, the pleasant conceit of considering Rosenberg and Greenberg themselves as types of Abstract Expressionists, in discursive prose: Rosenberg lyrically impulsive, like de Kooning; and Greenberg as starkly decisive as Newman. Both aspired, à la Pollock, to perfect unconventional modes of argument that would knock any would-be antagonist cold." -Peter Schjeldahl/New Yorker


Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy at the Met (-Sept. 1)

"It's too bad that Philippe de Montebello's successor couldn't have been in place by now. Then PdM's record for excellence wouldn't have been marred by his Director's Forward for the catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum's Superheroes show, opening Wednesday. ... Its inept attempt to impart the weight of intellectual seriousness to thin air casts the much maligned Star Wars (organized by Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and seen in 2002 at the Brooklyn Museum) in a more favorable light." - Lee Rosenbaum/CultureGrrl

"...perhaps it was those Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman statues perched atop the information desk, as poorly realized as the bronze Rocky Balboa that keeps turning up at the Philadelphia Museum like a bad penny. Whatever, this show of haute couture celebrating superhero comics, which should be fun and perhaps even inspiring, is in fact enervating and rather pointless. ...the antithesis of sexy..." - R.C. Baker/Village Voice


Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim (-May 28)

"...made from the oldest contemporary art-making formulas in the book. The general aesthetic philosophy behind much of his work falls under the 'multiples look good, particularly in larger scale' means of problem solving. ...too-easily reduced to an aesthetic reliant on the inevitable beauty found within destructive forces. With the exception of a breathtaking shipwreck sunk in broken dishes on the top floor, the exhibition never escapes the predictability of its own formulaic processes." - Paddy Johnson/Art Fag City


Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum (-July 13)

"Is there anyone who doesn't like his work? Or doesn't like to loathe its shallowness?" - Régine Debatty/We Make Money Not Art


George Lois: The Esquire Covers at the MoMA (-March 31, 2009)

"With an adman's brazenness, Lois transported the magazine cover beyond Norman Rockwell's small towns and Time's head-shot formality to something that snagged the eye and flummoxed the brain." - R.C. Baker/Village Voice


Nan Golden at the Tate Modern

"In many ways, [Patrick] Wolf's input actually freshened up some work which has become slightly over-familiar, and gave extra emotional heft to shots that no longer seem so shocking or transgressive (though Goldin defiantly kept in the picture of two young girls that caused huge controversy last year)." - Alex Needham/Guardian