Art
A Tribute to Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007)
We who have loved Elizabeth are blessed to have had this time, the last two and a half years since her horrifying diagnosis—to be able to show her how much we loved her and to say goodbye.
Documenta On The Ropes
By Kim LevinThe gods weren’t smiling. Two weeks after the opening of Documenta 12, Sanja Ivekovic’s poppy field in front of the Friedricianum had exactly one crimson bloom. Sakarin Krue-On’s terraced rice paddy beneath Schloss Wilhemshohe had been washed away by a rainstorm—all 7000 square meters of it, along with its reference to Beuys’ 7000 oak saplings.
In Conversation
Jack Whitten with Robert Storr
On the occasion of Jack Whitten’s two exhibits, at P.S.1 (from now until September 24th) and at Alexander Gray Associates (from September 13th to October 20th), Rail Consulting Editor Robert Storr spoke to the artist about his life and work.
In Conversation
Jay Bernstein with Joan Waltemath
Jay Bernstein is Chair and University Distinguished Professor in Philosophy at The New School for Social Research. He received his BA in 1970 from Trinity College in Religion and his PhD in 1975 from the University of Edinburgh.
Macy’s Jamaica (1947): An Unsung Modernist Masterwork In Queens by Joseph Masheck
By Joseph MasheckMy interest in abstract art developed out of an interest in modern architecture that began with the very early experience of a particular building, an experience that was repeated while I was still a child, and has retained vivid reverberations for a good sixty years.
Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years
By Anne ByrdIn conversation a few years ago, Richard Serra and the art historian Hal Foster spoke about the psychological effect of the sculpture that Serra had been making since the first torqued ellipses.
In Conversation
Shigeko Kubota with Phong Bui
In the midst of the preparation for her new exhibit, My Life with Nam June Paik: Video Sculpture and Installation, at Maya Stendhal Gallery (Sept. 6–Oct. 27), Shigeko Kubota welcomes Rail Publisher Phong Bui to her loft/studio (one of the lengendary George Maciunas buildings in SoHo) to talk about her life and work.
TRACKS: Sultana’s Dream and the SAWCC
By Maxwell HellerThe South Asian Women’s Creative Collective celebrates ten years of artistic and intellectual work with Sultana’s Dream, an Exit Art exhibition that epitomizes the group’s aesthetic accomplishments and its strength as a collaborative community.
THE SEVENTIES
By Deborah KassThe years I attended high school from 1967 to 1970 were some of the most intellectually, politically and aesthetically charged in post-war history. The rapid change in social consciousness was not lost on a teenager with an interest in the world outside her provincial suburb.
TRACKS: Peter Young: An Unlikely Artist
By Ben La RoccoIn the deeper recesses of my psyche, I preserve the ideal of the artist as a perennial radical—someone consistently at odds with convention in life and art, whose unorthodox choices often incite awe and bewilderment. I realize that characterizing artists as improvisational spirits is stereotypical and even a little juvenile. I understand the maturity and discipline it takes to stick with the arts beyond one’s early years and how the accompanying self-deprivation can curtail many avenues of expression that one might otherwise be inclined to explore.
In Conversation
Xu Bing with Ellen Pearlman
Xu Bing is one of the most important expatriate Chinese avant-garde artists. Winner of a 1999 MacArthur (“genius”) Fellowship for A Book From the Sky, which consisted of thousands of characters from an invented language printed on scrolls from hand-carved woodblocks, in 2003 he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture and in 2004, he received the first Wales International Visual Art Prize, Artes Mundi, for Where Does the Dust Collect Itself, an installation incorporating dust collected from Ground Zero.
