Rachel Schragis, Artist and Activist, Part I

by Avram Finkelstein, December 2011. Thursday, December 5, 2011. 9am. Part I of our conversation with Rachel Schragis, in which she discusses her work with Occupy Wall St., the developments of her practice leading up to her activism and the struggles of negotiating an artistic career with wider political concerns. Audio + transcript below. Artwrit: I’m talking…

Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe at the Met

by Michael Pepi, December 2011 One of Marius de Zayas’ charcoal portraits of Alfred Stieglitz hanging in Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art carries the subtitle “L’accoucher d’idées (The Midwife to Ideas).” The subtitle is a fitting description for Stieglitz, who, in addition to his groundbreaking work as photographer, was…

Jose Sanint at Salomon Arts Gallery

by India Nicholas, December 2011 Jose Sanint is not an artist. Or, at least, he doesn’t think of himself as one. That remains off his resume. He prefers to be called a creator. The young Colombian, a former Bogota-based architect, celebrated his debut collection of tapestries, Through the Silence, on November 16 at the Salomon Arts…

The Mask & The Mirror at Leila Heller

by Sarah Hassan, December 2011 The faces of artists stare out from their self-portraits on the walls of the newly-opened Leila Heller Gallery in Chelsea, inviting a game of “Guess Who?” as the viewer takes in The Mask and the Mirror, a group show curated by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat. Neshat, known for her video installations…

MONODROME: Third Athens Biennale

by Stephanie Bailey, December 2011 To get a feeling of Athens today, walk from the Monastiraki meat market to Plateia Theatrou to Diplareios, an art and design school in the historic center of Athens: the main building used for the third Athens Biennale, MONODROME (October 23 – December 11, 2011). In this short walk from…

Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim

by Carla Sakamoto, December 2011 The dramatic spiral of the Guggenheim museum in New York is currently the home of what looks like a grand scale version of an infant’s toy mobile, but with approximately 130 life-sized art pieces dangling perilously yet harmoniously over viewers’ heads. This body of work, starting from 1989, represents the…