Petrit Halilaj works from memories of his time in a refugee camp during the Kosovo War, when the sight of birds and thought of migration gave him hope.
Debra Brehmer
Debra Brehmer is a writer and art historian who runs a contemporary gallery called Portrait Society in Milwaukee, WI. She is especially interested in how portraits convey meaning.
50 Paintings Invites Viewers to Think Like an Artist
With its hands-off approach, the Milwaukee Art Museum’s survey is a reprieve — an intimate place to wallow in mark-making.
Remedios Varo in a Sphere of Her Own
Varo’s paintings beckon us to plunge into their vaporous worlds while challenging us to decode intricate scenarios.
What Today’s Museums Can Learn From Van Gogh
Van Gogh and his cohorts were actively searching for new means to translate modern culture. Why aren’t we taking risks?
Against an Art World That Excludes Mothers
Hettie Judah’s important book examines the current climate of discrimination against parents who are also artists.
Anatomy of a Disputed Emancipation Monument
The Chazen Museum of Art in Wisconsin didn’t quite know what to do with a controversial emancipation statue of Abraham Lincoln in its collection until Sanford Biggers stepped in with an idea.
For William Kentridge, Art and Life Animate One Another
In an exhibition that consists of mostly small-scale black and white works on paper, viewer engagement almost magically awakens the sleepy room.
The Joyous Kitsch and Lingering Simmer of Nick Cave’s Art
With explosions of color and materiality, Cave has his own enigmatic ways to funnel the funk through histories of adversity.
A Barbara Kruger Retrospective Mixes Capitalism and its Critique
Kruger never seemed to mind that the very world she critiqued co-opted her style and spit it back into advertising.
Adventure and Spirituality Collide in Joseph E. Yoakum’s Visionary Art
Yoakum had said repeatedly that the drawings were “spiritual unfoldments,” meaning that faith guided his patterns and passages.
The Triumphant Tangles of Christina Quarles’s Canvases
In Quarles’s paintings, boundaries dissolve as the artist grinds up the fixed binaries of Black/white or male/female.
Alice Neel’s Haunting Portrait of Domestic Abuse
Alice Neel: People Come First yielded a work I had never seen and that I will never unsee.