Haber's Art Reviews: Browse by Artist (C-D)

Pick from More Artists

John Haber
in New York City

Cabeza de Baca

Can a Caribbean or Mexican American artist cross the border? Esteban Cabeza de Baca feels the desert heat in Chelsea and Teresita Fernández a tropical storm, while Austin Martin White and Kathia St. Hilaire feel the rubber burning.

Cadmus

In New York, Edward Hopper found "the American city that I know best and like most," but which New York? His city in transition thrives on the possibilities, while New York for Paul Cadmus is home to old masters, male bodies and sex.

Caesar

Are women photographers better off posing or hiding? The subjects of Irene Caesar, Uta Barth, and Rachel Hovnanian include themselves, dolls, empty space, and even me.

Cage

John Cage literally took chances, with both his music and his tastes in art. Is "Rolywholyover a Circus" a fittingly postmodern memorial?

Cagnacci

So which will it be, the word of god in the study or the desert? For Joos van Cleve and Fra Angelico at Princeton, Saint Jerome could embody neither or both, while Guido Cagnacci takes even repentence to excess.

Cai

As Thomas Krens departs the Guggenheim, he leaves behind Cai Guo-Qiang, some fireworks, and an auto wreck. Which most resembles a Cultural Revolution?

What happened to the Guggenheim Museum's collection? Cai Guo-Qiang, Paul Chan, Jenny Holzer, Julie Mehretu, Richard Prince, and Carrie Mae Weems are granted "Artistic License" to find out, but the Whitney's collection looks downright new as well.

In 2006, Nancy Rubins, Cai Guo-Qiang, and "Between the Bridges" join an almost empty landscape for summer sculpture. Is the promise of lower Manhattan culture fading?

Caillebotte

Are museum blockbusters to blame for high museum prices? Tyler Green thinks so, but Gustave Caillebotte makes one wonder about the appeal of big shows and about art on the cheap.

When change came to painting and to Paris, were the department stores there first? Berthe Morisot takes out her best dress and her art, Gustave Caillebotte and Pierre-Auguste Renoir their umbrellas, and Edouard Manet and Claude Monet their brush for "Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity."

Cain

Has abstraction maxed out? Sarah Cain, Reed Danziger, Joanne Greenbaum, Gary Petersen, David Rhodes, and Ryan Wallace make room for excess.

Calame

The Whitney calls a show of abstract art "Remote Viewing: Invented Worlds in Painting and Drawing." With Julie Mehretu and, in the galleries, Ingrid Calame, and Jean-Paul Riopelle need one even think of abstract art as painting and drawing?

Caland

Do some women just refuse to shut up? "Born in Flames" opens with a torrent of words in search of a feminist future, but Shigeko Kubota found her voice in video and rushing waters, while Huguette Caland kept her silence in abstraction with awareness of a woman's body.

Calder

After Paris and Abstract Expressionism, can modern sculpture sit still? Alexander Calder has his mobiles and a return to normalcy after a pandemic as well.

As wealthy galleries like Pace rise higher and higher and higher, Andrew Ohanesian puts a long-time survivor up for rent. Can Alexander Calder in the very first Chelsea multiplex keep his balance?

How did Alexander Calder get from the whimsey of his Circus to the abstract sculpture at Storm King Art Center? His Paris years show him deciding between the noble savage and the savage sophisticate.

Calel

Has conceptual art made sculpture a thing of the past? Edgar Calel, Tania Pérez Córdova, Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik, R. I. P. Germain, and Claudia Pagès bring earth and a sense of the neighborhood to Queens.

Calle

Sophie Calle makes her most intimate thoughts and embarrassing details a matter of public record. But is she giving anything away?

Cameron

What makes photography realism—and what makes it fine art? In the 1860s, Julia Margaret Cameron treats portrait photography as theater, while Charles Marville documents the creation of the city of lights.

Cameron-Weir

John Dante Bianchi and Monika Zarzeczna make abstract art, Elizabeth Jaeger and Bruce M. Sherman ceramics, Lee Relvas wood craft, and Elaine Cameron-Weir lab equipment. So who do they all appear to fragment or to extend human flesh?

Campbell

Can one construct the life of an artist from three screens and an empty living room? Beth Campbell acts the same wherever she goes, while Fred Wilson finds local color in the museum.

Campin

If the Renaissance still casts a long shadow, Robert Campin cast some of the most intricate ones, especially in his great altarpiece at the Cloisters. Is it still meaningful to say that Western art emerged from one man's inspiration?

Could Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Memling have painted just for you? "Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych" shows the private side of the Renaissance.

Campins

Does realism in painting preserve the truth? Alejandro Campins, Bradley McCallum, Melanie Vote, and James White flaunt artifice and death.

Campos-Pons

María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Dineo Seshee Bopape, and Diedrick Brackens have deep African family histories. How does it take them into deep water, darkness, and a blood-red moon?

Campus

Does video art play out in real time or dismantle space and time in editing? For Peter Campus and Gary Hill, all it takes is the camera to disorient its subject and viewer.

Canogar

With Daniel Canogar, Pipilotti Rist, Mika Rottenberg, and Jennifer Steinkamp, have new media become an obsession? The New York Electronic Arts Fair invades Governors Island, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster invades Chelsea.

Is there a formula for art? Daniel Canogar, Katherine Bernhardt, Serena Gidwani Buschi, and Dennis Congdon might have found one—or used some used electronics.

Does art still need galleries after Covid-19? Daniel Canogar shows how digital art can command a physical presence.

Canova

Did European painting start afresh in Mexico City and the United States? For "Painted in Mexico" and Washington for Antonio Canova, an world is dying, and a new world is unable to be born.

Did the Renaissance and Neoclassicism aim for rationality and perfection? With Antonio Canova, David d'Angers, and "Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes" by Andrea Riccio and others, sculpture goes to extremes that anticipate Romanticism and today.

C. Capa

Is "ICP at 50" still open to change? What Cornell Capa founded to promote "concerned" photography also displays a fashion photographer who died of AIDS in David Seidner.

R. Capa

Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson raised a champagne toast to Magnum Photos. So what if they could not agree to call it photojournalism?

Capote

From Havana to Tehran and Angola, do Yoan Capote, Farideh Sakhaeifar, and Jo Ratcliffe fear censorship? They worry more about the people playing along.

Is the personal or political blowing off the Gulf? Yoan Capote, Carlos Amorales, Thornton Dial, and Deborah Luster look past the American South to murder, exile, and community.

How can Africa and the Third World be so achingly, unnervingly beautiful? Yoan Capote, Juan Manuel Echavarría, and Richard Mosse bring home the cost of the refugee crisis and war.

Caravaggio

When Caravaggio murdered and Hercules Segers fell downstairs, did they take responsibility? With late work by one and landscapes by the other, they both bear serious responsibility for the Baroque.

Is there more to the Madonna di Loreto than a scandal? For his pilgrims to a church in Rome, Caravaggio paints angels with dirty feet, much as Pieter Bruegel before him sought the rhythms of a peasant wedding.

Can Caravaggio in Italy lay claim to a painting attributed to Jusepe de Ribera in Spain, and can Cristóbal de Villalpando ascend the heights of cathedral in Mexico? Behold the money.

What was Caravaggio doing at a Dutch painter's four hundredth birthday party? Perhaps he was helping one study Rembrandt prints.

Can you connect the dots all the way from Leonardo to Caravaggio and call it a regional style? With "Painters of Reality," painting in Lombardy turns out to look more eclectic than that innocent title lets on.

When is a public collection a public responsibility? A visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts finds both, including work by Peter Paul Rubens, Frederic Edwin Church, Caravaggio, Pieter Bruegel, Jan van Eyck, and Petrus Christus.

Cardiff and Miller

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller have created the ultimate three-dimensional art form, in sound. So why does their work often seem so one-dimensional?

J. Carey

What good are the arts, and who gets to decide what counts as art? John Carey has a stern answer to the first and an accommodating answer to the second, enough to drive even a relativist to the museum.

P. Carey

Is there more to critics, dealers, catalogs, and "the art world" than fraud and theft? A novel by Peter Carey, an economist, and the owner of a possible Jackson Pollock found in a thrift shop all want to know.

Carnevale

The Met has found a name to go with an architectural fantasy from the Italian Renaissance, Fra Carnevale. Has it also found a new course for painting from Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca?

Carney

Can artists still leave their mark in paint? Andrea Belag, Grace Carney, Adam Pendleton, Michael Reafsnyder, and Chris Watts can with motifs, imagery, and surfaces while Trudy Benson catalogues the result.

Carpeaux

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux sided with the winners, even while demanding freedom for blacks in the French empire. Why did the winners and his passions let him down?

Carrier

While the Brooklyn Museum redirects curators, MoMA lets Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron put perception on a leash. Would David Carrier call this museum democracy?

Carriera

Is art just another show of wealth? "Tudor England" may think so, for all the skill of Hans Holbein the Younger, while Rosalba Carriera and Nicolas Party make the most of Rococo pomposity and piety.

Can a gift renew a museum's purpose or pervert it? The Eveillard gift brings John Singer Sargent and works on paper to the Frick, while the Gregory gift brings the decorative arts and Rosalba Carriera.

Carrington

When artists everywhere have their nightmares, is it still a movement? "Surrealism Beyond Borders," Leonora Carrington, and "Surrealism in Mexico" keep dreaming.

Carroll

For critics of photography, Lewis Carroll has served as everything from moral theater to soft-core porn. So which challenges modernism more, the scantily clad children or the ones all dressed up with only dreams to go?

When I think of sex, violence, and sheer play, am I talking about childhood or art? "Visions of Childhood" at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center lets Lewis Carroll, Nayland Blake, Nan Goldin, Grace Goldsmith, Laurie Simmons, and others ask just that.

Cartier-Bresson

Did Henri Cartier-Bresson make art photography, street photography, fashion photography, or photojournalism? His commitment to plain fact, constant motion, and disorienting experience described modernity.

Did Henri Cartier-Bresson intend to coin "the decisive moment"? Maybe not, but he found it everywhere in the twentieth century, and so did Elliott Erwitt in Pittsburgh.

Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson raised a champagne toast to Magnum Photos. So what if they could not agree to call it photojournalism?

Casebere

James Casebere uses scale models to create the illusion of vast interiors in ruin, and others have piled up intricate arrangements of everything from trash bags to Twinkies. Has the distinction between art and craft vanished, and is it about time?

Had I entered a history museum, a museum of natural history, or the Museum of Arts and Design? "Otherworldly" combines paintings and photographs with dioramas and scale models by James Casebere and others, for contemporary art in miniature.

castaneda/reiman

Do Chelsea's once idealistic galleries now form a business district—or a theater district? Michael Fried argued that "theatricality" precedes and follows modern art, and he could have been arguing with me as I checked out such artists as Richard Tsao, castaneda/reiman, Deborah Turville, and Scott Tunick.

Casteel

Who did more to help the other, Amy Sherald or Michelle Obama? Sherald's stylish official portraits make it hard to know, while John Dowell recalls who in America picked cotton and Jordan Casteel who aspires to African American art.

Castillo

Can fall in Chelsea start any sooner? Liset Castillo, Jules de Balincourt, Dean Monogenis, Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher, and others pack the city.

Castillo Deball

Are they all out to get you? "Everything Is Connected" connects art and conspiracy, while Adelita Husni-Bey, Mariana Castillo Deball, and Mika Rottenberg turn for hope to more ancient myths, maps, theater, Third World workers, and lawyers.

Castoro

As an African American, it took Alma Thomas a lifetime to make color-field painting her own. Did another woman, Rosemarie Castoro, reach Minimalism sooner or leave it behind?

Catlett

Late in life, Jacob Lawrence saw black men as Builders. How did Elizabeth Catlett see the black woman?

Catpc

Can social media turn art into action? "Perpetual Revolution" ditches photography for the latest upload and Catpc for African chocolate.

Cattelan

Will Maurizio Cattelan give up art or "be back soon"? Either way, he and Francis Alÿs turn relational esthetics into toy stores, ego trips, and "slacker art."

Is the Guggenheim's vision gone for good? "Visionaries" looks back to Wassily Kandinsky, Hilla Rebay, and creating a modern Guggenheim, while Maurizio Cattelan brings a tawdrier gold toilet.

Is art for the dead or the living? A memorial to Dash Snow lacks much sign of his art, Lutz Bacher hides herself and the subject of her tribute, and Maurizio Cattelan refuses even to die.

Cave

Who would wear something as confining as a Soundsuit, by Nick Cave? Cave himself tries them on, and he means African American art to speak out from the silence, like the Studio Museum artists in residence in "It's Time for Me to Go."

Cavell

You call that art! Stanley Cavell finds the challenge central to much modern art, but has contemporary art lost its outrage?

Caycedo

Has the Met forgotten "Water Scarcity" and its own "Water Memories"? Native Americans cannot, and the land for Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas has its claims, too.

Celmins

Vija Celmins traffics in enigmatic surfaces close to abstraction, as if divining the future in the ocean and the earth, while Yto Barrada and Bettina find Minimalism and nature on Governors Island. Is it only the illusion of an illusion?

Cendrars

A young Pablo Picasso in Paris and Blaise Cendrars looked to modern art and Montmartre to make it new, but Hannah Gadsby has her doubts when it comes to women. Are we there yet?

Cézanne

Was art for Paul Cézanne only an approach to painting? Cézanne drawings show how he reconciled observation and the art of museums, and I left with my doubts about Cézanne's doubt.

When Pablo Picasso hung a guitar on the wall and called it art, what was it? Like Card Players by Paul Cézanne, it transformed still life into portraiture and back again.

Was his wife sour and inhospitable or, as Meyer Schapiro wrote, the "tender image of esthetic feeling"? Paul Cézanne struggled with making a marriage and making meaning, but soon Egon Schiele used portraits to make peace with the demons who never left.

Did Camille Pissarro teach Paul Cézanne everything he knew? Their decade of closest collaboration takes art from Impressionism to an unpredictable future.

With Tod Williams and Billie Tsien as architects, has the Barnes Foundation sold out or found itself? In Philadelphia now, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and a ton of Pierre-August Renoir are still getting the "hang" of modern art.

Edouard Manet took on a revolution, with The Execution of Maximilian, and "Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde," witnessed one, in his dealings with artists from Paul Cézanne to Pablo Picasso. Why, then, do "Americans in Paris" seem so tame?

Chagall

Marc Chagall painted himself at his easel, alongside another nice Jewish boy, Jesus. Why did a Christian god mean so much to a Jew in love, war, and exile—and why did another in a family from Eastern Europe, Balthus, care so much about children?

Was Modernism a determined movement or movements? With Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, and Kazimir Malevich in Russia or Franz Marc and August Macke in Germany, make that a fatal encounter.

Chaimowicz

Artists can step out of the here and now, but where does that leave them? Zoe Leonard packs her suitcase, while Marc Camille Chaimowicz makes himself at home.

Chalmers

Catherine Chalmers makes colonial art, but of ant colonies. Is it any more bestial than imprints of nature for Ryan Foerster or bears making art for Shuvinai Ashoona?

Chamberlain

John Chamberlain denied associations with a car wreck. Could crushed auto parts nonetheless take him from Abstract Expressionism, to Pop Art, Minimalism, and today?

Set side by side, Willem de Kooning and John Chamberlain look lovely, but what gets left out? Perhaps Modernism knew something about omissions (and party crashing) all along.

Chan

After five years in Iraq, can art have mere intimations of disaster? Paul Chan, Deborah Brown, Joy Garnett, Lucien Samaha, and Meg Webster reveal the anxious artist.

What happened to the Guggenheim Museum's collection? Paul Chan, Cai Guo-Qiang, Jenny Holzer, Julie Mehretu, Richard Prince, and Carrie Mae Weems are granted "Artistic License" to find out, but the Whitney's collection looks downright new as well.

Chapman

Fire consumed a political statement by Dinos and Jake Chapman, while Sue Coe and group shows like "Bush League" and "The Presidency" went on the warpath. Did any of it make a difference?

For "Sensation" in Brooklyn, British artists and New York politicians recycle old scripts, nearly a decade after appropriation art held sway. With Dinos and Jake Chapman, Chris Ofili, Damien Hirst, Jenny Saville, to name just a few, what accounts for the shock of the not so new, and can a savvy analysis by Hal Foster pin it down?

Chardin

Chardin's quiet, beautiful still lifes and domestic interiors could well stand for the Enlightenment in paint. So why do people always remember Jean-Siméon Chardin as a painter from another era?

Chareau

Before there was a Glass House, there was the Maison de Verre. So why is Pierre Chareau so little known, and what does that say about "The Modern Interior"?

Charlesworth

If Modernism explored the language of art, is it now at a loss for words? Sarah Charlesworth, Thomas Scheibitz, Sadie Benning, and "Itself Not So" move between photography, geometry, and aphasia.

Chartier

Could something as simple as a color chart keep formalism alive—or does it just add another layer of conceptual art? Jaq Chartier, Tauba Auerbach, Kathy Goodell, Harriet Korman, and Catherine Lee turn to dots and dashes for "Ecstatic Alphabets."

Chase-Riboud

Did Georgia O'Keeffe discover abstraction by looking or by doing? Her drawings show an artist doing both, but with a personal connection to what she saw and did, while Alberto Giacometti and Barbara Chase-Riboud meet to reinvent modern sculpture.

Have African American art and abstraction become old friends? Melvin Edwards, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Kianja Strobert, and Sherrill Roland make abstraction a monument to black history.

Chassériau

Théodore Chassériau died young, as "the unknown Romantic," but his short career took in Classicism, a foretaste of academic doldrums, and a hall of mirrors. Who knew?

Did Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Modernism make up a single revolution? Drawings follow Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Chassériau, Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, and revolutionary France, decades before Pierre-Auguste Renoir paints fashion at full length.

Chen

How did the costs of globalization become an art film, with an Asian cast? Chen Chieh-Jen finds loveliness, pride, brutality, and numbingly obvious messages, but also touchingly real faces.

Cheng

For Sarah Morris abstraction is political art, for Elliott Green it has the sweep and majesty of landscape, for Ian Cheng video gaming aspires to myth, and for Maureen Gallace landscape reflects a divided America. Do they come down to the same thing?

Chia

What lies between self-expression and postmodern theater? Probably sex, smashed dishes, and broken promises, plus a visit to Soho along with Sandro Chia, Tracey Emin, Julian Schnabel, and Philip Taaffe.

Chicago

Is it time for women to get up from the dinner party? Judy Chicago adds her city of ladies, while Shahzia Sikander takes to the park to find justice.

How many feminisms does it take to light up Brooklyn? Despite "Global Feminisms," Judy Chicago, and a new Sackler Center for Feminist Art, all too few.

D. Childs

Does architecture still matter? Michael Kimmelman trashes the design of One World Trade Center, by David Childs, but only as an aside in a call for mixed use and public spaces.

M. Childs

Does abstraction still have room for expression and excess? With Mike Childs, Anoka Faruqee, Angelina Gualdoni, Wayne Herpich, and Melissa Meyer, it may even have room for lyricism, cross-hatching, and Op Art.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Christo and Jeanne-Claude open The Gates to New York. Along with tens of thousands, was I exploring the metaphoric fabric of a city, an installation, a landscape, my own childhood, or the shifting status of a work of art?

Chodorow

Why are women are like that anyway, and how long a feminist bibliography can I compile about it? Nancy Chodorow calls mothering a psychological necessity, even as artists challenge each person's identity and a woman's role.

Choi

Now that painting is back from the dead, will New Yorkers go anywhere to see it live? Ayn Choi, Kellyann Burns, Jacqueline Humphries, Rannva Kunoy, and Robert Moskowitz explore the promise of abstraction.

Choumali

Joana Choumali rises at dawn, but not for a moment to herself alone. Can she, Deana Lawson, and Jamel Shabazz find a refuge and a place for black photography in the lives of others?

Christenberry

Did the Great Migration carry African Americans north to freedom? A museum sees instead "A Movement in Every Direction," while William Christenberry and RaMell Ross keep returning to Hale County, Alabama.

Church

For decades Frederic Edwin Church returned to the same valleys, vistas, and volcanoes. Does that really make him closer to Impressionism and Modernism than to his Romantic roots?

Must a museum sell such assets as paintings by Sanford Robinson Gifford and Frederic Edwin Church? The "Best of 2008" collides with a financial crisis.

Cimabue

These days artists and celebrities can become famous for their passing fame. Cimabue got there first, before Giotto, however—or was it Duccio?

Claerbout

Cao Fei and David Claerbout travel from Chinatown to China and from Elvis to Nazi Germany. Is this the digital experience, and can Amie Siegel prove them wrong with film and a black swan?

E. Clark

Has the information age raised the specter of political oppression? Edmund Clark, Chris Dorland, Mark Pauline, and Survival Research Laboratories explore new and old media, pleasure, and terror.

L. Clark

Lygia Clark titled her most extravagant installation A Casa é o Corpo, or the house is the body, in that dangerously dark space that Bill Jenkins has explored as well. Did it take her a lifetime to find her way home?

Was Minimalism quintessentially American? With such artists as Lygia Clark, "Other Primary Structures" builds on a legendary exhibition to see it as global, while "Supports/Surfaces" follows it to France.

M. H. Clark

When artists give stuff away, are they "relating" or placing themselves front and center? Rirkrit Tiravanija and Mary Helena Clark feed our animal appetites.

Clark and Pougnaud

Clark and Pougnaud, Julie Blackmon, Thomas Demand, Benjamin Fink, and Alex Prager make photography at once domestic and fantastic. Can anyone tell what they create, what they stage, what they find, and what they manipulate?

Claude

Academic art may sound sedate, but did Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin have something else in mind? Drawings from them and their time help define an ideal.

When Claude Lorrain painted Battle on a Bridge, could he have had in mind Jewish refugees in World War II? Surely not, but his is among the "Afterlives" of Nazi-looted art.

Claude Master

The Claude Master illuminated tiny manuscripts, and seven contemporary artists might have learned from him. So which is in "Miracles in Miniature" and which is "Small"?

Clemente

When it comes to images of women, can the adolescent male gaze grow up? Francesco Clemente, William Copley, Ivy Haldeman, and John Wesley take women seriously, but not without a smile.

Clements

When does a work on paper become wallpaper? With Dawn Clements, Wei Ja, Claire Pentecost, and Lin Yan, it may well become the wall.

Cleopfil

Why are museums competing as sites for celebrity architecture? With a new home by Brad Cloepfil and an inaugural show, "Second Lives," the Museum of Arts and Design demands its place in the arts.

As part of the redesign of 2 Columbus Circle, Brad Cloepfil has clad the Museum of Arts and Design in terra-cotta and glass that, some say, spell out HE in huge capital letters. What are some of its other features?

Cleves Master

Was a Book of Hours a woman's own personal Hell or a prayer for human warmth? The Master of Catherine of Cleves illuminates the early Renaissance.

What was medieval time? With an assist from the Master of Catherine of Cleves and Jean Poyer, "Now and Forever" and "Medieval Monsters" step out of time and space.

Clippinger

Can sculpture offer a place to play or to sit? Martha Clippinger, Jeff Landman, and Susana Solano and are rebuilding Minimalism.

Clodion

Clodion and Jean-Antoine Houdon shared a certain Enlightenment reserve. Did their sculpture, like that of Giuseppe Penone in white porcelain today, still err on the side of excess?

Close

Can an artist stop believing in his illusions? Chuck Close challenges the camera and raises questions about the idea of artistic genius.

Cocks

Are artists rising to the challenge of 9/11? If Anna Somers Cocks misses political art, Roger Kimball finds it everywhere—but perhaps neither knows where to look.

Cody

What counts as diversity? Melissa Cody claims Barbie and Natalie Ball blackness for Native Americans, while Beau Dick has his masks, Pacita Abad invokes six continents, and Regina José Galindo stands up to the bulldozers.

Coe

Politics is serious business, but then so is art. Why, then, do Sue Coe and Thomas Bayrle need to demand that you take them seriously, and how does "Due Process" take a less polemical approach to black lives and incarceration?

Fire consumed a political statement by Dinos and Jake Chapman, while Sue Coe and group shows like "Bush League" and "The Presidency" went on the warpath. Did any of it make a difference?

Coecke

Was the Renaissance or the Baroque a multimedia age? Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Charles Coypel make the case for tapestry and the decorative arts.

E. L. Cohen

Was the Memphis design group radical or a dead end? For Ettore Sottsass in Italy, design and color could shape ways of living, with style, while Elaine Lustig Cohen trusts in design to take her from book covers to abstract painting.

H. Cohen

Mary Lucier reflects on her late husband's leaving earth in multichannel video, while Harold Cohen and AARON stake their art on AI. Cauleen Smith wanders LA, but is her's too the video a lifetime?

J. Cohen

What does a photo album become a lie, and when does it become art? Walker Evans collects postcards, Jem Cohen Polaroids of the city, Patti Smith the veils of Basque country, and Jane Hammond an imaginary tour of Europe.

J. P. Cohen

More than a year before the American Civil War, Dave could see it coming. Did he and the black potters of Stone Bluff Manufactory foretell freedom then and the medium for Betty Woodman and Jennifer Paige Cohen today?

L. Cohen

When a star performer enters a museum, is it a celebration or pandering to a hunger for celebrity? Leonard Cohen bring a touch of irony, anxiety, and sobriety even to a celebration, while Jason Moran comes as a fan, a collaborator, and an artist himself.

M. Cohen

Is street photography all about crowds? Mark Cohen finds blue collar childhoods, Barbara Crane the face of Chicago, Jared Bark a photo booth in Times Square, and Alfred Eisenstaedt something larger than life.

Cokes

Is art on the scene of gentrification still closed for installation? Tony Cokes, Fiona Connor, Trisha Donnelly, Jean-Luc Moulène, and Oscar Murillo find a great reckoning in an empty room.

Colburn

When art looks at disaster, can it see more than the picturesque? Adriane Colburn, Cheryl Molnar, Ed Osborn, Leonardo Silaghi, and Diana Thater find what Leo Marx called the machine in the garden and love among the ruins.

Teju Cole

Can black art aspire to the universal? Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints private moments with imaginary friends, Teju Cole mixes photography and poetry, and Umar Rashid recalls a mythical Kingdom of Harlem.

Thomas Cole

The founder of what could be the most important art movement in American history was born in Europe. What did Thomas Cole learn from his Atlantic crossings?

W. Cole

Can the art world can be open to African Americans—and can African American art be open to almost anything? Willie Cole, Deborah Grant, and Maureen Kelleher all riff on folk art and black history, but one also invokes Judaism and one is white.

Coleman

Are blacks and felons the "Unnamed Figures" of American folk art? Not for "Marvels of My Own Inventiveness," Ray Materson, and Joe Coleman.

Colescott

Is there more to Robert Colescott than a stereotype twice over? He and Kapwani Kiwanga in Minimalism take sharply contrasting approaches to racism.

Collens

Can New York serve as a model? With Vivien Abrams Collens, Ben Boothby, Liene Bosquê, and Christina Lihan, painting and paper approach architecture in motion.

Collier

Francesca Woodman takes herself as subject in empty interiors, while Anne Collier leaves herself just outside the frame. Are they asserting a place for women in photography or looking for a place to hide?

Commito

Has painting recovered its energy? Michael Goldberg takes Abstract Expressionism into the millenium, while Gianna Commito, Robert Kushner, and Gary Petersen turn up the heat.

Condo

"Cursed be forever the useless dreamer"—but what about the artist? Lara Schnitger and Fred Tomaselli deal in curses, rituals, and dreams, but George Condo knows that phony transgression may prove safer after all.

Are Cecily Brown and George Condo fine postmodernists or fake Old Masters? Vanity, vanity, all is vanity and a fluid brush.

Congdon

Is there a formula for art? Dennis Congdon, Katherine Bernhardt, Serena Gidwani Buschi, and Daniel Canogar might have found one—or used some used electronics.

B. Conner

What relates mushroom clouds to mushrooms, other than shape? For Bruce Conner the explosions come quickly—much as for Doug Wheeler in his Synthetic Desert.

M. Conner

Postmodernism calls practically everything text, including casual words and creative acts. Can Maureen Conner, Ronald Jones, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Sarkisian, Mark Sheinkman, and others avoid reprint corrections with a hand-made book?

Connor

Is art on the scene of gentrification still closed for installation? Fiona Connor, Tony Cokes, Trisha Donnelly, Jean-Luc Moulène, and Oscar Murillo find a great reckoning in an empty room.

Constable

The White Horse is many people's favorite painting at the Frick Collection. Downstairs, can a small show explain the origins of those Romantic landscapes by John Constable?

Can the artist known for direct cloud sketches need five drafts to complete a painting? Two full-size versions of Salisbury Cathedral by John Constable help show Romanticism's changing conception of nature and the creative imagination.

Conley

Is art in a state of emergency? Nari Ward calls an ambulance to Harlem, Sterling Ruby parks a prison in Chelsea, Brian Conley stages war games in Brooklyn, and David Maisel photographs the ashes.

Is photography more or less than an art? Andy Mattern and John Cyr consider the tools of the trade, Brian Conley puts it on the map, and the 2018 AIPAD Photography Show wants to keep it there.

Constant

Myrlande Constant celebrates quilting and revolution, while Renée Stout connects portraiture, politics, and painting by numbers. Are they both voodoo children, and can "Hope Is a Discipline" and "Tropical Frequencies" give them hope?

Contis

Is art photography's elephant in the living room? It is for the 2022 AIPAD Photography Show, much like dance for Sam Contis and "Time Management Techniques" for photographers today.

Cooling

As women, Janet Cooling, Doreen Garner, and Nancy Spero move casually between history and myth. As political artists and women, can they still take no prisoners?

Coolquitt

Did Africa give birth to art? Lydia Ourahmane finds cave art in scorched earth, but Andy Coolquitt, Michael Mahalchick, and "In Practice" for 2022 insist that ruin need not mean collapse.

Cooney

Is moral philosophy still possible? Tim Cooney believes that a basis for morality is even necessary, and the Internet can help, for acknowledging mere opinions marks a great step toward democracy.

May I add a brief personal appreciation after his death? I offer what I tried with my heart to say at the memorial for Tim Cooney—a writer, a philosopher, a drinker, a madman, and a generous friend.

Cooper

Is that an actual work of art, a view out the window, or the skylight? Diana Cooper, Sabine Hornig, and Joshua Neustein leave one stranded between the gallery and distant places.

Coplans

Art cries out for a great alternative space, but as alternative to what? I find out at the reopened P.S 1, especially in rooms by Marina Abramovic, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Robert Wogan, and John Coplans—whose photographs are a disturbing revelation.

High costs of living and the art-world carnival make postmodern artist and viewer alike pressed for time. For artists like Deborah Mesa-Pelly, Joao Onofre, Kara Walker, Hiro Yamagata, and John Coplans, does that mean more choices, more extravagance, or plainer tales?

Copley

When it comes to images of women, can the adolescent male gaze grow up? William Copley, Francesco Clemente, Ivy Haldeman, and John Wesley take women seriously, but not without a smile.

Coppola

Was there a direct path from the Bauhaus to Buenos Aires? For Horacio Coppola, Ellen Auerbach, Elisabeth Hase, and Grete Stern in photography, the connections run every which way.

Cordova

With the cantilevered Institute for Contemporary Arts in Boston, Diller Scofidio + Renfro let a museum take flight toward the harbor. Do they make Mark Bradford, William Cordova, and Robin Rhode models for contemporary art—or just another sacrifice to trendy art and architecture?

Cormand

Can the work of art no longer be faked? Joseph Cornell parrots Juan Gris, while Martí Cormand draws on Sherrie Levine after Walker Evans.

Cornell

Can the work of art no longer be faked? Joseph Cornell parrots Juan Gris, while Martí Cormand draws on Sherrie Levine after Walker Evans.

Corot

What kind of art criticism belongs online—or anywhere else? As a preface to this Web site, I take my online aims out of hiding and into the landscape of Camille Corot, with a contrast to how Michael Kimmelman sees it.

Can a museum sell off major work from its collection? The Baltimore Museum backs down, even as the Brooklyn Museum deaccessions Camille Corot, Lucas Cranach, Donato de Bardi, and more.

Corris

"Purer and emptier," Ad Reinhardt wrote, and he pushed himself to some of the most austere works of art ever made. How, then, does Michael Corris link them to political cartoons?

Corse

Did abstraction depart from Minimalism with shaped canvas, crude oil, and glass microspheres? Mary Corse, Dorothea Rockburne, and Lynn Umlauf still sought sensuality, stillness, and light.

Try mapping Minimalism, with Anne Truitt and Mary Corse on the coasts, Michael Snow and Kay Rosen in the "central regions." Can a map of a map have firm borders or only light?

Costain

The Great Depression was a crisis, but could Americans face it together? It may seem that way for Harold Haliday Costain, James van der Zee, and Hank Willis Thomas with For Freedoms.

Cotter

Holland Cotter embraces a museum's claims for Tullio Lombardo as a Renaissance artist, while Roberta Smith criticizes J. M. W. Turner as a flashy expressionist. Does contemporary criticism need art history?

Seven years after a massive expansion designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, can a museum—or late Modernism—as institution survive? Roberta Smith revisits MoMA, while the Robert Rauschenberg estate provokes Holland Cotter.

Courbet

Gustave Courbet landscapes hold a very feminine eroticism. Did he need Realism to keep his imagination from running wild?

Can the gravity of Gustave Courbet and Vincent van Gogh's manic highs trace a single path to Modernism? van Gogh's final patron and a sometime painter, Dr. Gachet, shows what their admirers often missed.

Coyne

When black, white, and color become so visible that one wants to reach out and touch, can one still call it visionary? Petah Coyne, Robert Ryman, and Richard Tsao move beyond debates over formalism and illusion to metaphor, geometry, and goo.

Coypel

Was the Renaissance or the Baroque a multimedia age? Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Charles Coypel make the case for tapestry and the decorative arts.

Cramer

Julianne Swartz, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Jane and Louise Wilson are back, Jonathan Cramer channels Jackson Pollock, and Bjorn Melhus changes the channels on Jerry Springer. Is Chelsea truly over the top?

Cranach

Did art spread the word for Martin Luther? He counted Lucas Cranach as a friend and collaborator, fifty years after a gentler piety in Hans Memling.

Sandro Botticelli was not all sweetness and light? But did he influence Lucas Cranach?

Can a museum sell off major work from its collection? The Baltimore Museum backs down, even as the Brooklyn Museum deaccessions Camille Corot, Lucas Cranach, Donato de Bardi, and more.

Crane

How did women end up on both sides of the camera? In photography and video, Barbara Crane, Barbara Ess, and Amy Greenfield fragment the body and the medium.

Craycroft

Can art have a private language, and what would it sound like? Anna Craycroft, Michael Portnoy, and Catherine Sullivan pursue studies in hysteria.

Crewdson

Is it painting or photography, staged or observed? Gregory Crewdson, Ron Diorio, Anne Hardy, Sherry Karver, and E. E. Smith all have one guessing.

Crow

Did Florine Stettheimer produce outsider or insider art? As painter, poet, set designer, and an influence on Rosson Crow, she could be worldly, theatrical, satirical, and loving.

Crowner

Is it still painting? James Hyde calls it "Public Sculpture," but he, Sarah Crowner, Melissa Brown, and Anna Ostoya have something else in mind.

Crumpler

For an African American, can anything stop the bloodshed? Faith Ringgold has come a long way from The American People to The French Collection, while Dewey Crumpler finds it only a short hop from museums to extraterrestrials and the Klan.

Crusader Bible

In an age of blockbusters, what is left for the small museum? It can partner with others, like the Scottish National Gallery at the Frick, or focus on its collection, like The Crusader Bible at the Morgan Library.

Culver

Can a bustling city offer empty pleasures? Christopher Culver, Duane Michals, Katherine Newbegin, and Holly Zausner look to landmarks, subways, and fire escapes for a sense of home.

Currie

Is London racing past New York or mired in tradition? Ken Currie, Damien Hirst, Christian Jankowski, Marilene Oliver, and Bridget Riley suggest the deep roots of a crazed arts scene and urban landscape.

Currin

Like Lisa Yuskavage, John Currin takes realism seriously. Does it mean more than exposing the female body to mass marketing and other threatening eyes?

If Postmodernism wants to ground art historically, why does it keep riffing so wildly on the past? Consider what happens when Robert Mapplethorpe encounters Mannerism, contemporary painters like John Currin create their own "Idols of Perversity," and—long before both—Goethe built a great drawing collection on his mistakes.

Cutler

Is there a thread connecting Amy Cutler, Cui Fei, Jonah Groeneboer, and Chiharu Shiota? Their weave catches added dimensions, female communities, private writing, and the viewer.

Cwynar

The Korean Media Arts Festival and Sara Cwynar span digital, neural, and human networks. Could Doug Aitken have captured them all in song?

Cyr

Is photography more or less than an art? Andy Mattern and John Cyr consider the tools of the trade, Brian Conley puts it on the map, and the 2018 AIPAD Photography Show wants to keep it there.

Cytter

Can video art mean more than a dark, empty room? The X-Initiative strands Keren Cytter, Luke Fowler, and Tris Vonna-Michell in Chelsea, while Aernout Mik shoots up eight floors of a museum on video.

Da Corte

Can KAWS (or Brian Donnelly) and Alex Da Corte get away with merchandising cartoons as art? Maybe so, but Niki de Saint Phalle was there before the bad boys, with playgrounds for very adult children.

Daguerre

The media in "The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes" and "Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting" have vanished, and neither one left copies. Must photographs and books come in multiple editions to feel modern?

Daignault

Must irony preclude a love painting? Cynthia Daignault, Helene Appel, and Meyer Vaisman share real pleasures along with a knowing wink.

Dalí

Salvador Dalí may not top everyone's list of modern artists, but he played one to the hilt. Does that make his art perfect for Hollywood, with "Dalí and Film"?

"Barcelona and Modernity: From Gaudí to Dalí" and Spanish Painting from "El Greco to Picasso" both deserve the name "From Picasso to Picasso." But can Barcelona or the Spanish mind really explain an artist like Salvador Dalí?

Could André Breton get enough sex? With "Surrealism: Desire Unbound" and Salvador Dalí the Met allows Breton's movement plenty of desire, but too small a revolution and not nearly enough madness.

Dalton

Can the system still work for artists, and who gets to laugh when it does not? Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida make it hard to cut "#class."

Does Chelsea's massive fall opening amount to an entertainment event or a model for museums of contemporary art? In 2006, artists could easily grow cynical or messianic, including Jennifer Dalton, Barnaby Furnas, and Matthew Ritchie.

D'Alvia

Does art today flaunt eclecticism and excess? Roland Gebhardt and Carl D'Alvia find a less impersonal side to Minimalism and its rigor, while Tom Doyle with a nod to Eva Hesse shows how it all began.

D'Angers

Danto

Are Auguste Rodin's twisting bodies and multiple casts more like variations on a theme or Xerox copies? Arthur C. Danto, Nelson A. Goodman, and Rosalind E. Krauss—as critics and philosophers—each tackle the originality of the avant-garde.

Arthur C. Danto wants to approach art without the biases of his own time. Is he wrong to draw conclusions from hypothetical art, or is that what artists since Marcel Duchamp do every day?

Imagine Immanuel Kant writing weekly reviews for ordinary readers? Rare among philosophers, Arthur C. Danto loves art and says so—enough to take his time getting to artists.

When Joseph Masheck collects his Texts on (Texts on) Art, has art and criticism given way to an obsessive chain of influence? Not when Marcel Duchamp, Ad Reinhardt, Andy Warhol, Arthur C. Danto, and others embraced the dangers.

Should artists approaching "The Art of 9/11" feel angry, guilty, or both? Arthur C. Danto curates a measured response, and Chang-Jin Lee offers the comforts of a "Homeland Security Garden," but anger wells up with "A Knock at the Door. . . .

Arthur C. Danto calls his essay on Peter Fischli and David Weiss "The Artist as Prime Mover." But did they ever stop moving?

Arthur C. Danto cut his philosophical teeth on Warhol's Brillo boxes. Did Andy Warhol decline from agent provocateur into celebrity, or was he asking for it all along?

Will Arthur C. Danto find that his exploration of art without definitions takes him to a definition of art? Neo-conservatives are already all-too-fond of definitions and limits.

May I also give Arthur C. Danto special acknowledgment? In a preface to this Web site, I take my online aims out of hiding and into Camille Corot's landscape.

Danziger

Has abstraction maxed out? Reed Danziger, Sarah Cain, Joanne Greenbaum, Gary Petersen, David Rhodes, and Ryan Wallace make room for excess.

Darboven

Are no two snowflakes alike? Maybe not, but "The Keeper" has no end of collections to make you wonder, including thousands of photographs and teddy bears from Ydessa Hendeles, like a cultural history from Hanne Darboven.

Daumier

Can museums help with mental health after Covid-19? One experiments with Honoré Daumier as art therapy, while elsewhere Asif Mian looks for closure after losing his father.

David

Why did Jacques-Louis David need so many preliminary drawings? He had to focus his art without losing his Neoclassical theater—like Claude Gillot, who taught Jean Antoine Watteau, in the Age of Reason.

Did Jacques-Louis David sell out in switching allegiances from the French republic to empire? He and Kehinde Wiley get to have it both ways when it comes to Napoleon and, for Wiley, public sculpture.

Davidson

When does Socialist Realism become Surrealism? Brian Griffin finds both in Thatcher's England, while Bruce Davidson finds hope in changing times and an ever-changing New York.

B. Davis

Does art need a post-critical theory? Ben Davis and Johanna Drucker find art in complicity with the culture industry—and loving it.

Who pays for museum expansions? The Met raises its admissions prices for those beyond New York, while Ben Davis lays responsibility firmly on the board.

S. Davis

Was Stuart Davis the first Pop artist? Maybe not, but he adapted Cubism to America in the jazz age, while Jean Tinguely and Max Ernst put the pop and sizzle into modern art in Europe.

Can one locate the origins of modern art in something other than painting? Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso may not have discovered Cubism in film, but Henri Matisse sure knew textiles, and Stuart Davis literally drew on New York.

How did Picasso get to America without leaving Europe? "Picasso and American Art" traces his influence on Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, and others.

Dean

Gillian Wearing just wants to tell the truth about you, or does she? She and Tacita Dean, Brigitte Lacombe, and Catherine Opie in "Face to Face" suggest how much of women in photography lies behind a mask.

"They are amazing," writes John Ashbery in his poem "Some Trees." How can still life from Ellen Altfest, an actual dead tree from Anya Gallaccio, and video by Tacita Dean reach for amazement?

What is left if blockbusters are just business as usual, and videos by Tacita Dean become tributes to artists who have passed away? A lot, and the "Best of 2012" is all over the map.

de Bardi

Can a museum sell off major work from its collection? The Baltimore Museum backs down, even as the Brooklyn Museum deaccessions Camille Corot, Lucas Cranach, Donato de Bardi, and more.

de Beer

What terrors lurk in that dark house, and whose desires draw one into video? Sue de Beer shapes the scenes from "Black Sun" twice, on screen and as installation, and her women ask viewers, too, to take risks.

When artists bring death to the style pages, have they created a fourth-wave feminism? A slippery slope to suicide haunts video by Sue de Beer, paintings by Rachel Howard, and a sell-out by Sam Taylor-Wood.

DeCarava

As an African American, Roy DeCarava dedicated himself to jazz and New York, even as Alvin Baltrop photographed the AIDS crisis and war. Why, then, did both find themselves in darkness?

Dee

"Art Fairs: An Irresistible Force in the Art World?" If the answer seems too obvious for words, Elizabeth Dee, Richard Lehun, Nicholas O'Donnell, and Ed Winkleman tally up the financial and ethical implications, while Dee looks for an answer in Independent Projects.

DeFeo

Was there more to Jay DeFeo than The Rose? Maybe so, as a kind of lifelong "Sinister Pop."

Degas

Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas met at the Louvre, and then Henri Matisse and André Derain met up in the south of France to found Fauvism. How does that accord with the painting of everyday life and the urge to make it new?

For Degas, monoprints were an experimental medium, as I explain further in an interview. Can they claim Edgar Degas for Modernism?

One of the most original artists of his time carefully bought and arranged hundreds of works from the past. For Edgar Degas as collector, what was the connection?

John Singer Sargent could do anything. So you may want to say after seeing his watercolors or "The Impressionist Line," drawings from the Clark Institute from Edgar Degas to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but what exactly could he do?

Dehner

Alice Adams brings architecture to Minimalism, while "By the Way" seeks sculpture in material and motion. Could Dorothy Dehner before them lead the way while leaving David Smith behind?

de Hooch

Did Pieter de Hooch and Jan Vermeer see the same street in Delft? In "Vermeer and the Delft School," the art of painting takes on a city's dreams.

Deitch

In choosing Jeffrey Deitch as director, has LA MOCA put a fox in charge of the henhouse? I ask nine New York dealers, including Paula Cooper, Andrea Rosen, and Elizabeth Dee.

Delacroix

Were could Eugène Delacroix have ever seen a tiger? His drawings and a full retrospective show him torn between observation and the imagination.

Did Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Modernism make up a single revolution? Drawings follow Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Géricault, Théodore Chassériau, Eugène Delacroix, and revolutionary France, decades before Pierre-Auguste Renoir paints fashion at full length.

Delaunay

Did Sonia Delaunay live for art or just dress for it? She, Orphism, and Frederick Kiesler treated Modernism as design and experiment.

Deleuze

Barbara Wolff and "Repetition and Difference," with help from Gilles Deleuze, find nature's and art's abundance in Jewish tradition. Between contemporary art and the past, who has changed whom?

Delvoye

How long will New York look to the sky at Ground Zero? Outdoor installations in 2003 from Wim Delvoye, the Socrates Sculpture Park, and "Between the Bridges" have one reimagining the ground below.

Does the Chelsea gallery scene know where the bodies are bodied? Wim Delvoye, Tracey Emin, Gary Hill, Daniel Rozin, and Sam Taylor-Wood may not get real, but they do get physical.

de Maria

When Manhattan Island gets an island of its own, should one call it a site, a nonsite, or gentrification? With the assistance of Nancy Holt, Floating Island makes a provocative addition to a suitably systematic and entropic Robert Smithson retrospective—and a striking contrast to New York earth art by Walter de Maria, while emerging artists "Make It Now."

How did so much earth and the dark corners of New York streets get inside? Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset create an underground End Station, Peter Wegner a paper labyrinth, and Mike Bouchet a pungent alternative to Walter de Maria.

Demand

Thomas Demand, Julie Blackmon, Clark and Pougnaud, Benjamin Fink, and Alex Prager make photography at once domestic and fantastic. Can anyone tell what they create, what they stage, what they find, and what they manipulate?

de Montebello

Did museums create the whole idea of originality? Alan Wallach traces the modern museum to a shift from plaster casts, while "The Philippe de Montebello Years" gives acquisitions the look of gift-shop reproductions.

Dennis

Remember flyover country? Donna Dennis, Sam Falls, Greg Lindquist, and Aspen Mays find a dark and not altogether distant beauty.

de Oude

Did art have to choose between color-field painting and Minimalism? "The Fullness of Color," "Marking Time," Larry Zox, and Rob de Oude have their doubts.

de Pareja

Could Diego Velázquez have painted his greatest portrait of a mere slave, his slave? Juan de Pareja gets his due as a painter himself and a free man.

Derain

Deroo

Can photography find its subject slipping away? Wijnanda Deroo, Sarah Jones, Andrew Moore, and Joe Pflieger look from museums to movie houses and from the open road to a shadowy garden.

de Rozas

Has the Met forgotten "Water Scarcity" and its own "Water Memories"? Native Americans cannot, and the land for Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas has its claims, too.

Derrida

Faced with the "truth in painting," it is hard to avoid challenging, deriding, misusing, or plain stealing from Jacques Derrida. My most explicit theft is a dialog about Brancusi's sculpture.

It is hard to do without what Jacques Derrida called "erasure" faced with a Warhol silk screen. What happens when a man with a paintbrush or a woman with a gun try erasing Warhol?

Thanks to Jacques Derrida, a gorgeous chain of voices surrounds two enigmatic shoes. Are they and their painter, Vincent van Gogh, really two of a kind?

Can you name an even more difficult writer? I know several, but Jacques Lacan makes more sense to me in light of a response by Jacques Derrida to his essay on Poe.

Is Jacques Derrida (or Marx or Freud) a secular Jew? I can answer only for myself.

"Word to Word" invokes Jacques Derrida and his concept of philosophy as a kind of writing. What remains of writing and art alike as all-too-physical gestures?

DeSana

Do the stumps of Hudson River Park attest to New York as an arts scene or port city? Every Ocean Hughes (formerly Emily Roydson) and Jimmy DeSana trace sites of queer identity.

Despont

Louise Despont draws away from New York to a Pacific island, while Jennifer Bartlett returns to the city from the garden, and Sol LeWitt builds a collection. Which finds a greater stillness?

DeVille

Was 2020 New York summer sculpture missing something important, sculpture? Not entirely, but Nancy Baker Cahill went virtual, while Héctor Zamora and Abigail DeVille were late for the party.

de Waal

What was the human cost of Nazi-looted art? Edmund de Waal and the Ephrussi family remember, while the Neue Galerie looks to its collection with "Modern Worlds."

Should an installation respond to the museum or its art? Edmund de Waal, Rafael Domenech, and Regina Silveira work in the shadows of a museum.

Dewing

Nardo de Cione's great Madonna shares a museum with decorative portraits by Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Must art always worship women?

Dial

Is the personal or political blowing off the Gulf? Thornton Dial, Carlos Amorales, Yoan Capote, and Deborah Luster look past the American South to murder, exile, and community.

Has outsider art entered the mainstream? A panel on "Break on Through (from the Outside)" at Sotheby's featuring Andrew Edlin, Scott Ogden, Edward M. Gómez, Daniel Swanigan Snow, and Richard Lehun wonders if it should—while "History Refuses to Die" with Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, and Gee's Bend quilts ponders the evidence.

Diamond

In dreams, the city itself can seem hard to pin down. How do Martha Diamond, Jane Freilicher, and Charles Mayton make it at once vivid, familiar, and strange?

Diao

Must art as text always mean the impersonality of Joseph Kosuth? For Mickey Smith it means blood money, for R. Luke DuBois it means American politics, and for David Diao it means a life in painting.

At what point does a shape become a symbol? For Pete Schulte from the moment it takes shape as abstract art, for Edie Fake as politics and sheer pleasure, for David Diao in the parts of chair, and for Stanley Boxer maybe never, when there is painting to be had.

Dick

Dickson

Is New York scary at night and a country home ever so comfortable in sunlight? Jane Dickson, Jessie Edelman, Chris Hood, and Mary Lum make their way through the light.

di Cosimo

Can art from Toledo means more than El Greco? From Ohio, the Toledo Museum shows art history's grappling with humanity and nature in such figures as El Greco, Piero di Cosimo, and Jacopo Bassano, while Spain and St. John the Divine set aside "Time to Hope."

Diehl

When people talk about art after the end of art, do they mean that conceptual art has outlived the art object? Edward Winkleman, Catherine Spaeth, Carol Diehl, and "The Shallow Curator" make the virtual case against the anti-esthetic.

Dienes

Judy Pfaff and Lucy Kim raise painting off the wall, in every sense of the term. Was Sari Dienes there first, between Pop Art and Surrealism?

Dill

With Rain Room and Random International, is the art of artificial lights now just a light show? Laddie John Dill, Santiago Taccetti, and Leo Villareal mirror the darkness.

B. Diller

What if you could have your own private park, in one of New York's liveliest neighborhoods? Barry Diller has Little Island, but he and Thomas Heatherwick are not keeping it to themselves, while Meg Webster extends the ecosystem beyond Governors Island.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Can Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Gensler rescue the Museum of Modern Art for the permanent collection? MoMA's 2019 expansion banks on diversity and installation art, as "Surrounds."

Do the High Line, contributions to Hudson Yards by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, and the Museum of Modern Art with help from Diller Scofidio + Renfro represent New York's worst or its hopes for the future? Architecture enters a new decade with choices ahead.

With the cantilevered Institute for Contemporary Arts in Boston, Diller Scofidio + Renfro let a museum take flight toward the harbor. Do they make Mark Bradford, William Cordova, and Robin Rhode young and old models for contemporary art—or just another sacrifice to trendy art and architecture?

Will the High Line preserve an overgrowth of wild flowers and urban history, with sculpture by Sarah Sze, or will it tower over Chelsea as one more dark, utopian vision? Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in association with Field Operations and with photographs by Joel Sternfeld, offer a look down upon the art world.

Can the American Folk Art Museum be saved? Michael Kimmelman and others speak out, as Diller Scofidio + Renfro and MoMA plan to demolish the Tod Williams and Billie Tsien architecture for yet another expansion.

Should one trace motion in painting and new media to illusion, vision, or physical sensation? Daniel Rozin looks in the mirror, Michael Betancourt in pop psychology, Diller Scofidio + Renfro at the spy camera, and Peter Paul Rubens into his own heart.

Dijkstra

Zwelethu Mthethwa confronts African migrant labor, while Rineke Dijkstra cherishes children on the verge of self-discovery. What, then, makes their photography so ruthless?

Dinkins

Can art confront climate change, contagion, AI, and sex, in politics and economics? For Stephanie Dinkins, Josh Kline, and Suzanne Lacy, new media must keep up with it all.

Dion

How can science and art intersect, and, if they cannot, will opposites attract? Mark Dion, "Produced at Eyebeam 2005," Michal Rovner, Jessica Bronson, and Jacob van Ruisdael feel the attraction.

Can an art museum in Manhattan have a department of tropical research? Mark Dion, Eugen Gabritschevsky, and Future Retrieval take art into the cross-cultural realm of the senses.

Can a museum dedicated to modernity become a custodian of the past? Jed Perl thinks so, but Mark Dion literally digs up the dirt on the Museum of Modern Art.

Must big gestures be macho and empty installations be empty of meaning? David Brooks (with help from Mark Dion), Allyson Vieira, and John von Bergen see Minimalism as urban history.

Diorio

Is it painting or photography, staged or observed? Ron Diorio, Gregory Crewdson, Anne Hardy, Sherry Karver, and E. E. Smith all have one guessing.

di Suvero

Anish Kapoor likes dark interiors and sweeping curves, Mark di Suvero builds wide-open towers, and Joel Shapiro started small, spare, and evocative. Do any of them deserve the label post-Minimalism?

Has summer sculpture gone for permanence? New York finds safety in Mark di Suvero, Jaume Plensa, and "VISTA."

Is there any art left in Soho? I offer a light, off-the-cuff spring 1997 tour, with the most space to Elizabeth Murray, Mark Tansey, and Mark di Suvero—whose latest installation really knows how to use space.

Divola

Are there way too many images—and all the wrong kind? "A Trillion Sunsets" looks for them in photography and online, "Actual Size" at actual size, and John Divola in an abandoned corner of California.

When did subjectivity become the new black? John Divola, León Ferrari, Kerstin Persson, Andrea Longacre-White find depths where a group show insists on "Black."

Dix

How German was German Expressionism? With Otto Dix, "German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse" aims to shift the center of Modernism from Paris.

Djurberg

With Nathalie Djurberg, Cecily Brown, Judith Eisler, and Bill Henson, art gets painfully explicit about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. So why do their human actors vanish so easily into forests, fairy tales, claymation, the blur of a picture tube, or death?

When women artists play against stereotype, are they getting hysterical? Nathalie Djurberg, Zoe Beloff, Mika Rottenberg, and Karen Yasinsky improve on Freud's studies in hysteria.

do Amaral

Does it take a woman to discover the dignity of native people? For Tarsila do Amaral it took Cubism and cannibals, and for Adriana Varejão it takes Native American traditions, while Zilia Sánchez finds very different heroines and warriors.

Dodd

What does it take for a landscape or still life to make you feel right at home? Lois Dodd, Anne Buckwalter, and J. J. Manford take painting out of interiors and into the familiar.

Doeringer

Can criticism cross over into art—or conceptual art into criticism? Lucy Lippard charts six years in the emergence of conceptual art, while Eric Doeringer would like to remake it.

Doisneau

Whose life is this anyway? Robert Doisneau, Neo Rauch, and Amy Bennett all have deceptively traditional, penetrating views of realism, and their tales unfold against a complex world, but they bring one on intimate terms with the human comedy.

Dolmanisth/Masters

Art can carry on after 9/11, but can it return to normal? A group show seeks sincerity in "Extreme Existence" while, over in Brooklyn, Karen Dolmanisth and Deborah Masters mix ritual and performance, and Bob and Roberta Smith offer an Art Amnesty.

Domenech

Should an installation respond to the museum or its art? Rafael Domenech, Edmund de Waal, and Regina Silveira work in the shadows of a museum.

Dominguez

Must as outsider artist live outside? Anthony Dominguez did, while Mary Lovelace O'Neal took to New York in the dark of night, and Raymond Saunders borrows from and casts his shadow on the streets.

Donaldson

When photography meets abstraction, does the camera have designs on the viewer? Peter Halley haunts mixed media from Rory Donaldson, Lansing-Dreiden, and Raha Raissnia.

Donatello

Was the early Renaissance the age of Donatello? The Museum of Biblical Art pits him against Lorenzo Ghiberti and more.

Did the Renaissance in Italy rediscover the individual, in profile and in the round? "The Renaissance Portrait" moves from Donatello to Giovanni Bellini and from heads of states to a wider world.

Does fine art sound elitist compared to popular culture? With Jean Poyer (or Jean Poyet) and Donatello, the Renaissance has an interchange between "high" and "low."

B. Donnelly

Can KAWS (or Brian Donnelly) and Alex Da Corte get away with merchandising cartoons as art? Maybe so, but Niki de Saint Phalle was there before the bad boys, with playgrounds for very adult children.

T. Donnelly

Is art on the scene of gentrification still closed for installation? Trisha Donnelly, Tony Cokes, Fiona Connor, Jean-Luc Moulène, and Oscar Murillo find a great reckoning in an empty room.

Donovan

Is it still magic if the magician gives away the trick? Tara Donovan makes her materials shimmer, but also plain for anyone to see.

Madame d'Ora

Can "Photography's Last Century" claim the century for staged photographs and a mystery theater? Dora Kallmus, or Madame d'Ora, found herself obliged to drop the poses.

Dorland

Has the information age raised the specter of political oppression? Chris Dorland, Edmund Clark, Mark Pauline, and Survival Research Laboratories explore new and old media, pleasure, and terror.

Dossi

Do Dosso Dossi, David Salle, and Julião Sarmento all spin postmodern allegories? Something funny happens to fables without a subtext.

E. Douglas

Can political art be numbingly obvious and obscure at the same time? Emory Douglas, Claire Fontaine, Hans Haacke, and Artur Zmijewski give it their best shot.

S. Douglas

Can Moynihan Train Hall make up for the indignities of Penn Station? Skidmore, Owings & Merrill give it their best, with an assist from Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Kehinde Wiley, and Stan Douglas.

Dove

The Whitney puts up scaffolding for some serious remodeling, just in time to display Arthur Dove, Andrew Wyeth, and a new look at its permanent collection. Is the museum getting back to America's roots or retreating into the bunker?

Dowell

Doyle

Does art today flaunt eclecticism and excess? Roland Gebhardt and Carl D'Alvia find a less impersonal side to Minimalism and its rigor, while Tom Doyle with a nod to Eva Hesse shows how it all began.

Downes

Can there be a still point in a changing world? Rackstraw Downes finds turmoil and quiet from a dance floor in Texas to a cultural center in New York, Stefan Kürten in Modernism's glass house, Richard Artschwager in his final years in New Mexico.

Draeger

From Minimalism to installation art, how did art get into this mess? With Ugo Rondinone, Martin Boyce, Christoph Draeger, and David Byrne, the star of the show has departed, leaving visitors to rattle around a cluttered but still empty interior.

Dragset

You call this a monument? Ed Ruscha traces the course of empire, while "Monuments for the USA," featuring Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset among others, seeks a nation worth remembering.

Dream the Combine

Can public sculpture be neither inside nor out? From the Flatiron Building to the Rockaways, Dream the Combine, Heidi Lanino Bilezikian, Urs Fischer, and Yayoi Kusama find a space to call their own.

Drew

At the end of 1996, did "in" New Yorkers still never travel north of 14th Street? I check out the new Chelsea galleries and dear old 57th Street, with the most space to Christian Haub, Garry Hill, Ellsworth Kelly, Jodi Manasevit, Sue Williams, and Leonardo Drew.

Can art trace the materials of a life? The artists in residence in "Pass, Carry, Hold," Paula Wilson, Virginia Overton, and Leonardo Drew step off the wall.

Was spring late in coming? Summer sculpture 2019 made up for it with Alicja Kwade, Carmen Herrera, and Leonardo Drew, by pointing to the earth and sky.

Is anything left of Modernism's daring except nudity and nostalgia? In the cold winter of 2001, I take a quick gallery tour, with most space to Leonardo Drew, Nan Goldin, Robert Longo, and Lisa Yuskavage, who also has a rather early retrospective.

Drexler

Abstract art may seem to belong to the past the more it asserts its authority. Can James Turrell, Ad Reinhardt, Michael West, Albert Kotin, and Lynne Drexler recover a neglected past and present?

Drift

Can art get you looking at something other than your phone? Tim Gardner and Drift bring nature alive along with human distractions and high-tech solutions, while Ross Bleckner and Zachari Logan find shadows in the garden.

Drucker

Does art need a post-critical theory? Johanna Drucker and Ben Davis find art in complicity with the culture industry—and loving it.

DuBois

Must art as text always mean the impersonality of Joseph Kosuth? For Mickey Smith it means blood money, for R. Luke DuBois it means American politics, and for David Diao it means a life in painting.

Dubuffet

Did outsider art inspire Abstract Expressionism? "Art Brut in America" recalls Jean Dubuffet in New York, while his drawings and Ronald Lockett remember the madness of modern art.

Are galleries more like public spaces or luxury retailers? Jean Dubuffet treats sculpture as an urban plaza, Bosco Sodi evokes cracked earth and the Rothko Chapel in white, and Liam Gillick takes the shared space of Minimalism apart.

Du Camp

Is Byzantine art the missing link between the ancients and the Renaissance? "Africa and Byzantium" bridges centuries and continents, while Maxime Du Camp in nineteenth-century photography can only try to look back.

Duccio

Did the Renaissance truly begin in Florence? Duccio, Simone Martini, and Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti spur the rise of painting in Siena.

One can trace a magnificent history of the Renaissance, from its emergence with Duccio to its triumph with Dürer. But did even these artists always travel in straight lines?

After Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi tread only cautiously toward the Renaissance, like the circle of Duccio before him. Does that make either of them an "Italian primitive"?

These days artists and celebrities can become famous for their passing fame. Cimabue got there first, before Giotto, however—or was it Duccio?

Were the 1300s a lost century or the missing link from Giotto and Duccio? Bartolo di Fredi finds his way to the Renaissance.

Duchamp

A survey of "Dada" spans two doors, six cities, and hundreds of objects. Did Marcel Duchamp, May Ray, and others rebel against the very idea of art or engender all of art to come?

Did Modernism find inspiration in the unconscious, Mexican temples, or the camera obscura? Max Ernst, Josef Albers, and Serkan Ozkaya speaking on behalf of Marcel Duchamp take them all to the max.

Arthur C. Danto wants to approach art without the biases of his own time. Is he wrong to draw conclusions from hypothetical art, or is that what artists since Marcel Duchamp do every day?

Mike Bidlo creates emblems of the postmodern museum, like his turning Marcel Duchamp into bathroom wallpaper, alongside Tom Merrick's inflatable green dinosaur and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's bird house. Do these look any different, now that MoMA has bought P.S. 1 lock, stock, and toilet?

Dudis

Are earthworks just overblown dump sites? Mierle Laderman Ukeles stands up for sanitation workers as "maintenance artists," and Eleanor Antin lets empty boots stand on their own, while Louise Dudis stands up to trees and Nicole Wermers to awnings.

Dumas

When political art goes wrong, it can get too didactic or too personal. With Marlene Dumas, "The Labyrinth Wall," and Emily Jacir, can it ever be both at once?

Dunkan

Must blackness be invisible? Shaun Leonardo finds it in the glare of police lights and Wardell Milan even in the Klan, while Kenny Dunkan puts it on display in front of the Eiffel Tower with a dance.

Dunkley

Is folk art, Caribbean art, or African art obsessed with dying? John Dunkley works between day and night and Paa Joe between coffins and castles, while "Race, Myth, Art, and Justice" shares secrets.

Dunn

Should still life aim for the moment or the thing itself? For Susan Jane Walp, it is first and foremost paint, but Tim Wilson finds it in a haunted house, Kyle Dunn and Martine Johanna in something close to love.

Duplessis

Even a revolution needs to find its public, in art or in life. John Singer Sargent drew parodies and praise for a family portrait, and Benjamin Franklin sat often for portraits at the French court, including two by Joseph Siffred Duplessis.

Durand

Up on the latest gossip from Artforum? Money talks louder than art yet again, through the UBS Collection and the sale of an Asher B. Durand.

Durant

As plans for culture at Ground Zero stagnate, can political art respond? The backlash definitely is setting in, with exhibitions of the key architects, plus Luc Tuymans, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Sam Durant.

Has summer sculpture swooped in—or just a drone by Sam Durant? It encounters culture change and climate change with "The Musical Brain," Guadalupe Maravilla, Maya Lin, Melvin Edwards, and "Re:Growth."

You call this a monument? Ed Ruscha traces the course of empire, while "Monuments for the USA," featuring Sam Durant and others, seeks a nation worth remembering.

Dürer

One can trace a magnificent history of the Renaissance, from its emergence with Duccio to its triumph with Albrecht Dürer. But did even these artists always travel in straight lines?

In The Tribute Money and in a young man, does Michelangelo see a growing mastery or a choice? He finds them both in "Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich" and "From Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Courtauld Gallery."

Durham

Is there more to political art than the foul rag and bone shop of the heart? Jimmie Durham, Leon Golub, and Cathy Wilkes put their bodies on the line.

Dyson

Eva Hesse made an expanded Minimalism speak for its materials, for a viewer's anxieties, and for her. Can Charisse Pearlina Weston, Xaviera Simmons, and Torkwase Dyson do the same for African Americans today?

Still more names!

jhaber@haberarts.com