Russian artist and theoretician Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a significant figure in 20th-century abstraction. His masterwork "Painting with White Border" (1913, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), inspired by his native Moscow, emerged during an inte...

"There they rest, inert, impertinent, in gallery space – those book forms either imitated or mutilated, replicas of reading matter or its vestiges. Strange, after its long and robust career, for the book to take early retirement in a museum, not as r...

American artist Vija Celmins (b. 1938) is widely admired and respected for her sublime images of night skies and ocean waves. "Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster, 1964-1966" looks closely at Celmins' early work, which is deeply engaged with the Po...

Our era is defined by the model. From Victoria's Secret and "America's Next Top Model" to the snapshots we post on Facebook and Twitter, our culture is fixated on the pose, the state of existing simultaneously as artifice and the real thing. In thi...

Not for sale in Estonia! Kurt Schwitters' stated goal was to "erase the boundaries between the arts". This collection, culled from the five-volume German edition of Schwitters' writings, introduces the total work of art that is Merz through Schwitt...

Contemporary artist Allison Smith's diverse creative practice critically engages with popular forms of historical reenactment through a variety of media, including sculpture, textiles, ceramics, and photography. Focusing on the handmade and performat...

The subversive, often jarringly direct sculptures of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) are acclaimed for their seemingly absurd juxtapositions and uncanny photorealism. Reflecting deep suspicions of religious and political authorities, these...

Who gets to say what counts as contemporary art? Artists, critics, curators, gallerists, auctioneers, collectors, or the public? Revealing how all of these groups have shaped today's multifaceted definition, Terry Smith brilliantly shows that an hist...

The art world is currently enthralled with contemporary Chinese art. This thoughtful book argues, however, that American audiences have been exposed only to a narrow range of what is available – with the majority of exposure having been given to avan...

In the years around 1960, a rapid process of deindustrialization profoundly changed New York City. At the same time, massive highway construction, urban housing renewal, and the growth of the financial sector altered the city's landscape. As the new...