Email Author R. C. Baker

2013 Stories by R. C. Baker

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  Blame It on Magritte

  published October 2, 2013

  You might assume that the Photoshop fantasias of our age would make the visual conundrums of René Magritte's pre-war paintings feel... More >>

• Four-Color Revolution

  published September 4, 2013

  In his introduction to this superbly illustrated compendium of underground newspapers, editor Geoff Kaplan channels the 1960s' exuberant... More >>

• America First: MOMA's Homegrown Modernism

  published August 28, 2013

  Although the Museum of Modern Art garnered prestige (and occasional derision) by bringing such European exemplars as Picasso,... More >>

• Abstraction: The Sequel

  published August 7, 2013

  Ahhh, the '80s: Reagan was in the White House, Thirtysomething was on the tube, and Julian Schnabel's retrospective was at the... More >>

• Heavy Hitters: Damn Yanquis and Cartoon Vampires

  published July 31, 2013

  The camera pans across battered cinder-block walls, a muddy infield, concrete stands shorn of awnings, and palm trees silhouetted against gray... More >>

• Skin Games, Flesh On The Brain

  published July 31, 2013

  While organizing the group show "Hair and Skin," curator Isaac Lyles considered recent research into "mirror neurons" and "physical empathy"... More >>

• Radiant Blobs: Ken Price's Carnal Clay

  published July 10, 2013

  The brilliant ceramicist Ken Price was born in West Hollywood in 1935 and died last year in Taos, New Mexico. Too late (but not with too... More >>

• Grisaille Vaginas and Saturated Sunsets

  published July 3, 2013

  Ah, summertime, when a gallery-goer's fancy turns to . . . group shows. "Sunsets and Pussy" (Marianne Boesky Gallery) focuses on two... More >>

• Le Corbusier's Paper Utopias

  published June 12, 2013

  "You must be sympathetic to man's condition in his environment," the modernist architect Le Corbusier said in a 1957 film. "That's what... More >>

• Peeping Ed: Watching Hopper Watch

  published June 5, 2013

  "Maybe I am not very human. What I wanted to do," Edward Hopper once explained, "was to paint sunlight on the side of a house." A telling... More >>

• Hollywood Babble On: Jack Goldstein's Disappearing Act

  published May 15, 2013

  With his aviator shades, shoulder-length locks, and blasé good looks, Jack Goldstein could have fronted some '70s band you don't quite... More >>

• Painters' Paradise: Batting .750 on the Upper East Side

  published May 8, 2013

  Painters, even the most experimental ones, continually time-travel for inspiration. Right now, you can traverse half a millennium of painting... More >>

• Taking Some Hacks with Charles McGill

  published April 17, 2013

  A serious golfer, artist Charles McGill knows from bad lies. In 1997, he photographed himself playing through a vacant lot in Harlem, firing... More >>

• Claes Oldenburg's Soft Serve Escape From Late-term Abstract Expressionism at MOMA

  published April 17, 2013

  Roaming through MOMA's chockablock installation of highlights from Claes Oldenburg's early career, you can sense a febrile mind and... More >>

• Gordon Matta-Clark Spelunked the Soul of the City

  published April 10, 2013

  There is something both elegiac and death-defying about Gordon Matta-Clark's work. The short-lived Matta-Clark (1943–1978) is... More >>

• The Ugly Humors of Robert Arneson

  published March 20, 2013

  Robert Arneson (1930–92) was an incorrigible provocateur. You might recall his notorious 1981 memorial for slain San Francisco mayor... More >>

• Sink into Ragnar Kjartansson's Soggy Serenade

  published March 13, 2013

  Although the band broke up three decades ago, Abba continues to reverberate across cultural frontiers. Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson has... More >>

• "NYC 1993": The New Museum Takes Us Right Here, Right Then

  published February 20, 2013

  So now we know: If Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet in the 1980s, the art world, circa 1993, would have spawned it instead. The New... More >>

• Spooks and Aliens: Trevor Paglen Surveils the Surveillance State

  published February 13, 2013

  In a stroke of grim serendipity, Trevor Paglen's latest exhibition opened on the day the Senate began confirmation hearings on John O. Brennan,... More >>

• Leonid Sokov's Cocktails and 500 Cocks

  published February 6, 2013

  "I love him—no, no!" says a laughing Leonid Sokov when I mention Joseph Stalin. We are surrounded by guests hoisting shots of... More >>

• Song Dong's Smash

  published February 6, 2013

  You can't get more quotidian than Song Dong's large photographic self-portraits, Eating Drinking Shitting Pissing Sleeping... More >>

• Cracked Actor

  published January 16, 2013

  Renata Poljak: 'Uncertain Memories' With stirring orchestral strains on the soundtrack, teenage soldiers attack Nazis invading... More >>