Janet Tyson

Why Things are Falling Apart is a book I bought, then put off reading because, not having done my homework about the author, I feared it was written by some Tea Party wingnut.

  Cloaked in blue tarps, the wood piles behind our house shrink daily as we burn the stuff to stay warm. There is one—our shelter-magazine centerfold stack—which we haven’t touched.…

Lynn Barber lives in Rapid City, South Dakota. She has degrees in microbiology and law, and intermittently works as a patent attorney. She enjoys playing the hammer dulcimer and the…

Amon G. Carter was a man of iron will, blunt charm and big ideas. Her father’s daughter, Ruth Carter Stevenson, inherited his intractibility and vision but thinly cloaked it with…

My first and likely only prediction for visual art in 2013: thanks to the retrospective that was organized by and debuted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Ken…

Dave Hickey recently announced his retirement from art criticism, citing his disgust with the circus that the art world—particularly the world of contemporary art—has become. He also, in an article published…

  Forget iPhone 5. Instead of buying the latest Apple gadget, I’ve added Magritte VI to my credit card bill. Nothing Apple sells stirs my covetousness like a book on Magritte–and…

Martin Parr’s newish book, Up and Down Peachtree, represents the South’s shiny capital with a mix of mean-spiritedness and generosity that recalls Richard Avedon’s long-ago treatment of the American West.…

I was a late-comer to Francesca Woodman‘s pictures but liked them right away. That was around 2003, and Woodman’s surrealism provided me with a lyrical counterpart to René Magritte’s poetically banal imagery.…

    This is an epic year for England. Well, for the UK, but mostly England. The Diamond Jubilee. The Olympics. The Tories sinking ever deeper into their own doo doo.…

I’ve loved Mona Hatoum‘s work since I first saw it in 1993 at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. The exhibition was called Four Rooms and Hatoum was one of…

  Ever discover what you want to write about something, after reading what someone else wrote about something else? Happens to me all the time—most recently, when I read an…

    A few years ago, when I made large sculpture out of Lego pieces, I typically dismantled works after they were shown so that I could reuse the bricks for new…

      Re-booting my brain after being challenged–Challenged!–on my Feeding the Beast blog.   So I’ve found a couple sources of useful ideas. One is a facebook post by Ken Johnson, whose book, Are You Experienced:…

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Looking at two new books that recently landed in my lap, I’m reminded of Dave Hickey’s description of the therapeutic institution. That would be the museum or ICA or biennial…

  Local media enthusiasm has helped make ArtPrize an even bigger deal than its money has. Photo credit: Janet Tyson ArtPrize is an annual competition that features thousands of artworks ranging…

Material girl that I am, I love books. Holding them, smelling them, turning their pages, penciling notes in their margins. Finishing one and closing it with a satisfying thap. The…

It’s not the elusive Marfa Lights or the filming of Edna Ferber’s Giant or, for that matter, its stalwart ranching community, for which the town of Marfa, Texas, is best…

  It glides in under the radar while I’m enjoying a patch of midday sun or clear night sky: without warning, I miss Texas. Not the heat and air pollution…