- Is Helen Frankenthaler good or just influential? We still can’t tell from Roberta Smith’s descriptive review. [NY Times]
- This one’s better. Smith reviews Virginia Overton’s spare but memorable show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, helping us to solve the mystery of the coffee maker and the bathtub. We’ll have more on that in our upcoming “We Went to Chelsea.” [NY Times]
- And because we love Roberta Smith so much, her thoughts on MoCA’s problems. Our favorite bit is when she describes Deitch’s greatest mistake as being optimistic and naive enough to take the job in the first place. She also is very clear that board member Eli Broad is the biggest problem this museum has. [NYTimes]
- I want to see a contemporary art show in Boston. Robyn Day offers a clear and satisfying review of “Me Love You Long Time,” a campy-sounding show about sex work and the sex trade, from artists and activists. Sounds like playful engagement with the real world that we’re missing from Chelsea. [Big Red & Shiny]
- Facebook’s timeline changed, meh, [Facebook] and prepare to usher in the Smartwatch Revolution. [Daily Beast]
- YUHUHUCK. Rattlesnake hearts, and other snake-related photos, in Matt Eich’s Instagram coverage of the annual Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup in Texas. [The New Yorker]
- Between Gutai and Yevgeniy Fiks, Tyler Green has a strong program in his latest podcast, and, in a leader of ledes, manages to segue from that Wegman puppy GIF to Matisse sculpture. *Snaps*. [MAN, podcast] [MAN, Wegman]
- Feared critic Charlie Finch, recently of Artnet, writes a brief, but flaming defense of longtime Artnet editor and painter Walter Robinson’s paintings now up at Dorian Grey Gallery. He claims: “Yet, if only by osmosis, the great ironists of figuration, Currin, Peyton and Yuskavage and their legions of inferiors, owe everything to Walter’s painting, while , as his new show proves, he remains a better painter than them!” [anaba]
- The great author Chinua Achebe died today at the age of 82. Now’s a great time to reread “Things Fall Apart.” [CNN]
