Pick an Artist

John Haber
in New York City

Haber's Reviews . . . by Artist or Critic

Even after Postmodernism, the best way into art is through its creators and interpreters. So take your pick! I list many group shows as well, all now alphabetized. (A search accepts their names, too.)

I have loved, learned from, and derided all too many artists and critics. Here I list those with relatively longer reviews. Need more help? Try this handy glossary of art terms.

Abad

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.

Abbott

Is that plane headed for a house in Queens, and is that skyscraper falling over? Photos by Lee Friedlander and Berenice Abbott are falling for America.

Abloh

Did Virgil Abloh abandon the street? Knobkerry had a community store to match its East Village styles, but not the product photography in "The Real Thing."

Abney

Kara Walker is losing patience with Trump's America, critics, and you. Should you listen when she, Sanford Biggers, and Nina Chanel Abney boast?

Abramovic

Can performance enter the museum without the need for video, and is it then still performance? Marina Abramovic welcomes reenactment while keeping center stage.

For twelve days Marina Abramovic plays, literally, the starving artist. In The House with the Ocean View, do she and gallery visitors share an energy field or a dark complicity?

When does a woman staring back constitute a self-portrait, and when does her sexuality become instead vulnerability or even stardom? Rebecca Horn flies close to death in early videos, Marina Abramovic alleges "erotic rituals," and Roni Horn turns her camera on another woman.

Should one trace motion in painting and new media to illusion, vision, or physical sensation? "<Alt> Digital Media" and "Video Acts" get one thinking, with heavy lifting from Marina Abramovic, Bruce Nauman, and others.

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 John Coplans, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Robert Wogan, and Marina Abramovic—whose art creates a dark politics of memory.

Acconci

Did MoMA PS1 celebrate forty years as New York's pioneering arts institution by closing? Not quite, but "Forty" remembers, while Vito Acconci and Lucas Samaras forget others than themselves.

A. Adams

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?

P. Adams

Was abstract art once hard to explain? Pat Adams and Harmony Hammond still keep one guessing what they are adding and what they are taking away, while Francis Hines graciously wraps things up.

R. Adams

Did Robert Adams find comfort in walking the night, and where are the clouds by day? He and Richard Misrach photograph a disturbing human presence in the American landscape.

Adeniyi-Jones

Vivian Browne sought her heritage in Nigeria and found it in abstract art, and now Tunji Adeniyi-Jones takes his part in her two-way journey. Can an African American look at art both ways?

Adnan

"Here and Elsewhere," including Etel Adnan, traces years of conflict in art of the Arab lands. Can artists cross borders while taking sides?

Adolfsson

Do the global elite have their own playground? Isaac Julien finds sleek surfaces and untrammeled vistas, Liz Magic Laser a politician's disco ball, and Martin Adolfsson suburbia gone wild.

af Klint

Does it take a woman to discover abstraction or a vision? For Hilma af Klint it took listening to unseen messengers and building a temple, but then Wassily Kandinsky embraced the spiritual and abstract art as well.

Aguilar

Can art history give voice to the silenced? David Shrobe turns to combine paintings to frame black history, Farley Aguilar to carnival for American and Latin American cities, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya to photo-collage for portraits of racial and sexual identity.

Aho

If painting is dead, as critics used to say, it is having quite an afterlife. How do Eric Aho, Cecily Brown, Robert Mangold, Julian Schnabel, and Amy Sillman come by such abundance?

Ai

With Ai Weiwei, political art can be both crowd pleasing and dangerous. Does that mean it also can lose its dangers?

Can fences make good neighbors after all? Ai Weiwei fences in New York to open it to refugees, while Erwin Redl makes his grid of lights, and Gillie and Marc pile on the rhinos.

Ailey

Alvin Ailey created modern dance from the African American experience and a sense of beauty. Just what does that have to do with art?

Aitken

Terence Koh floods a museum with light and Jesper Just sets off fireworks, while Doug Aitken and Anthony McCall illuminate three sides of a museum tower and the darkness of a gallery. Have they located new media in sensual experience or the multiplex?

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

Which best describes video art—sculpture or spectacle? "Before Projection" claims the first and "Programmed" the second, while Erin Shirreff, Tomás Saraceno, and Doug Aitken take the course of the sun into the gallery.

Can installation art reveal a hidden New York? Doug Aitken, Carlos Amorales, Mike Nelson, and Reynold Reynolds dig deep.

Akerman

What happens when a Jew and an avant-garde film maker confronts echos of the past? Chantal Akerman looks at Eastern Europe after the Cold War.

Akomfrah

Can Tyler Mitchell make you feel good? He says so, but his black utopia, "Covid New York," "#ICPConcerned," and John Akomfrah know only loss.

Can photography see through barriers between people? Frédéric Brenner brings twelve photographers to "This Place," in the Middle East, where Shimon Attie works as well, while John Akomfrah finds poignancy in the migration across continents.

Alario

Do you believe in magic? Laura Larson connects nineteenth-century spirit photography to empty hotel rooms and contemporary adolescence, while Scott Alario finds magic in a family portrait, but Christopher Williams cuts through the mystery.

A. Albers

Was Anni Albers a painter in disguise? Long after her tenure at the Bauhaus, she took weaving seriously, while Josef Albers, too, makes a long-awaited return to New York.

J. Albers

With Homage to the Square, Josef Albers showed how long a painter could persevere in his art. Did American Modernism need his European rigor, and can Sharon Lockhart find it in dance, tapestry, and Noa Eshkol?

Was Anni Albers a painter in disguise? Long after her tenure at the Bauhaus, she took weaving seriously, while Josef Albers, too, makes a long-awaited return to New York.

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.

When Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy came to America, did they bring fine art, sound design, or more consumer products? "From the Bauhaus to the New World" has one asking, while "Bauhaus: Workshops for Modernity" shows how Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Marcel Breuer shaped modern art.

Does painting have critics "Seeing Red"? A survey at Hunter College, influenced by Josef Albers, starts with the psychology of color, but Walter Biggs, James Nares, Nancy Scheinman, and Gregg Stone have something else in mind.

Alekhuogie

Can diversity require a deeper and more personal history? David Alekhuogie, Remy Jungerman, and Guadalupe Maravilla find themselves in Africa, Suriname, Mayan civilization, Modernism, and anthropology.

Al-Hadid

Terry Winters and others leave their traces on the wall and on paper, Ethan Greenbaum in plastic, and Diana Al-Hadid in a tangled impasto. Are these still the impression of nature?

Who would dare treat the city's sacred green space as a parking lot? Virginia Overton takes a truck to Socrates Sculpture Park, Huma Bhabha huddles on the Met roof, and Diana Al-Hadid kneels in Madison Square Park for 2018 summer sculpture.

Allen

In "Headlines," such artists as Jonathan Allen, Carlo Vialu, and Amy Wilson confront, appropriate, and literally make headlines. When art and politics intersect, why must they meet on such contested ground? A second part looks at controversy surrounding the show itself.

Al-Maria

What can art do in the face of a global crisis? "Insecurities" maps refugees and shelters, while Sophia Al-Maria views "temples of capitalism" in the Gulf states, and "Tales of Our Time" finds post-industrial wastelands in China.

Almond

Has photography outgrown planet earth? Amid the impulse to think big, Darren Almond, Thomas Ruff, and Letha Wilson cover Mars, seven continents, and America's geologic present.

Alsoudani

What ever happened to violence in art about Iraq, and what makes it so sexy? Ahmed Alsoudani and Raymond Pettibon.

Althamer

Can the lessons of the Eastern Europe apply to the Bowery? Paweł Althamer calls his retrospective "The Neighbors," and this is not Mister Roger's neighborhood, but it has nothing on the anxious self-portraits of Maria Lassnig.

Altmejd

Does size matter, at least when it comes to installations? Robert Therrien brings up to date the distinction between size and scale, while David Altmejd and his angels burst right through gallery walls.

Alter

Robert Alter praises literary works like the Bible, where there are so many voices that even God may not have the final say. When he too takes up arms against dissenting voices, those left-wing academics, should postmodernists be running for cover—or chortling?

Altfest

"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?

Althoff

Is there art you cannot even give away? "Take Me (I'm Yours)," featuring Christian Boltanski, treats relational esthetics as a gift—but a yard sale by Kai Althoff is not giving anything away.

Alvanson

When an artist documents the world, is she engaged in directed dreaming? In an interview, Kristen Alvanson finds "the rigorous bastardization of dream."

Alvarado

Were so many of today's Americans once refugees on the high seas? Lisa Alvarado, Ficre Ghebreyesus, and Tom Pnini navigate a treacherous crossing.

Alÿs

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."

Ambe

Can repetition become mere showmanship and magic tricks? Gwyneth Leech and Stephen G. Rhodes are still drinking coffee, while Noriko Ambe and Simryn Gill have more discretely layered obsessions.

Amorales

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

Can installation art reveal a hidden New York? Carlos Amorales, Doug Aitken, Mike Nelson, and Reynold Reynolds dig deep.

Amos

Was Emma Amos activist or traditionalist? As an African American woman, she walks a tightrope, with style and family memories.

Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet

Can the experience of a book stretch from one mind to a household and out to an entire public world? A "Medieval Housebook" suggests how, set alongside shows of "the Medieval world" and of controversial works by Giotto and others from Assisi.

Anadol

Can the Chinese artists in "Mirror Image" really expect open doors, and can Refik Anadol really see MoMA in his machine dreams? Maybe not, but the video art in "Visionary Legacies" at the Asia Society was there well before.

Anatsui

Can an installation extend both painting and political art? El Anatsui, Wolfgang Laib, Xin Song, and Lin Yan add local and global color.

Can one conceptual artists from bad boys and museums from big-box stores? Face to face with Gelitin and El Anatsui, Roberta Smith wants to know.

Is the future of painting in breaking boundaries or the scraps of art's past, and do they even differ? El Anatsui, Mark Bradford, Lia Halloran, Jeffrey Kessel, and more are recycling abstraction.

Anderson

What distinguishes relics from ruins? Both for Ilit Azoulay are mere things, while Rachael Catharine Anderson sees still life as sexy and close to death.

Andre

Is there more to Minimalism than industrial materials and the ground beneath one's feet? Carl Andre adds rural materials and poetry, while Charles Gaines adds faces, trees, and blackness.

Carl Andre took a long last look at the oldest gallery in Soho. Is his Minimalism getting chillier in a postmodern age or even more inviting?

Had enough of the war on terrorism and struggles over memorials to 9/11? Carl Andre and M. Meshulam lower the volume.

When Carl Andre typed pillars of words and wild strings of letters, were they lessons in how to read or how not to be read? One could ask the same about text as art in "Drawing Time, Reading Time"—or art as music for William Engelen.

Andrews

Was African American art caught up in the American struggle? Benny Andrews and Jake McCord see history through the faces, black and white, they knew best—and Emily Furr explains why only the latter remains an outsider.

Angelico

Can one really reconstruct the art of Fra Angelico from his days as a workshop assistant and without his frescoes or major altarpieces? Maybe not, but one may see the birth of the Italian Renaissance instead.

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.

Anholt

Simone Fattal in Beirut, Mrinalini Mukherjee in India, and Tom Anholt and Chris Hammerlein today move casually between traditional art, Modernism, and myth. Are the myths entirely their own?

Antico

Could Renaissance art history lie off the beaten path, with a forgotten sculptor and a town in northern Italy? Antico rediscovers antiquity, while Bergamo holds painting by Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Lorenzo Lotto.

Antin

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.

Antonello

Painting is dead, people say every few years, but did it have a birth, too? The Italian Renaissance had to discover oil painting, and Antonello da Messina made that discovery stick.

Antoni

Is there really "The Female Gaze," and what could it look like? Janine Antoni and Juergen Teller parse the elements of desire.

Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? Janine Antoni, Amy Bennett, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, Peter Sarkisian, and David Shapiro put them both to the test.

Appel

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

Aranda

The International Center of Photography opens its new home on the Bowery with "Public, Private, Secret"—but which will it be? As with Julieta Aranda, it is getting harder and harder to say.

Arbus

Diane Arbus may make everyone look weird, but she first has to make everyone look. How did she catch you looking, too?

While early Diane Arbus stepped out of commercial photography, Paul Outerbridge kept returning to it. Did she find only a freak show, and did he find art?

Arcangel

What distinguishes digital art from boys playing with their boy toys? New media looks for definitions in old-fashioned contraptions by Cory Arcangel, Charlotte Becket, and Tim Hawkinson.

With museum shows of artists entering their thirties, has art found a new generation? Cory Arcangel, Laurel Nakadate, and Ryan Trecartin live between video games and the eternal present.

Archer

Identity is a matter of pride, but is it also a matter of "Grace"? Identity politics is anything but graceful in the art of Ina Archer, Charles Long, and Hannah Starkey.

Armajani

Can an Iranian be at home in America and an artist in architecture? When public art meant little more than monuments, Siah Armajani built a bridge, while Wangechi Mutu enters hundred-year-old niches on the façade of the Met.

J. Armstrong

What does this Jackson Pollock mean to you? John Armstrong thinks that art's value lies in something very personal, but the Gere collection, of some sixty early landscape sketches in oil, shows how personal reveries in art took shape not all that long ago.

S. G. Armstrong

Does abstraction today keep asking for more? Big reds by Alix Le Méléder and installation and book art by Sara Garden Armstrong are bursting out and paring back.

Artschwager

Richard Artschwager was painting realism on Celotex while a young Wade Guyton preferred video games. Are they two versions of Post-Minimalism?

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.

Asawa

Was the greatest twentieth-century Latin American artist a German Jew and a refugee? Like Ruth Asawa in wire sculpture, Gego cast a wide net in steel while drawing in space.

Ashoona

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?

Astley

Urban systems and strata may call up excavations deep within New York. Yet they supply titles for abstract art by Christopher Astley, Tony Ingrisano, Colin Keefe, and Rebecca Smith.

Atkins

Will entropy reduce art and humanity alike to dust? Ed Atkins watches it happen, while emerging artists find themselves in "Total Disbelief," and Al Taylor picks up the remains from the street.

Lynn Hershman Leeson has spent a lifetime playing others, with and without digital assistance. Can she, Ed Atkins, and Wong Ping also play themselves?

Atlas

Is Bushwick settling down? Maybe not, but Charles Atlas, Deborah Brown, and Bushwick Open Studios 2012 challenge the art fairs.

D. Attie

Want your own history of art, with echoes of Modernism and family? Make it a work of art, like Dotty Attie, Nina Katchadourian, and Mark van Yetter with wide-ranging, colliding art histories.

S. Attie

E. Auerbach

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

T. Auerbach

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

Austen

So all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely selfies? Maybe not, but others in "Grand Illusions" had their staged photography more than a century before Cindy Sherman, while Alice Austen had a reclusive stage to herself on Staten Island.

avaf

Finished works of art command high prices. Why, then, do Andy Goldsworthy, avaf, Alexander Lee, and so many others seem intent on trashing the gallery?

Avedon

Can Modernism accept fashion photography only by denying its aims? Richard Avedon can look pretty classy anyhow.

Awai

Think struggling artists have it bad? After gentrification and displacement, Nicole Awai, Julie Becker, Devin Kenny, Ebony G. Patterson, and the artists in residence in Harlem in "MOOD" seek a place to call home.

Ayón

Can an atheist celebrate African religion in Communist Cuba? Belkis Ayón crosses dark borders, like Tania Bruguera and the Caribbean artists in "Liminal Spaces."

Azoulay

What distinguishes relics from ruins? Both for Ilit Azoulay are mere things, while Rachael Catharine Anderson sees still life as sexy and close to death.

Bacon

Francis Bacon paints revulsion—against fine art, against the flesh, and against himself. Dis his raw meat ever become Modernism?

Bacher

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.

Bader

When it comes to gun culture, is political art more about the guns or about culture? Sarah Frost creates a ghostly paper arsenal, while Liz Magic Laser, Henry Taylor, and Darren Bader feel your pain.

Baechler

Can Soho recover memories of modernity? Donald Baechler, Stephen Westfall, Wendell McRae, and Tim Hawkinson take on the construction job—with everything from abstract painting and photography to machine parts.

Baerveldt

Would a feminist display an empty dress and nurse a mannequin like a sick child? Erzstbet Baerveldt reflects movingly on the perplexities of a woman artist.

Báez

Anne Katrine Senstad and Firelei Báez fill a room with blue, while Marta Minujín takes you from room to room through a neon tunnel, for what Zach Nader calls psychic pictures. Is just one installation about color and another about African American history?

What makes an official portrait official? Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald treat Barack and Michelle Obama to flora and fancy dress, while Troy Michie recalls the Zoot Suit Riots and Firelei Báez the fire of women in Harlem.

R. Bailey

Did the March on Washington demand a response from African American artists? When Romare Bearden helped found "Spiral," he could only dream how Radcliffe Bailey, "Evidence of Accumulation," and Lyle Ashton Harris would spiral outward.

S. Bailey

Remember when art took time? Simone Bailey, Janaye Brown, Claudia Joskowicz, Jorge Macchi, James Nares, Joseph Zito, and "Long Takes" experience the gallery and the brink of revolution in real time.

Baker

Hans Haacke finds that his political agenda has held up very well indeed. What about America, the halls for the Senate for Melanie Baker, and their art?

Baker Cahill

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.

Baldessari

When John Baldessari repeats I Am Making Art over and over, is he making or denying meaning—and is he making art? His conceptual art is cool, detached, ironic, and at ease with popular culture.

Baley

Which will do in art first, gentrification or trashy installations? Jonathan Schipper wants you to drive carefully in Brooklyn, while Lisa Kirk and Sarah Baley look for change to the Brooklyn Naval Yard.

Balincourt

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

Balke

What could be more extreme than death? Edvard Munch and Peder Balke find a passage to the next world at the northern extreme of this one and between the clock and the bed.

N. Ball

P. Ball

Does art take science—or vice versa? David Hockney cannot keep either one straight, while Philip Ball brings them together in a fascinating history of color.

Balla

Can a movement devoted to speed have stumbled so slowly to an ending? "Futurism: Reconstructing the Universe" looks beyond Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and fascism to set design, such women as Benedetta Cappa, and a thirty-five year history.

Balthus

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?

Baltrop

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?

Bannard

When does abstraction become new media? Max Frintrop and Luiz Zerbini draw on the digital as imagery and tool, but Walter Darby Bannard experimented all along with paint.

Banners of Persuasion

Do fabric and tapestry design still stand for multiculturalism, tradition, or women's work? Charles LeDray, "Rags to Richesse," and Banners of Persuasion range from the East Village to North Africa and from myth to a man's sexual coming of age.

Bark

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.

Barker

Who are you calling naive? Hayley Barker and Karla Knight know their way around Modernism and outsider art, Melvin "Milky" Way around biochemistry, while Eugene Von Bruenchenhein before them knew Abstract Expressionism and madness.

Barlow

Phyllida Barlow plays the Post-Minimalist, Anna Maria Maiolino the global traveler, Bernard Kirschenbaum the mad geometrician, Jim Osman the modernist, and Mateo López the designer and architect. Whose world, then, is still under construction?

Should shaped canvas stick to canvas—or the wall? Phyllida Barlow, Charles Hinman, Al Loving, and Artie Vierkant shape alternatives.

How do you get from the pyramids to the parks? Start with summer sculpture by Lauren Halsey on the Met roof, but do not forget Mary Mattingly, Sheila Pepe, and Phyllida Barlow in the great outdoors.

Did Minimalism have another, messier, and now largely forgotten history? Phyllida Barlow, Bill Bollinger, and Sheila Hicks anticipate a rediscovery of everyday objects, craft, and chaos.

Barney

One year late, Matthew Barney has finally come out on video, if only at the Guggenheim. Does his five-part cycle gives new meaning to museum blockbusters?

Is Matthew Barney or Giosetta Fioroni just a shooting star? When it comes to Barney, Lina Bertucci is doing the shooting, and the Morgan Library makes an epic from his drawings alone.

Baron

Is that a woman at a window or behind the mask? Mary Frank bridges past and present, observation and a vision, and painting and stone, while Hannelore Baron can only hope to leave a trace behind.

Barrada

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?

Does found the future of abstract art lie in "chromatic figuration"? "Overflow, Afterglow" thinks so, but Yto Barrada, Hasani Sahlehe, and Patrick Wilson know when to look back.

Bartana

For Martha Rosler, Duston Spear, Ardeshir Mohassess, and Yael Bartana, political art after 9/11 conveys urgency, but counts as politics? The answer may differ for those who lived through other wars.

Barth

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

Barthé

Video by Isaac Julien moves between Frederick Douglass and his lessons of the hour for today. Would they feel familiar to Richmond Barthé in the Harlem Renaissance?

B. Bartlett

What defines conservative art—an accessible artist, an academy of fine art, or a sober realist at home in one? The 2006 National Academy Annual emerges from 181 years of torpor and Bo Bartlett, Victor Burgin, and Alina Grasmann from the American tradition.

Does realism stand for representational truth, a style and a means of representation, or a period or two in art history? A tour from Giotto and Jan van Eyck to the American Realism of Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, and John Sloan leaves open the puzzles that Bo Bartlett and others are solving today.

J. Bartlett

With Rhapsody, Jennifer Bartlett took painting apart, but could all the king's horses after Modernism put it together again? With "Against the Grain," the Edward R. Broida collection tries to fill a gap, both in the Modern's permanent collection and contemporary art's history.

In music a recitative lies between speaking and singing. Can Jennifer Bartlett recite the story of painting?

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?

M. Bartlett

Will no one ever see the man behind the masks? Probably not, but Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Morton Bartlett play with photography, light, and shadow as well as childhood, masks, and dolls.

Bartolo di Fredi

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

Barton

Alice Neel made portraiture look easy—or uneasy. Was she a political artist all along, and what of Rick Barton, with gay desire and a restless pen?

Bas

Can museums set art apart from its commodity value, and if not, who gets to cash in? Brandeis University turns on its donors, with plans to sell off the Rose Museum, while the Brooklyn Museum panders to one, with work by Hernan Bas.

Baselitz

Fifteen years later, can Georg Baselitz still set the art world on its head? Just try it in the Guggenheim's already titled rooms.

Was postwar expressionism a bold from the blue? With Richard Pousette-Dart and, thirty years later, Georg Baselitz, it knocked the human figure off its feet.

Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat projected countless many words and images onto himself? At his retrospective, does self-expression became one more image of the artist?

Was Jean-Michel Basquiat a street artist? He responded in paint to the death of Michael Stewart, who the police arrested and killed as one, but others even then looked "Beyond the Streets."

Is it mourning or morning in America? The African American artists in "Grief and Grievance," with help from Glenn Ligon, riff on Jean-Michel Basquiat, Daniel LaRue Johnson, and Jack Whitten.

Did Jean-Michel Basquiat and other artists of the 1980s sell out, get forced out, or aspire to move out all along? "East Village USA" evokes a scene of experiment and entrepreneurship, like a trial run for art today.

Did Andy Warhol decline from artist into celebrity, or was he asking for it all along? A film about Jean-Michel Basquiat—an artist who knew celebrity all too well—does not shy away from Warhol's late work.

Bassano

How can five paintings from the Norton Simon Museum include three dogs, three mothers, and at least twice as many angels? Jacopo Bassano, Peter Paul Rubens, Guercino, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo chart the parallel development of painting in oil and a new secularism.

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."

Batchelor

Can art set color free and design free the mind, without both adding still more stifling constraints? "Color Chart: Reinventing Color," inspired by Donald Batchelor, and "Design and the Elastic Mind" pursue two postmodern utopias.

Baudelaire

If Charles Baudelaire distrusted Impressionism, how can his Paris streets stand for the birth of Modernism? I call it just part of the postmodern paradox.

Baudrillard

Did Leonardo and Paolo Veronese anticipate Beethoven, the discovery of Pluto, and Jean Baudrillard? With Peter Greenaway, the society of the spectacle has a hungering for the real.

Bauer

Philip Taaffe erects totems, John Bauer ghostly architecture, Julian Lethbridge textbook Pollocks, and Jonathan Lasker abstraction as a kind of graphic novel. Has abstract art really gotten over irony?

Bauermeister

Is it long past time to take women artists seriously. Mary Bauermeister, Judy Rifka, and Miriam Schapiro add up to more than a few all by themselves.

Bauhaus

What made people line up to see Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and the Bauhaus? Rather than relying solely on censorship, the Nazis put on display "Degenerate Art."

Baum

Is there more to art and language than an artist's book? Erica Baum, John Fyfe, Chris Jones, and Jeanne Silverthorne bring literature to installations and painting.

Bayrle

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?

Bearden

Romare Bearden identifies with the Renaissance—the one in Harlem and the one in Italy, too. Can one still call his collage Pop Art or an African American voice of the 1960s?

When Romare Bearden returned to art after a break, he turned to abstraction. How then did he recover collage and community in The Block?

Does a tribute say more about the original or the present? With "The Bearden Project" and a mural, Kira Lynn Harris and others remember Romare Bearden.

Beasley

If white America treats blacks as outsiders, does that make African American art outsider art? Lonnie Holley finds power in masks, Kevin Beasley in sound and a turbulent history.

Beatz

Is there more to African American art than portraiture and pride? Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys add celebrity, Marcus Leslie Singleton a study in relationships.

Becher

What makes a city so faceless or familiar? Bernd and Hilla Becher multiply its towers, while Anthony Hernandez sets it behind a screen, and Yvonne Jacquette takes to the sky.

Becker

Think struggling artists have it bad? After gentrification and displacement, Julie Becker, Nicole Awai, Devin Kenny, Ebony G. Patterson, and the artists in residence in Harlem in "MOOD" seek a place to call home.

Becket

What distinguishes digital art from boys playing with their boy toys? New media looks for definitions in old-fashioned contraptions by Charlotte Becket, Cory Arcangel, and Tim Hawkinson.

Beckmann

Did Max Beckmann disdain Modernism or bring it to Germany? From a brutal, mythic past to a decadent, impoverished present, Beckmann confronts a nation's masks.

It took Max Beckmann a lifetime to get to the Met. Had he found in New York an end to exile, and had it begun even earlier, in Weimar Germany after a world war?

Was there ever so self-conscious an art as German and Austrian Expressionism? "The Self-Portrait," from Egon Schiele to Max Beckmann, helps rescue the self-aware from self-conceit, while George Grosz sees in the Weimar Republic an eclipse of the sun.

What made people line up to see Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and the Bauhaus? Rather than relying solely on censorship, the Nazis put on display "Degenerate Art."

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

Beebe

Can an outsider struggle with real-world politics? Jeffrey Beebe, Ralph Fasanella, and Willem van Genk make art out of mental illness and the city.

Belag

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.

Bellini

In a secular age, is there still room for a miracle? Restoring a painting by Giovanni Bellini sheds some breathtaking light.

Paintings by Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione once belonged to the same collector in Venice. Did they share a mystery as well?

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.

Bellows

When George Bellows captures the brutality of the boxing ring, he means the brutality of the spectators most of all. Could he have played the spectator in his art?

Beloff

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

Bendolph

Mary Lee Bendolph at Gee's Bend helped make quilting an art form, while Christopher Stout calls his painted linen quilts,and Margot, Agatha Wojciechowsky, and Tamara Gonzales reach for beauty, horror, and the spirit world. Can their claims be reconciled?

Benedetta

Benjamin

Have time on your hands, like a flâneur in early modern Paris, and doubts about art? "The Arcades" pairs contemporary art and Walter Benjamin, while Louise Lawler takes one behind the scenes of a collection.

Benglis

Does a dark opening with sharp teeth, sculpture like frozen lava, or a look of desire buried in the mask of a clown suggest a male artist's wrestling with industrial scrap—not to mention deeper fears about female sexuality? Lynda Benglis and Lee Bontecou prove that a woman artist can make the story more complicated yet.

When Lynda Benglis shares space with Louise Bourgeois, can one tell the good girl from the bad girl? Anna Gaskell and Margaret Murphy prefer not to say.

Bennett

What does circuitry have in common with sprawltown? As landscape painters, Amy Bennett, Jane Freilicher, and James Hoff have many devices.

Whose life is this anyway? Amy Bennett, Robert Doisneau, and Neo Rauch 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.

Has art become more fragile or only a critic's authority? Amy Bennett, Janine Antoni, Matthew Geller, Kevin Hanley, Peter Sarkisian, and David Shapiro put them both to the test.

J. Benning

Nature is a harsh discipline, but is it also vanishing? James Benning, Peter Hutton, Matthew Jensen, and Zoe Leonard cross continents by film, photography, and Google Street View.

S. Benning

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.

R. Benson

Can photography separate industry from craft or Modernism from beauty? Richard Benson embraces them all, while "Fotoclubismo" before him in Brazil shows how photography can give women their due, too.

T. Benson

Is the revival of abstraction excess or enigma? Trudy Benson, "Pour," Canan Talon, and others pour it on.

Benton

Thomas Hart Benton fled the midwest in the name of art and New York in the name of America. Why did the controversy keep surprising him?

Bernhardt

Is there a direct line from Expressionism to the graphic novel? Joyce Pensato, Katherine Bernhardt, and Takashi Murakami get graphic.

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

Bernini

If only a great artist could "handle marble as if it were bronze," Gian Lorenzo Bernini handled them both as if they were modeling clay. Did he also leave his fingerprints in clay?

Berkenblit

Ellen Berkenblit paints defiant horses and women, Andrea Joyce Heimer parties and ancient warriors, and Heidi Hahn the very image of melancholy. Could they all be speaking up for a woman's self-definition?

Berthot

Is there more to landscape than a moment in time and point in space? Jodi Hays and Michi Meko find change coming to the New South, while Jake Berthot carries his darkness from abstraction to landscape, and Emily Nelligan returns to Maine and impending darkness.

Bertoldo

For a Renaissance artist, the sculpture garden of Lorenzo de' Medici was the place to be. Could its curator, Bertoldo di Giovanni, have influenced Michelangelo, and what of "The Renaissance of Etching"?

Bertschmann

The Times profiles Harry Bertschmann as "The Struggling Artist at Eighty-Six." Should that be grounds for hope or cynicism about art?

Bertucci

Is Matthew Barney or Giosetta Fioroni just a shooting star? When it comes to Barney, Lina Bertucci is doing the shooting, and the Morgan Library makes an epic from his drawings alone.

Betancourt

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.

Bettina

Betts

What is the price of justice? Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts plead for African Americans in prison without trial, Simone Leigh remembers black women in confinement, and Purvis Young takes it to the streets.

Beuys

Does Peter Saul owe more to MAD magazine than to Marx? Serkan Ozkaya and Joseph Beuys could well pull their activism right out of a cereal box, but it is meant for adults.

Bey

Who would star in The Americans today? The black and white photographers in "But Still, It Turns," curated by Paul Graham, and Dawoud Bey in Birmingham and Harlem cross America.

Bhabha

When do terror and loss translate into something spiritual, personal, and true to the present? Huma Bhabha and Zarina Hashmi are of very different generations and hostile nations, but in place and spirit not so very far away.

Can summer sculpture top found art or New York itself? Maybe not Rose B. Simpson crossing the city, but watch out for Petrit Halilaj on the Met roof and Huma Bhabha, Suchitra Mattai, and Cannupa Hanska Luger in the parks.

Bianchi

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?

Bibiena

Was Jean-Jacques Lequeu a visionary architect or a "white savage"? Giuseppe Galli Bibiena and his family already blurred the lines between late Baroque architecture, theater, and fantasy.

Bidlo

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?

Biesenbach

Should Klaus Biesenbach step down as MoMA's chief curator at large? Christian Viveros-Fauné thinks so, even as the museum boasts of its future with "Scenes for a New Heritage."

Can art, as Dave Hickey demands, still "civilize us"? The enormous futon that Klaus Biesenbach and Wendall Walker call Volume, SHoP's manic sculpture garden by the name of Dunescape, and "Around 1984" with its look at the 1980s do their best, but Barbara Kruger wittily refuses to try.

Biggers

If there were a uniquely black or Latin American art, would it have room for quilting or abstraction? Sanford Biggers, Dawn Williams Boyd, Odili Donald Odita, and José Parlá question identity and community.

Kara Walker is losing patience with Trump's America, critics, and you. Should you listen when she, Sanford Biggers, and Nina Chanel Abney boast?

J. Biggs

Paul Sharits uses raw film strips for shock treatments, while Janet Biggs subjects herself to shock therapy and Sara Ludy to her own subsurface hell. Which counts as experimental film?

What does shopping have in common with loss of a home? Kaari Upson turns the video camera on Costco, Omar Fast on Chinatown and Germany, Janet Biggs on Africa, and Regina José Galindo on Central America.

W. Biggs

Bilezikian

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

Bingham

As the fashion for posthumous portraits in America in "Securing the Shadow" came to a close, George Caleb Bingham kept looking past Missouri or even the Hudson River School. Why, then, did he keep returning to life on the river?

From George Caleb Bingham past Winslow Homer, painters have been telling "American Stories." But are they stories of individualism or community, of race or merit?

Binion

Is too much paint being flung around? Absolutely, but McArthur Binion, Keltie Ferris, Daniel Hesidence, Scott Ingram, Stephen Maine, and Jackie Saccoccio can still leave their physical trace and their shimmer.

Birch

Can a midcareer retrospective have three floors, one each for the artist's progenitors? Kinship for Theaster Gates includes abstract artists, potters, musicians, and the African American community, while Willie Birch knows the everyday heroism in keeping up with the news.

Bittencourt

Should artists have a natural sympathy for refugees? Maybe not, but "Senso Unico" finds exiles in Italy, "Flow" in and beyond Africa, and Julio Bittencourt in a boarded-up building in Brazil.

Black

Can art still floor you? Sam Moyer, Karla Black, Ann Shostrom, and Doug Wheeler look to marble, dust, fabric, and light to challenge the gallery floor and the weight of the art world.

Blackmon

Julie Blackmon, Clark and Pougnaud, 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?

Blaine

Does abstraction really have to stand for painting, as if meanings stood still apart from art and culture? Skip over the decades with Nell Blaine, Milton Resnick, Anne Truitt, Sean Scully, and Simon Lee, and see if the whole idea of abstraction is still standing.

N. Blake

Is it just a few years ago that Soho felt like a carnival? I offer a light, off-the-cuff summer 1994 tour, with the most space to Michael Heizer, Jenny Holzer, Laurie Simmons, and Nayland Blake—who sees that art has something in common with both sides of a certain kinky philosopher.

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 Nayland Blake, Lewis Carroll, Nan Goldin, Grace Goldsmith, Laurie Simmons, and others ask just that.

W. Blake

Which has the final word—heaven or hell, innocence or experience, text or watercolor? For William Blake, opposites always attract, repel, mingle, and even obliterate each other.

Bland

Why is craft now looming over fine art? Elias Sime looks to African markets, Suzanne Goldenberg to Minimalism and the artist's hand, Julia Bland to Native American tradition, and Talia Levitt to the Yiddish for rags.

Bleckner

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.

Bleecker

What marks the edge between city and country? Like suburbia and sprawltown, James Bleecker, Tadashi Kawamata, Patrick O'Hare, and "Degrees of Freedom" are learning to forget.

Bloom

Do collecting and mirroring add up to narcissism? Barbara Bloom puts real and imaginary museums through their paces.

Bluemner

Who knew that prewar American art had such an explosion of color? Oscar Bluemner starts as an architect and draftsman, only to reinvent himself in New York, exhibit in some heady modern company thanks to Alfred Stieglitz, and die almost forgotten.

Blum

When Rachel Whiteread casts common objects, does she leave monuments or their absence? She flirts with grandeur, but Sydney Blum restores sculpture to kitchen duty.

Blunt

How many lives had Anthony Blunt? Surely the specialist in Nicolas Poussin and the Cambridge spy have nothing at all in common—beyond the complexities of a life, of scholarship, and of their time.

Boccioni

Bochner

"The limits of my language," a philosopher wrote, "mean the limits of my world." Could Mel Bochner be feeling his limits, or has he broadened his world—even as Andy Freeberg quotes him to mock the art fairs?

Bodmer

Did it take European eyes to see Native Americans in an expanding America? Karl Bodmer paints their portrait, while Jules Tavernier comes to a ceremonial dance as participant and observer.

Boetti

Alighiero Boetti attributed his art to him and his imaginary twin. Had he escaped from Arte Povera and fine art—or found his significant other in himself?

Bogat

Have squares lost their magic? Regina Bogat, Cordy Ryman, and Hassan Sharif are maximizing Minimalism.

Bois

What most hurts contemporary art, a lowering of standards in the name of critical theory—or a commodity culture that breeds amnesia about past experiments? A new textbook by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin Buchloh upsets conservative critics by daring to ask.

B. Bollinger

Did Minimalism have another, messier, and now largely forgotten history? Bill Bollinger, Phyllida Barlow, and Sheila Hicks anticipate a rediscovery of everyday objects, craft, and chaos.

M. Bollinger

Is landscape painting, photography, and video about light or lives? Matt Bollinger, Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly, and Eleanor Ray encompass both.

Boltanski

"Be not afeard," Caliban assures himself, though "the isle is full of noises." Why is Susan Philipsz singing, Barbara Kruger shouting, Joachim Koester in a drug-induced trance, Alix Pearlstein auditioning, and Christian Boltanski hearing hearts pounding?

Can sound art become visible and a memorial reside underground? Christian Boltanski captures sunlight in the forest, while Isamu Noguchi looks beneath to "Subscapes" and remembers the atomic dead.

Is there art you cannot even give away? "Take Me (I'm Yours)," featuring Christian Boltanski, treats relational esthetics as a gift—but a yard sale by Kai Althoff is not giving anything away.

Bonnard

In almost every late interior by Pierre Bonnard, a basket or fruit dish occupies the center or foreground. Why, then, must his wife lurk in the shadows?

Bontecou

Does a dark opening with sharp teeth, sculpture like frozen lava, or a look of desire buried in the mask of a clown suggest a male artist's wrestling with industrial scrap—not to mention deeper fears about female sexuality? Lee Bontecou and Lynda Benglis prove that a woman artist can make the story more complicated yet.

Bonvicini

As installation art takes over, can any sculpture garden bother with plants or a gallery with real life? Monica Bonvicini, "In Practice" for 2007, and Jannis Kounellis give it a try.

Boothby

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

Bopape

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?

Bordowitz

What do you remember of political art, the headlines or the images? "Off the Record" remembers the anger and the irony, while Gregg Bordowitz maintains them in the face of AIDS today.

Bosquê

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

Bossard

Käthe Kollwitz made German Expressionism for the people and Paula Modersohn-Becker for the I she wished to become, while Johann Bossard may have a swastika his legacy. Could an art of love stand up to the Nazis and death?

Botero

Which supplies the most grisly erotic theory—high heels in the mud, Abu Ghraib, or gold chains? Marilyn Minter, Fernando Botero, and "The Gold Standard" know what is naughty and nice.

Botticelli

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

Did the Medici make Florence a cultural capital in the 1500s? Michelangelo and Sandro Botticelli might disagree, but Agnolo Bronzino, Jacobo da Pontormo, and Francesco Salviati show their influence on portraits and politics.

Bouabré

Must literature be lost in translation? Archie Rand commemorates the loss, while Hollis Sigler finds poetry and the devil in a sampler, and Frédéric Bruly Bouabré in West Africa supplies the alphabet.

Boucher

François Boucher found his models in women, children, and art. Can his drawings rescue for modern eyes a workaholic's confusion of artifice and observation?

Bouchet

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, while emerging artists "Make It Now."

Bourgeois

For a self-styled matriarch, Louise Bourgeois makes some of the most approachable art of the twentieth century. Why then does one fear to touch?

Was Louise Bourgeois a Freudian or a rebel against all father figures, Sigmund Freud included? Her years in therapy left no end of her words, but it takes her prints to do her justice.

With her horses, Susan Rothenberg found her "new image." But did she revive or negate painting, and why did Louise Bourgeois give it up?

When Louise Bourgeois shares space with Lynda Benglis, can one tell the good girl from the bad girl? Anna Gaskell and Margaret Murphy prefer not to say.

Boursier-Mougenot

Does sound art turn a gallery into a nightclub, a cathedral, or a wildlife preserve? While Céleste Boursier-Mougenot hears the buzz, Christian Marclay sees the score.

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

How long will Chelsea offer a mix of warehouses, idealism, chic, and big money? In late 1999 it at least has room for Postmodernism, laughter, and laser-cut tears, including Andreas Slominski, Gary Hill, Eric Magnuson, Diane Samuels, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

Bove

Can sculpture escape its monsters and its ghosts? David Smith has his ghostly presences in white and Carol Bove still brighter creatures.

Boyd

If there were a uniquely black or Latin American art, would it have room for quilting or abstraction? Dawn Williams Boyd, Sanford Biggers, Odili Donald Odita, and José Parlá question identity and community.

Boxer

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.

Boyce

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.

Brackens

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?

Bradley

Is there more to African American culture than divas and mass incarceration? Jamaal Peterman and "This Longing Vessel" have their doubts, but Garrett Bradley recovers a century-old film history.

Brady

When Martin Johnson Heade painted a gathering storm, did he foresee a war? "The Civil War and American Art" and "Photography and the American Civil War" show painters like Winslow Homer and photographers like Mathew Brady caught up in events more than they ever knew—and Hale Woodruff in his murals evoked them for the next century.

K. Bradford

When it comes to images of women, are women making the practice acceptable at last? Kyle Staver and Katherine Bradford picture them between Pop Art and myth.

M. Bradford

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?

Is the future of painting in breaking boundaries or the scraps of art's past, and do they even differ? Mark Bradford, El Anatsui, Lia Halloran, Jeffrey Kessel, and more are recycling abstraction.

Bradley

Slater Bradley, Lucas Samaras, and John F. Simon, Jr., remake their image and surrender the copyright. With Macs so expensive and bytes so cheap, what else is a digital artist to do?

Brancusi

How many postmodernists can dance on the head of a pedestal? Constantin Brancusi takes sculpture off base.

Brandt

In 1938, MoMA claimed its first solo photography exhibition. With "American Photographs," did Walker Evans seek a nation's unity, its diversity, or just a penny picture studio—and did Bill Brandt find them all, too, in England?

Brannon

Can art escape the prison house of language? Zen advertising from Matthew Brannon and a labyrinth of quotes from Joseph Kosuth lay a trap of words.

Braque

Was Cubism a movement or a vision? Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in drawing made it more than both.

With Still Life with Chair Caning, Cubism took on the real thing. Does that place Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris within the trompe l'oeil tradition?

Why did Cubism so love newsprint and the headlines? In the Leonard A. Lauder collection, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, and Pablo Picasso keep making news.

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.

Brathwaite

Did it take New York to see the city of the future? Winold Reiss found Modernism in Harlem, while Kwame Brathwaite and Ming Smith found black power on the streets and in jazz and fashion.

Brauntuch

For a time Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, and Cindy Sherman shared a Soho gallery. Did they ignite "The Pictures Generation"?

Breder

How does a photographer capture the decisive moment? For Mark Steinmetz, by waiting for lightning to strike, while Hans Breder takes photography from Surrealism to body art and Ana Mendieta, and "We Are Here" finds it on the street.

Brennan Hinton

Marcel Storr has his urban visions, but can outsider art find a home in the city? "Made in New York City" sees it there all along, while Keiran Brennan Hinton and Michael Gregory turn to interiors and landscapes.

Brenner

Breton

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.

Breuer

Can a collection from a mansion thrive on Brutalism? The Frick Madison brings decorative art and art history to Marcel Breuer.

Is the Met Breuer on Madison Avenue still the Whitney? It may look familiar, in architecture by Marcel Breuer, but it has such challenges to a canon of American art as Nasreen Mohamedi.

As Renzo Piano unleashes his imagination in the Meatpacking District, will Marcel Breuer be left behind? The Whitney weighs a move to the foot of the High Line.

Is the Met finished with Marcel Breuer? With "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible," opening the museum's presence on Madison Avenue as the Met Breuer, it sees art itself as a work in progress.

Breuning

For Robert Storr, does conceptual art embody the excesses of art-world stardom and childish installations? Olaf Breuning, Dan Fischer, and the African Americans in "30 Seconds off an Inch" point instead to conceptual arts in the plural.

Brewington

What if the taxi driver in the film of that name targeted only blacks? Arthur Jafa has a recurring nightmare, while Alexander Brewington paints a brighter African American New York at night.

Brickley

What happens when abstraction meets the ready-made gesture? Skyler Brickley, Tamar Halpern, and Amy Sillman take painting "Besides, With, Against, and Yet."

Bronson

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

Bronzino

How did Mannerism turn from agony to manner? Agnolo Bronzino drawings take him from Pontormo's studio to self-reflection, while "Rome After Raphael" watches the manner die.

Broodthaers

Was Andy Warhol serious about books as well as art, and did Marcel Broodthaers give up either one? The book art of one and the poetry of the other belong in anyone's imaginary museum.

Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition

Do summers bring out everyone's inner child or just some childish art? For 2008, Jeff Koons and Chris Burden play hard, while "Waste Not, Want Not" in Astoria and a version of "Between the Bridges" called "Relative Environment" teach one to recycle one's toys.

Not all sculpture looks better as an outdoor monument. How can Joel Shapiro, Roxy Paine, and others in Socrates Sculpture Park or the 2007 "Between the Bridges" look so graceful?

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?

For once, can outdoor sculpture evoke the lazy months of summer? In 2005, Sol LeWitt, "Set and Drift" on Governors Island, "Sport" in Socrates Sculpture Park, and an incarnation of "Between the Bridges" called "Rapture" all give it a try.

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.

Can art find common ground for grieving? A path lies from Ground Zero to Brian Tolle's Irish Hunger Memorial and the BWAC twentieth anniversary of sculpture "Between the Bridges."

Brookner

When Anita Brookner looks at Romanticism, she sees only discontents and infinite longings. So what makes Caspar David Friedrich's Moonwatchers so at home with nature in turmoil, the darkness of night, and the far-away heavens?

Brooks

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.

When Leo Marx wrote The Machine in the Garden, did he have in mind a camera—or a steam shovel preparing earthworks? David Brooks, Justine Kurland, and Erin Shirreff find America on the edge between nature and culture.

C. Brown

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

What could be more academic these days than abstract art, except maybe turning against it? Cecily Brown has to make one ask, but along with James Hyde and Rebecca Purdum, she may offer too many answers.

If painting is dead, as critics used to say, it is having quite an afterlife. How do Cecily Brown, Eric Aho, Robert Mangold, Julian Schnabel, and Amy Sillman come by such abundance?

With Cecily Brown, Nathalie Djurberg, 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?

D. Brown

Is Bushwick settling down? Maybe not, but Deborah Brown, Charles Atlas, and Bushwick Open Studios 2012 challenge the art fairs.

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

J. Brown

Remember when art took time? Janaye Brown, Simone Bailey, Claudia Joskowicz, Jorge Macchi, James Nares, Joseph Zito, and "Long Takes" experience the gallery and the brink of revolution in real time.

M. Brown

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

T. Brown

Are Sam Moyer and others in ". . ." haunted by abstraction, including their own? Trisha Brown remembers abstraction's collective dance, while Lilly Ludlow finds it a century ago on the Lower East Side.

Browne

Vivian Browne sought her heritage in Nigeria and found it in abstract art, and now Tunji Adeniyi-Jones takes his part in her two-way journey. Can an African American look at art both ways?

Bruce High Quality Foundation

If you can't beat 'em, pretend that you already have. That may describe the Bruce High Quality Foundation, but is it fair to everyday artists, dealers, and Bushwick Open Studios 2013?

Should one ban the Whitney Biennial, replaced by the "Brucennial" and the Bruce High Quality Foundation? The edgy 2012 Whitney Biennial may not back down, but it is stripped down.

Bruegel

When Pieter Bruegel and Jacob Lawrence created work for reproduction, how seriously did they take themselves and all that moralizing? Perhaps it takes a little high seriousness to create a truly popular art.

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 older art sustain new and trendy themes? The Met's Skylight Project sheds light on Pieter Bruegel and European painting.

From Jan van Eyck to Pieter Bruegel, can such shimmering, personal art have emerged from a shared workshop? When a museum opens its own back rooms, two institutions come under the spotlight.

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.

Bruguera

Can an atheist celebrate African religion in Communist Cuba? Belkis Ayón crosses dark borders, like Tania Bruguera and the Caribbean artists in "Liminal Spaces."

Buchanan

Can a sophisticated New York artist speak for the black community in the south? Beverly Buchanan draws on Minimalism with her slab works and folk art with her shacks, while Rashid Johnson stands between the present and his father.

Bucher

Between World War II and the Cold War, could artists escape a culture in ruins? Sigmar Polke turned from Neo-Expressionism to irony, while Heidi Bucher felt art as her skin.

Buchloh

Buckwalter

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

Burchfield

Charles Burchfield spent his last quarter century reworking his own visionary watercolors. Had he discovered realism, appropriation, or apocalyptic wallpaper?

Did Modernism have its romantic visions? Charles Burchfield, Mary Frank, and Agnes Pelton chart a fiery, dangerous world replete with natural histories.

Burckhardt

Can art ride out the storm? Tom Burckhardt, Maya Lin, and Anicka Yi respond to climate change with their own ecosystems.

Burden

It takes "Endurance" to survive as an artist, but what about as a spectator? Chris Burden wants to know.

Buren

Does the Guggenheim still have a place for art? Daniel Buren, Hilla Rebay, and Jorge Oteiza take one back to the Museum of Non-Objective Painting and forward once again, to museum empires and empty ramps.

Burgin

What defines conservative art—an accessible artist, an academy of fine art, or a sober realist at home in one? The 2006 National Academy Annual emerges from 181 years of torpor and Victor Burgin, Bo Bartlett, and Alina Grasmann from the American tradition.

Burnley

If self-taught photography were outsider art, would Instagram be the largest outsider art fair ever? "Photo Brut" and Gary Burnley bring out slippery notions of photography, outsider art, and European and American tradition.

Burns

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

Burr

Can appropriation art still look back? Tom Burr and Gedi Sibony undertake a renovation project for modern art.

Burri

What if Pablo Picasso never broke through? Also in Barcelona, on his way from Montevideo, Joaquín Torres-García seeks the eternal in the present, but Alberto Burri slashes and burns his way through.

Burrows

Did the 1960s have its legacy in activism and hope, racial divisions and overpopulated prisons, or life on the fringe? Danny Lyon photographed them all, as people, and Larry Burrows did the same for soldiers and civilians in Vietnam.

Buschi

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

Busse

Summer and photography alike promise a window onto nature. How, then, do Dietmar Busse, Roger Ricco, and Sharon Lockhart present "Mutilated/Cultivated Environments"?

Buvoli

Futurism found beauty in "the hood ornament of a speeding automobile," but only before a collision. Must art's bad boys, from Martin Kippenberger to Luca Buvoli, always crash the party?

Byars

Jeff Koons moves happily between child toys and porn, James Lee Byars between gilded rooms and childlike questions. How can anyone so out to shock be so eager to please?

Byrne

Have social media taken over everything? David Byrne, "Social Media," "Facetime," and "Corporations Are People Too" try something more collaborative, but also impersonal.

Still more names!

jhaber@haberarts.com