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Recognized at the time of its making as a groundbreaking painting in both Jackson Pollock’s development as an abstract artist and the field of advanced American art, Mural of 1943 is a massive work—the largest that Pollock produced, in fact—at a staggering 95 5/8 x 237 3/4 inches. These monumental dimensions were prescribed by the size of the entryway in collector and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim’s Upper East Side townhouse. At just thirty-one years old, Pollock was still an unknown quantity in July 1943 when Guggenheim commissioned Mural (she gave Pollock carte blanche); began paying him a stipend of $150 per… Full Review

Curator Carol Squiers’s overview of photography since the 1970s at the International Center of Photography poses a vexing question in its title. For most of photography’s history before this period, the dilemma was: is photography an art? Finally answered to the satisfaction of most art institutions, the central question in the last few decades has dramatically turned to the very basis of the medium’s identity, particularly given the onslaught of digital media. Rather than answering the question directly, or attempting to surmise the future, Squiers’s exhibition offered a contrast to conceptualist-based theories of recent photographic history. In the opening… Full Review

It is strangely difficult to consider what is meant by street photography, both for those who write about it and for the photographers for whom the street is their location and, to varying degrees, their subject. This is due in large part to the remarkable success of a genre that is most often championed through reference to its so-called “greats”—photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan, and Garry Winogrand—and, more tellingly still, through a familiarity and popularity that has seen it become the stock and trade of photography blogs and image-sharing sites. Much of this popularity is predicated on a… Full Review

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition on textiles entitled Interwoven Globe certainly accomplished the goal stated on the show’s website, which was to “explore the international transmittal of design from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century through the medium of textiles.” Its scope was impressive, as was the great variety of textiles on display, whether in terms of geographic and chronological span or category type: fashion, liturgical textiles, marriage quilts, raw fabric, etc. The exhibition could not have come at a better time, perfectly in step with the museum’s declared interest in becoming more global and inclusive (“one Met… Full Review

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s Holy Bible takes the form of a King James facsimile, complete with tissuey paper and gilt edges. Opening the book reveals photographs printed as if pasted over the text, with evocative scriptural phrases underlined in red. A crimson pamphlet in the back bears the essay “Divine Violence” by philosopher Adi Ophir, which argues that the biblical God regulated humanity through catastrophic violence, and that with the rise of law and the nation state, this power shifted to the human realm. This very human condition is manifested in the compelling documentary photographs, chosen by the artists… Full Review

Although entitled The Image and Its Prohibition in Jewish Antiquity, the ten essays in this collection edited by Sarah Pearce center as much on the power of the image as on its prohibition. From the remarkable wall paintings of the Dura Europos synagogue to the surprising floor mosaics featuring Helios and the zodiac, the richness of ancient Jewish art, particularly the art of Late Antiquity, is on display. Nearly half of the essays focus on the art of that period—a good choice, since much of the scholarly community, not to mention the general public, is still unfamiliar with its… Full Review

Ron Athey’s performances present bloody religious tableaux, explicit sex, and self-harming actions. Deeply disturbing and profoundly moving, these performances have garnered critical attention and generated controversy since the 1990s, when Athey’s Torture Trilogy (1992–95) became the focal point of Congressional culture war debates. The ideas and aesthetics embedded in Athey’s artworks reflect his complex, overlapping identities, both past and present: Pentecostal child prodigy, punk adolescent, heroin addict, S&M club performer, HIV-positive patient, tattooed man, avant-garde performance artist. As the first book to focus on Athey’s work, Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey addresses these and… Full Review

The 2014 Whitney Biennial, the last in the iconic Marcel Breuer building on New York's Upper East Side, is divided into three floors curated by Anthony Elms, Stuart Comer, and Michelle Grabner, respectively. Each floor has its own more-or-less open thematic, and little attempt is made to connect them aside from the premise that the curators come from outside of New York (Comer only recently took a job at the Museum of Modern Art). Nevertheless, the Whitney’s impending departure for its new Renzo Piano building downtown seems to have inspired artists throughout the exhibition to grapple with the histories, discourses… Full Review

A New Way Forward: Japanese Hanga of the 20th Century is a small exhibition, consisting of sixteen prints and one album, which will be rotated once during the course of the show. The exhibition allows viewers to compare styles and techniques in prints of the shin hanga lineage with those of the sōsaku hanga group. Shin hanga (new prints) as a practice was organized by Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885–1962) in Tokyo, who found artists willing to design prints with a Westernized drawing style, volume, atmosphere, and perspective on traditional themes, especially beauties (bijin), landscapes or cityscapes, and kabuki actors… Full Review

A monumental sculpture made with over two hundred recycled speaker boxes sourced from the Seattle area, William Cordova’s machu picchu after dark (pa’ victoria santa cruz macario sakay y aaron dixon) (2003–14) was shown at the Seattle Art Museum alongside the massive and largely historical exhibition Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and Moon. Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, this exhibition claimed to survey 3000 years of art and culture from a civilization turned nation. A golden “octopus,” or eight-armed forehead ornament, from the Mochica culture, which had been stolen during the 1980s and repatriated… Full Review