Jackson Pollock

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Drawn together: The MFA's 'Fresh Ink'

Plus Neal Rantoul and 'Boston Does Boston'
The Museum of Fine Arts' "Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition" exhibit sounds like a cool idea.
By GREG COOK | December 15, 2010

Review: The Addison Gallery returns

Welcome back
Closed for two years of renovation and expansion, the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy reopened this past Tuesday with "Inside, Outside, Upstairs, Downstairs: The Addison Anew," nearly 400 greatest hits from its great collection.
By GREG COOK | September 08, 2010

Cube root

Roni Horn at the ICA, Andrea Fraser at Harvard
"I've been told it's the largest single piece of glass in the world," Helen Molesworth, the Institute of Contemporary Art's new chief curator, said at a press preview last week.
By GREG COOK | March 01, 2010

Alternative universe

Boston Expressionism in context
In the 1930s and '40s, Boston painters developed a moody, mythic realism. They mixed social satire with depictions of street scenes, Biblical scenes, and mystical symbolic narratives, all of it darkened by the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II.
By GREG COOK | December 16, 2009

Epic Albanian foodstory

A mother never made it to America, but her chicken pie did.
Portland resident Bill Dilios taught me how to make his favorite dish from Albania, kotopita.
By LINDSAY STERLING | November 18, 2009

Play by Play: September 25, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 22, 2009

Play by play: September 18, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 17, 2009

Autumn garden

Fall on Boston boards
It's freshman and sophomore year on the Boston rialto, with American Repertory Theater artistic director Diane Paulus introducing her first season and Huntington Theatre Company honcho Peter DuBois endeavoring to survive his second.
By CAROLYN CLAY | September 14, 2009

The sunny side of the street

Politics and other mistakes
It's good to be known as an optimist. It keeps people from realizing you're actually a boob.
By AL DIAMON | July 22, 2009

Primitive soul

Anne Siems and the folk revival
Anne Siems's paintings are time machines teleporting you back to the early days of our American republic. In her show at Walker Contemporary, the German-born, Seattle-based artist channels the endearing awkwardness of artists like John Brewster Jr., who roamed NE at the start of the 19th century painting portraits.
By GREG COOK | July 14, 2009

Black and white and red all over

The stylish ultraviolence of MadWorld
The most common problem afflicting video games these days is a deficit of imagination. So many releases look alike, sound alike, and play alike.
By MITCH KRPATA | April 02, 2009

Neo-rococo

Laurel Sparks at Yezerski, plus Julie Miller, Sheila Gallagher, Darren Foote, and Michael Ellis
Jamaica Plain's Laurel Sparks has become one of our best local abstract painters, as her new collection of bright, fun, juicy, abstracted chandeliers at Howard Yezerski Gallery attests.
By GREG COOK | February 20, 2009

Worlds collide

Bryce Dessner and Matthew Ritchie at MIT
A week ago Wednesday and Thursday, a curious collection of young scruffy indie kids and older scruffy MIT eggheads converged on the school's Broad Institute for two nights of free music, art, and lecture dubbed "Darkness Visible."
By WILL SPITZ | February 03, 2009

The thinker at mid century

Size matters
A long time ago (say 70 years), in a galaxy far, far away (New York), a tired band of rebels ached to be the Next Big Thing.
By GREG COOK | January 27, 2009

Elements + islands

Dennis Pinette's identity is on display at CMCA
Dennis Pinette, who was born in the Penobscot Bay town of Belfast and lives there still, makes completely contemporary paintings whose roots extend back through those epic early days of American painting.
By KEN GREENLEAF | November 05, 2008

Rough justice

The Lieutenant of Inishmore; How Many Miles to Basra?; Legally Blonde the Musical
Except that it's a black farce, not a tragedy, you could call The Lieutenant of Inishmore Martin McDonagh's Titus Andronicus .
By CAROLYN CLAY | November 05, 2008

Chihuly lite

RISD’s sprawling exhibit could use more ‘wow’
The main problem with “Chihuly At RISD,” on view at the RISD Museum’s new Chace Center (through January 4), is that there’s not enough Dale Chihuly here.
By GREG COOK | October 16, 2008

Gimme some truth

In praise of Ultimate Fighting
Can it be a coincidence, I ask rhetorically, that we have all of a sudden become very interested in watching highly trained men smack the shit out of each other?
By JAMES PARKER | June 25, 2008

Fringe festival

Galleries off the beaten path
Off the beaten path, the fringes of Boston's gallery scene are seeing new development, and even expansion.
By GREG COOK | June 10, 2008

Greatest hits

RISD shows off its new and renovated galleries
The RISD Museum continues its top to bottom renovation and expansion.
By GREG COOK | June 04, 2008

Gods and monsters — and David Hasselhoff

Art: 2007 in review
The Museum of Fine Arts did big things with Napoleon and Edward Hopper, pictures of prostitutes graced the walls of Boston’s two biggest art museums, and all hell broke loose when the Mooninites invaded.
By GREG COOK | December 17, 2007

A case of identity

'Pollock Matters' at Boston College
In 2002, the year after his mother died, as Alex Matter tells it, he found a brown paper package in his father’s storage locker on Long Island.
By GREG COOK | September 04, 2007

Toys are us

Transformers puts the commercial back into cinema
Transformers is a movie in disguise.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 03, 2007

The case of the zombie Pollocks

Art sleuthing
On Monday, Harvard researchers kicked a hornets’ nest that has been buzzing in the art world since the discovery of 32 drippy abstract paintings claimed to be previously unknown works by Jackson Pollock.
By GREG COOK | January 31, 2007

Ah, painting!

At the DeCordova, abstraction is new again
“Big Bang! Abstract Painting for the 21st Century” rounds up 15 painters who reinvigorate abstraction by drawing inspiration and imagery from computers, stars and constellations, quantum physics, data mapping, the Internet, genetics, squiggly microscopic critters.
By GREG COOK | January 29, 2007

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