Haber's Art Reviews: Browse by Artist (S-U)

Pick from More Artists

John Haber
in New York City

Saar

Betye Saar was a lifelong collector, for tokens of family, memory, cultural stereotypes, and African American artistry. How, then, did she produce such scathing and affirming art?

What does it take to fill the expanded MoMA? "Sur Moderno" journeys from Latin America to abstraction, Pope.L crawls more than its length, and Betye Saar looks through a black girl's window.

Saarinen

When did modern architecture give way to colors and curves? Eero Saarinen, Charles Gwathmey, and Josiah McElheny each give the International Style a different terminus.

Saccoccio

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

Sachs

Can a tea ceremony come to Mars, a vision of heaven to New Jersey, and gardens to the Meatpacking District? Tom Sachs, Rachel Harrison, and Virginia Overton are not expecting miracles.

With his mission to Mars, Tom Sachs is lost in space, while Tomás Saraceno builds his Cloud City on the roof of the Met. Which of them is dreaming?

Saenredam

Will the age of the virtual museum dispel the aura of art—or add a new veneration of images? Something other than religion can go on anyway in painting, even within the confines of majestic seventeenth-century cathedrals by Pieter Saenredam.

Sahlehe

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.

Saint-Aubin

Can a little-known Rococo artist find a home in the age of graphic novels? Gabriel de Saint-Aubin cannot stop drawing.

Saint Phalle

Can KAWS (or Brian Donnelly) and Alex Da Corte get away with merchandising cartoons as art? Maybe so, but Niki de Saint Phalle was there before the bad boys, with playgrounds for very adult children.

Sakhaeifar

From Havana to Tehran and Angola, do Yoan Capote, Farideh Sakhaeifar, and Jo Ratcliffe fear censorship? They worry more about the people playing along.

Sala

For Laura Poitras and Anri Sala, politics meets immersive new media. Can documentary filmmaking and classical music adapt to a museum retrospective?

Salcedo

Are Latin America and the north "Under the Same Sun"? Doris Salcedo and others find themselves caught between terror and the everyday—or between "tropical sensibility" and "modernities."

Salle

I came to New York to look at modern art, only to watch it fall apart. Early David Salle and late Andy Warhol were both painting the death of painting.

Do David Salle, Dosso Dossi, and Julião Sarmento all spin postmodern allegories? Something funny happens to fables without a subtext.

Salmon

Who owns history, including art history? The question takes on special urgency in black America—and for Keris Salmon, Titus Kaphar, and Kehinde Wiley.

Saltz

After decades of feminist criticism, why does MoMA display so few women artists? Jerry Saltz asks, just when late Pablo Picasso draws praise for Modernism's most famous dead white male.

Has the Web made theory obsolete? Jerry Saltz asks Facebook "friends" for their favorite critic, but I vote for myself.

Is it unfair to contemporary art to compare it to Mannerism—or unfair to Mannerism? Jerry Saltz and Peter Schjeldahl look beyond Neo-Mannerism, while the Wagner collection makes contemporary art look all the more mannered.

Angered by a critic of art as mainstream as Rockefeller Center, Jerry Saltz tells him to make his own damn art. When Tino Sehgal creates performances by others, including the viewer, does he really invite just that?

When so many Chelsea galleries jump-start their fall openings, has contemporary art lost the "battle for Babylon"? Jerry Saltz finds hope on the margins, but Bill Owens and others leave one unsure.

"Is the art market making us stupid?" Jerry Saltz worries, and Jed Perl is dead certain, but "Private Treasures" look smart.

"Not for Sale" takes work that artists have kept for themselves, but has P.S. 1 managed not to sell out? Jerry Saltz has his doubts.

Salviati

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.

Samaha

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

Samaras

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.

Lucas Samaras, Slater Bradley, 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?

Cindy Sherman exposes Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lucas Samaras keeps exposing himself. Who does that leave for a photograph to discover?

Samuel

How does Bridget Riley make one's head spin, and how could Jacob Samuel as a collaborator and printmaker make an impact, too? It takes stepping back and taking care.

Samuels

So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Diane Samuels, Michal Rovner, Julian Stanczak, and Jennifer Steinkamp, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.

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.

SANAA

The New Museum, in architecture by SANAA, promises a rebirth on the Bowery, but its opening show, "Unmonumental" (parodied by Howard Saunders as "URmonumental"), promises to retain the spirit of the Lower East Side. Which will win out?

Roberto Burle Marx, SANAA, and "A Japanese Constellation" make design a collaboration with others and the garden. Is there more to modern architecture than the wow?

Sánchez

Does it take a woman to discover the dignity of native people? For Tarsila do Amaral it took Cubism and cannibals, and for Adriana Varejão it takes Native American traditions, while Zilia Sánchez finds very different heroines and warriors.

Sandback

Symmetry is back, but are artists opening or shutting doors? Fred Sandback, Ron Gorchov, Mark Grotjahn, Ellsworth Kelly, and Catherine Yass start knocking.

Did Minimalism ever get off the ground? François Morellet may have you looking up, and so will Fred Sandback in a show with Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and John McCracken.

Can anyone still follow the thread of art history into Minimalism and beyond? With the flimsiest acrylic thread, Fred Sandback can seem to alter the very air in which one moves.

Sander

Hands and faces speak volumes for Dorothea Lange. Did she look for types, like August Sander before her, only to find individuals?

Santiago

Is diversity in art always a cause for celebration? Curtis Talwst Santiago has it explode into carnival, while Gabrielle l'Hirondelle Hill indulges in Native American tobacco, and Ebecho Muslimova shows off her studio and her butt.

Santin

Has fashion become conceptual art and painting become fabric? Eckhaus Latta puts on a fashion show, while Antonio Santin spins oil into tapestry.

Saraceno

Is Minimalism or sound art often a little too quiet? Jennie C. Jones and Tomás Saraceno have you listening to your fears.

With his mission to Mars, Tom Sachs is lost in space, while Tomás Saraceno builds his Cloud City on the roof of the Met. Which of them is dreaming?

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.

Sargent

Could nineteenth-century art let its hair down? John Singer Sargent had more daring and reserve in portraits of artists and friends—including Henry James, who knew him and other American artists well.

How does Edouard Manet keep you from looking away, whatever that says about you? John Singer Sargent was already bored, as he turned to charcoal.

Even a revolution needs to find its public, in art or in life. John Singer Sargent drew parodies and praise for a family portrait, and Benjamin Franklin sat often for portraits at the French court, including two by Joseph Siffred Duplessis.

John Singer Sargent could do anything. So you may want to say after seeing his watercolors or "The Impressionist Line," drawings from the Clark Institute from Edgar Degas to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but what exactly could he do?

Must Jewish collectors stay true to their heritage? The Sassoons cultivated portraits by John Singer Sargent and friends in high places, while the Newman Foundation sees Barnett Newman in art today.

John Singer Sargent returned again and again to portraits of children. How many adults haunt those images, and how many of them are alive today?

Can a gift renew a museum's purpose or pervert it? The Eveillard gift brings John Singer Sargent and works on paper to the Frick, while the Gregory gift brings the decorative arts and Rosalba Carriera.

When Napoleon turned his cannons on Spain, he also stirred up art, with a new taste for the Spanish Baroque. What happens when art history rolls out the canon, from Diego Velázquez and Francisco ea Goya all the way to Edouard Manet and John Singer Sargent?

Stung by Salon criticism, Edouard Manet did the editing that left a great painting or two. Was he less of a modern after all than John Singer Sargent, who gave up society portraits for landscape?

Sarkisian

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

Postmodernism calls practically everything text, including casual words and creative acts. Can Maureen Conner, Ronald Jones, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Sarkisian, Mark Sheinkman, and others avoid reprint corrections with a hand-made book?

Can digital art make a revolution while appropriating the same old world? Compare "BitStreams" and "Data Dynamics" to the obsessions, intimacy, and invasions of privacy in such gallery artists as Peter Sarkisian and Gary Hume.

Sarmento

Do Julião Sarmento, Dosso Dossi, and David Salle all spin postmodern allegories? Something funny happens to fables without a subtext.

Sarto

Was Andrea del Sarto the faultless painter? In drawings and on canvas, he pursued the anxious moment, to a fault.

When Andrea del Sarto paints The Sacrifice of Isaac, should one identify with Abraham's dilemma or the look in Isaac's eyes? A selection of "European Painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art" offers an unusually intimate history of Western art.

Sasamoto

When artists bring nature into the gallery, is it alive? Garret Kane fishes in the Prow, Cosima von Bonin at the beach, and Aki Sasamoto in the wash, and the 2016 Governors Island Art Fair washes onshore.

Saul

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.

H. Saunders

R. Saunders

Must as outsider artist live outside? Anthony Dominguez did, while Mary Lovelace O'Neal took to New York in the dark of night, and Raymond Saunders borrows from and casts his shadow on the streets.

Savdie

Are abstract artists abstracting away and, if so, from what? "Abstraction from Nature" takes a broad view of both its terms, while JP Munro turns them into myth and Ilana Savdie a carnival.

Savedoff

Will people maintain their trust in photography, as a passive trace of real, in the digital age? Barbara Savedoff has her doubts, but Walker Evans and Sylvia Mendel may put that trust in question in the first place.

Saville

For "Sensation" in Brooklyn, British artists and New York politicians recycle old scripts, nearly a decade after appropriation art held sway. With Jenny Saville, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Damien Hirst, and Chris Ofili, to name just a few, what accounts for the shock of the not so new, and can a savvy analysis by Hal Foster pin it down?

Meyer Schapiro

Is modern art a fake? Despite such eloquent defenders as Meyer Schapiro, it was still fighting that charge when Postmodernism turned up to agree.

Who is that couple in Jan van Eyck's most famous painting, face front and hands joined, as if for a solemn ceremony? Three books seek the truth in painting and a new art history, just as Meyer Schapiro once had faced an enigmatic pair of shoes by Vincent van Gogh.

Was his wife wife sour and inhospitable or, as Meyer Schapiro wrote, the "tender image of esthetic feeling"? Paul Cézanne struggled with making a marriage and making meaning, but soon Egon Schiele used portraits to make peace with the demons who never left.

Cézanne and Pollock both started off as expressionists, and then both created a classicism teeming with emotion. But what in Jackson Pollock carries the sensuality that Meyer Schapiro found in Paul Cézanne's apples?

Miriam Schapiro

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

(Note: if you meant David or Joel Shapiro, look down.)

Scheibitz

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.

Scheinman

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

Schendel

When does drawing stop and calligraphy or weaving begin? Cui Fei, Paul Glabicki, Lee Mingwei, León Ferrari, and Mira Schendel leave art hanging by a thread.

Schiele

Are Egon Schiele and Expressionism the ancestors of today's "shock art"? In landscapes and prints, it depends on who is shocking whom.

Was his wife sour and inhospitable or, as Meyer Schapiro wrote, the "tender image of esthetic feeling"? Paul Cézanne struggled with making a marriage and making meaning, but soon Egon Schiele used portraits to make peace with the demons who never left.

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 color is a striped dress? Even after a thorough cleaning, Edouard Manet piles on brushstrokes and enigmas, while Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Pablo Picasso pick up portrayals of women and the origins of Modernism.

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

Schipper

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.

Schjeldahl

Peter Schjeldahl announced his fatal illness with "The Art of Dying," amd Roberta Smith has since retired from The Times. Will critics still teach people how to look?

Is art at the mercy of big money, and what about New York City? Peter Schjeldahl and Edward Winkleman debate the spectacle.

Schlingensief

What could be more "unmonumental" than Ground Zero after 9/11? Isa Genzken fills it with her rootless, anxious assemblages, while Christoph Schlingensief finds an even messier and more violent German history.

Schnabel

What lies between self-expression and postmodern theater? Probably sex, smashed dishes, and broken promises, plus a visit to Soho along with Sandro Chia, Tracey Emin, Julian Schnabel, and Philip Taaffe.

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

Did Andy Warhol decline from artist into celebrity, or was he asking for it all along? A film by Julian Schnabel, who knew celebrity all too well, makes an eerie backdrop for yet more of Warhol's late work.

Schneemann

Will Carolee Schneemann die a painter? Maybe, but only if she does so in performance.

Did Nam June Paik invent video art? Charlotte Moorman and and Carolee Schneemann had their hand in performance and Lillian Schwartz her computer art, but Looking Glass would rather invoke arcade games.

Schnitger

"Cursed be forever the useless dreamer"—but what about the artist? Lara Schnitger and Fred Tomaselli deal in curses, rituals, and dreams, but George Condo knows that phony transgression may prove safer after all.

Schoolwerth

Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Pieter Schoolwerth, Do Ho Suh, Khalif Kelly, and the video artists in "Closer Now" might agree to disagree.

Schor

Are you a feminist artist? Mira Schor wants to know, and Anna Ostoya wants revenge.

Schori

Who needs shaped canvas to reshape the rectangle? Don Voisine does it with geometry, Angelika Schori with both sides of the picture plane, and Al Loving with paint and paper.

Schulnik

One fills mad landscapes with eyes and snakes, one has struggled with mental illness and Minimalism, one still believes in ghosts, and one bundles trash from the street. So which of Domenico Zindato, Martin Thompson, Allison Schulnik, and Judith Scott is making outsider art?

Schulte

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.

Schütte

Conceptual art becomes material for Thomas Schütte and media studies for Rodney Graham. Are they and the KAWS collection just clowning around?

Schutz

Does a white woman have the right to portray the death of Emmett Till? Dana Schutz stirs controversy at the 2017 Whitney Biennial.

How big can art get, and will it then outgrow its own myths? Dana Schutz, Ron Mueck, Neo Rauch, and Tom Thayer see art as a matter of life and death.

Are women from another planet? Jordan Kasey finds them in other worlds, Rita Lundqvist in a Nordic landscape, and Dana Schutz in the clouds, but still as familiar as planet earth.

Schwaiger

Now that anything goes, where can it stop? Helen Marten and, at a gallery with Kathy Ruttenberg, Lily Wong reach beyond conceptual art and fantasy to painting, while Elizabeth Schwaiger all but paints herself out of her studio.

Schwartz

Schwitters

You call this painting? Frank Stella may have given up on paint, but not on the word, while Kurt Schwitters brings to newsprint and collage the texture of an old master.

Scott

One fills mad landscapes with eyes and snakes, one has struggled with mental illness and Minimalism, one still believes in ghosts, and and one bundles trash from the street. So which of Domenico Zindato, Martin Thompson, Allison Schulnik, and Judith Scott is making outsider art?

Scully

Sean Scully and Brice Marden still treat a painting as both an object and a study in studio light. Why, then, does their abstraction cherish the cracks in a wall of light?

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

Segal

As a humanist and Jew, George Segal probes art's conscience. Do his body casts only bury it in their whiteness?

Segers

When Caravaggio murdered and Hercules Segers fell downstairs, did they take responsibility? With late work by one and landscapes by the other, they both bear serious responsibility for the Baroque.

Sehgal

Seibel

Can site-specific art look behind the wall? Philip Seibel, Anne Libby, Susan Philipsz, and Jan Tichy penetrate the gallery's light, sound, and infrastructure.

Seidl

Can an artist play at once abstract painter, architect, photographer, and voyeur? Claire Seidl, David Ersser, Susan Leopold, and Christoph Morlinghaus can, by going through the roof.

If painting is not dead, has abstraction survived as mere recitation? Clare Seidl, Suzan Frecon, Brice Marden, David Novros, and Victor Pesce try additions, overlays, and a heart of gold.

Seidner

Is "ICP at 50" still open to change? What Cornell Capa founded to promote "concerned" photography also displays a fashion photographer who died of AIDS in David Seidner.

Semmel

Can a woman reclaim her body and her autonomy from the male gaze? For Joan Semmel, Leonor Fini in Surrealism, and Marilyn Minter, the next step is to reclaim it from her own.

Senstad

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?

Sepuya

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 and Paul Mpagi Sepuya to photo-collage for portraits of racial and sexual identity.

Serra

Everyone coming to Richard Serra will have that special moment, when the light bulb comes on and for a time everything seems so clear. At his retrospective and a retrospective of Serra drawings, should you trust it?

What does one do with twelve-ton sculpture disguised as Minimalism? When it comes to Richard Serra, take a walk through it and surrender to the difference.

Does Richard Serra give one time to ask why this is art? With his early work and drawings, tread carefully.

As Richard Serra notes, "Art has always found ways to intervene, to critique." Would he change his mind after fall openings, and do they still matter in a world of commerce and art fairs?

With Minimalism, does art surrender to experience, or does the viewer surrender to the art? With a factory redesign by Robert Irwin, 300,000 square feet, and big shows for Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, Andy Warhol, and many more, Dia:Beacon assumes control.

Serrano

Which opens art most to the masses, Chelsea in September 2008 or Damien Hirst at auction? Either way, it entails a fascination with toilet jokes and Andres Serrano.

Seurat

Can one have Impressionism without the color? In his drawings, Georges Seurat finds luminosity in shades of black.

With his Circus Sideshow, did Georges Seurat capture a tawdry spectacle or the theater of modern life? Unlike for Claude Monet and others in "Public Parks, Private Gardens," this is no Sunday walk in the park.

Did followers of Georges Seurat miss the boat to Modernism? From Paul Signac to Helen Frankenthaler and her Lighthouse series, his independence of color has had a sustained influence.

Shabazz

Joana Choumali rises at dawn, but not for a moment to herself alone. Can she, Deana Lawson, and Jamel Shabazz find a refuge and a place for black photography in the lives of others?

Shahbazi

Can there be signs of life in the Mideast and Asia? Barry Frydlender spots them outside his window in Tel Aviv. Shirana Shahbazi and Igael Shemtov on their way home, and Stephen Shore everywhere in that war-torn region.

Shah

If any city were to follow to Ezra's Pound's directions to "make it new," it ought to be New York. Seher Shah, Paul Graham, and Lothar Osterburg still invent their city of dreams.

Shakespeare

If I claim to be a feminist and postmodernist, what am I doing sending a valentine from Romeo and Juliet? I must have been lost in Juliet's words.

D. Shapiro

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

J. Shapiro

Anish Kapoor likes dark interiors and sweeping curves, Mark di Suvero builds wide-open towers, and Joel Shapiro started small, spare, and evocative. Do any of them deserve the label post-Minimalism?

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?

(Note: if you meant Meyer Schapiro, look up.)

Sharif

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

Sharits

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?

Shaw

There is appropriation, for Sally Smart and artists in miniature, and then there is hoarding. Jim Shaw seems not have let go of anything since he discovered comic books and sex—and who is to say which to him matters more?

It takes only a small step to proceed from chaos to mythos. Can that explain "Organizing Chaos," Tunga, and The Donner Party by Jim Shaw?

Shawky

Were the Crusades a mere puppet show—or a lecture gone wrong? In video by Wael Shawky and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, the encounter between east and west becomes deadly.

Shear

What does it take for drawings to keep up with the present? "100 Drawings from Now" finds upheaval and isolation, while the Jack Shear collection has still more drawings but a lean sensibility.

Shechet

Do you go to the Frick or the Rococo to escape this world? Jean Antoine Watteau finds a world at war and Arlene Shechet its porcelain, while Pierre Gouthière gilds the lily.

Sheeler

In 1927, Ford Motor Company welcomed Charles Sheeler. Should a critic still care decades later, when Andrew Moore finds Detroit in decay?

Sheinkman

Sometimes art aspires to a science experiment. With Mark Sheinkman, David Fried, Antony Gormley, Jeppe Hein, and Eileen Quinlan, is it all done with smoke and mirrors?

Shelley

Is there a point of intersection between African American and Jewish Art? With "We Fight to Build a Free World," Jonathan Horowitz fights the good fight, but Ward Shelley and Douglas Paulson see American politics as the scene of a crime.

Shemtov

Shepherd

Was Ida Kohlmeyer looking to painting's future with her symbols or for a way out? She, Ana Tiscornia, and Kate Shepherd, too, apply minimal means to a maximal case for women in abstract art.

Boys will be boys, right? That may excuse Bruce Nauman, but Eileen Brady Nelson and Kate Shepherd do not just indulge in girl talk.

Sherald

Who did more to help the other, Amy Sherald or Michelle Obama? Sherald's stylish official portraits make it hard to know, while John Dowell recalls who in America picked cotton and Jordan Casteel who aspires to African American art.

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.

B. M. Sherman

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?

C. Sherman

Does that photo seem familiar? For Cindy Sherman, call it a self-portrait, a pose, or simply an image to remember.

Untitled Film Stills showed Cindy Sherman as infinitely malleable. How could she or "Fashioning Fiction" find anything left to change?

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

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.

Can appropriation ruin Cindy Sherman or entire neighborhoods? James Franco and Urs Fischer treat it as the privilege of wealth, but "The Real Estate Show" and Shelley Reed look to a more savvy past.

Cindy Sherman exposes Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lucas Samaras keeps exposing himself. Who does that leave for a photograph to discover?

Did Monderism have a choice, and does the Museum of Modern Art now? In "Making Choices: 1920–1960," Cindy Sherman with her shards of an ego, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor by Frank Stella, and Walker Evans's collision with reality each get to define modern art's first decades of triumph.

Shieh

Can immigrants leave their memories behind? Sheida Soleimani and Daniel Shieh can ask their parents, "Immersion" everywhere that they have lived.

Shiferaw

Does light take time to reach us? That could be the precondition of landscape for Stacy Lynn Waddell and for white blindness to the nght for Tariku Shiferaw, but African Americans in "Going Dark" are always on the edge of visibility.

Shiota

Is there a thread connecting Chiharu Shiota, Amy Cutler, Cui Fei, and Jonah Groeneboer? Their weave catches added dimensions, female communities, private writing, and the viewer.

Shirreff

Can Minimalism abandon industrial precision for earth? Grace Knowlton crafts shattered orbs and dirt piles, while Erin Shirreff, Derek Franklin, and Anya Gallaccio look to sculpture for revitalization.

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

SHoP

Can art, as Dave Hickey demands, still "civilize us"? The enormous futon that Klaus Biesenbach and Wendall Walker call Volume, manic sculpture from SHoP 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.

Shore and Fisher

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

S. Shore

Has Stephen Shore abandoned photography for Instagram or saved it? He still has raises tough questions about you are there, long after William Eggleston found color in Los Alamos.

Shostrom

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.

Shotz

If Cubism arose today, would it be painting, sculpture, photography, or computer graphics? Alyson Shotz, Laura Letinsky, and Serge Alain Nitegeka explore the possibilities and then some.

When Terry Winters paints his Knotted Graphs, is he doing math or illustrating it? Alyson Shotz, "Measure for Measure, and Winters raise questions about art and mathematics.

Shrobe

Shunk-Kender

Does a portrait of the artist transcend ego? With Shunk-Kender and Duane Michals, an artist is on both sides of the camera.

Sibony

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

If anything goes, can that include Minimalism? In a hyperactive art world, Gedi Sibony, Richard Rezac, and Jan Tichy display restraint, if only on the surface.

Siegel

Cao Fei and David Claerbout travel from Chinatown to China and from Elvis to Nazi Germany. Is this the digital experience, and can Amie Siegel prove them wrong with film and a black swan?

Sierra

Can formalism lose itself in a dance, in language, or in a maze? Gabriel Sierra, Karl Haendel, Ruby Sky Stiler, and Jeff Williams are monkeying around with Minimalism.

Sigler

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.

Signac

Did followers of Georges Seurat miss the boat to Modernism? From Paul Signac to Helen Frankenthaler and her Lighthouse series, his independence of color has had a sustained influence.

Could Félix Fénéon reconcile the avant-garde and anarchy? Maybe not, but Paul Signac, for one, deemed Fénéon a magician.

Sigurdardóttir

Can an artist still break through boundaries, with or without a radio signal? Rirkrit Tiravanija, Katrín Sigurdardóttir, and Susan Hamburger give it a try.

Sikander

Is it time for women to get up from the dinner party? Judy Chicago adds her city of ladies, while Shahzia Sikander takes to the park to find justice.

Shahzia Sikander sees her life and her future as a painting in miniature. How do she, Asal Peirovi, and Cindy Ji Hye Kim reconcile contemporary art and tradition?

Silaghi

When art looks at disaster, can it see more than the picturesque? Leonardo Silaghi, Adriane Colburn, Cheryl Molnar, Ed Osborn, and Diana Thater find what Leo Marx called the machine in the garden and love among the ruins.

Sillman

Now that anything goes, is there anything left to add? Amy Sillman, Nick Goss, and Lauren Silva add digital media, washes, and allusions to abstract painting.

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

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

Bob Nickas calls his group show "An Ongoing Low-Grade Mystery." Could he be describing, too, the appeal to insiders from Amy Sillman, Reena Spaulings, and others near the downtown club scene?

Silva

Now that anything goes, is there anything left to add? Lauren Silva, Nick Goss, and Amy Sillman add digital media, washes, and allusions to abstract painting.

Silveira

Should an installation respond to the museum or its art? Regina Silveira, Edmund de Waal, and Rafael Domenech work in the shadows of a museum.

Silver

If art is going to cut through the market's chaos and complicity, it needs a map. Could abstraction from Marjorie Welish, Larry Silver, or the 2008 National Academy Annual supply one?

Silverthorne

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

Sime

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.

G. Simmons

When Gary Simmons looks at blackness, he finds degrees of whiteness in need of erasure. Can an artist recover America's past by effacing it?

L. Simmons

Gillian Wearing shows the stages of a woman's life as wrought with guilt, Robin Hill places art in a hospital, and Laurie Simmons moves in with a love doll. How can manufactured bodies suffer anxiety and decay.

Did Laurie Simmons 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.

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 Nayland Blake, Michael Heizer, Jenny Holzer, and Laurie Simmons—an artist for whom women are more than living dolls.

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

X. Simmons

Eva Hesse made an expanded Minimalism speak for its materials, for a viewer's anxieties, and for her. Can Charisse Pearlina Weston, Xaviera Simmons, and Torkwase Dyson do the same for African Americans today?

Simon

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

Does computer art offer anything at all new, and is anyone buying? After a gallery tour and panel discussion, John F. Simon, Jr., Kirsten Geisler, John Klima, and Mark Napier suggest that old news from art and software can still create strange new bedfellows.

L. Simpson

Lorna Simpson loves frames—for images, for text, and for American history. Can black experience itself provide the frame?

Can Lorna Simpson continue to track black lives in blue paint? Her reserve does not preclude remembering, just as with a memorial to an African American burial ground for Alexandria Smith.

M. Simpson

What unfolds between nature and performance? Mary Simpson, Andy Goldsworthy, Yoko Ono, and Sarah Sze discover cracks in Minimalism's garden.

R. B. Simpson

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.

A. Singh

The Drawing Center returns to Soho, with architecture by Claire Weisz and the diaries, notebooks, or "assembly instructions" of Guillermo Kuitca, José Antonio Suárez Londoño, and Alexandre Singh. How modest (or ambitious) is that?

R. Singh

Does street photography seem made for black and white? While color for Lauren Greenfield exemplifies status and surfaces, it led Joel Meyerowitz out of the city and Raghubir Singh across India, but with deep roots in the street.

Singleton

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.

Siqueiros

After the Mexican revolution, a revolution came to Mexican art. Did such muralists as David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, and Diego Rivera Jackson Pollock and American art as well?

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Can Moynihan Train Hall make up for the indignities of Penn Station? Skidmore, Owings & Merrill give it their best, with an assist from Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Kehinde Wiley, and Stan Douglas.

Sloan

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.

Slominski

Smart

Smit

Why should one trust a journalist more than an artist, when it comes to events as charged with political and human meaning as 9/11? Guy Richards Smit, Emily Jacir, and others know when to listen, even when the voices get a little crazed.

A. Smith

Can Lorna Simpson continue to track black lives in blue paint? Her reserve does not preclude remembering, just as with a memorial to an African American burial ground for Alexandria Smith.

B. Smith

Is assemblage a threat, to art or to you? Addie Wagenknecht smells blood, but Bob Smith plays around in the darkness, and Christine Rebhuhn feels right at home.

B. and R. Smith

Art can carry on after 9/11, but can it return to normal? A group show seeks sincerity in "Extreme Existence" while, over in Brooklyn, Bob and Roberta Smith offer an Art Amnesty, and Karen Dolmanisth and Deborah Masters mix ritual and performance.

When is political art a contradiction in terms? "Zero Tolerance" and "Crossing Brooklyn" aim to represent global protest and the Brooklyn artist community, but Bob and Roberta Smith would just as soon forget the whole thing.

C. Smith

Mary Lucier reflects on her late husband's leaving earth in multichannel video, while Harold Cohen and AARON stake their art on AI. Cauleen Smith wanders LA, but is her's too the video a lifetime?

D. Smith

Instead of the mythic American artist, a retrospective marks David Smith as a sculptor firmly in the tradition of European Surrealism. Can either perspective make him relevant for today?

Was David Smith an Abstract Expressionist or Minimalist? "Cubes and Anarchy" hopes to rescue his late Cubi by setting aside both.

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

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?

E. E. Smith

Since abstraction and appropriation, what happened to drawing and painting objects? E. E. Smith, Anne Geoffroy, and Jennifer Wynne Reeves remember the little things in life.

J. Q. Smith

Long before MAGA and melting ice made headlines, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith painted The Vanishing American—and she did not mean the Pueblo people and pottery in "Grounded in Clay." Is Native American art so quick to see?

K. Smith

In a retrospective of Kiki Smith, the work that one sees first contains nothing but air. How does it lead to easily to thoughts of creature comforts, life and death, nature, myth, tradition, and female perception?

Is this our common humanity? The bodily terror of Kiki Smith and the Straus collection joins the annual juried show at Hudson Valley MOCA as "Death Is Irrelevant."

Michael Smith

Is art devolving into a scary, macho remake of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll? Mike Kelley and Michael Smith take Baby IKKI to Burning Man, "The Horror Show" plays on, and Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman convert a huge gallery into Black-Acid Co-op.

Mickey Smith

Must art as text always mean the impersonality of Joseph Kosuth? For Mickey Smith it means blood money, for R. Luke DuBois it means American politics, and for David Diao it means a life in painting.

Ming Smith

Can a woman's photographs be truer to women? Marianna Rothen asks where the bodies are buried in film noir, Barbara Probst in the studio, and Ming Smith in Harlem.

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.

P. Smith

What does a photo album become a lie, and when does it become art? Walker Evans collects postcards, Jem Cohen Polaroids of the city, Patti Smith the veils of Basque country, and Jane Hammond an imaginary tour of Europe.

P. A. Smith

Marc Yankus photographs buildings you only thought you knew and Thomas Roma the shadows of Brooklyn, while Paul Anthony Smith sees the city beyind barriers and a beach in Puerto Rica. Which is the real New York. Is this the real New York?

Rebecca Smith

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

Roberta Smith

Peter Schjeldahl announced his fatal illness with "The Art of Dying," amd Roberta Smith has since retired from The Times. Will critics still teach people how to look?

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.

Roberta Smith worries about the fate of art "made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand." Can conceptual art and the handmade learn to get along?

Seven years after a massive expansion designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, can a museum—or late Modernism—as institution survive? Roberta Smith revisits MoMA, while the Robert Rauschenberg estate provokes Holland Cotter.

Roberta Smith asks why artists trade up to new galleries, while Edward Winkleman asks why a gallery like his own cuts artists. When Elizabeth Peyton paints American royals, has she figured out what it takes to play insider?

Holland Cotter embraces a museum's claims for Tullio Lombardo as a Renaissance artist, while Roberta Smith criticizes J. M. W. Turner as a flashy expressionist. Does contemporary criticism need art history?

S. Smith

Barkley L. Hendricks mixes academic portraiture, clashing colors, quotes from art history, and African-American identity. Can he and Shinique Smith have it all?

T. Smith

Tony Smith leaves a cigarette butt in Central Park, and sculpture parks reinvigorate New York. Which is more open to the commmunity?

Smithson

When Manhattan Island gets an island of its own, should one call it a site, a nonsite, or gentrification? With the assistance of Nancy Holt, Floating Island makes a provocative addition to a suitably systematic and entropic Robert Smithson retrospective—and a striking contrast to New York earth art by Walter de Maria.

How did art get from nonsites to Web sites? Christina McPhee moderates a discussion of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and new media.

D. Snow

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.

M. Snow

Try mapping Minimalism, with Anne Truitt and Mary Corse on the coasts, Michael Snow and Kay Rosen in the "central regions." Can a map of a map have firm borders or only light?

Snyder

Do some painters nudge art toward the future, while some shape it? Joan Snyder and Elizabeth Murray may have chosen the first course, even with shaped canvas, but they dare one to overlook the influence of women artists.

Do Joan Snyder, Mernet Larsen, and Pat Steir exemplify abstract painting, natural imagery, a contorted humanity, or decorative patterning? Just do not dismiss it as feminine.

Sobel

Did Janet Sobel invent drip painting—or perhaps have it come to her? In her hands, it comes with a whole cast of tiny figures, as well as a fresh look at Abstract Expressionism, primitivism, and a woman's role.

Was Janet Sobel an Abstract Expressionist or a primitive? The 2009 Outsider Art Fair shows how both ideas helped to create outsider art.

Sodi

Are galleries more like public spaces or luxury retailers? Jean Dubuffet treats sculpture as an urban plaza, Bosco Sodi evokes cracked earth and the Rothko Chapel in white, and Liam Gillick takes the shared space of Minimalism apart.

Sokal

Should art and Postmodernism keep their hands out of science, and can they? A hoax by Alan Sokal, a physicist, erects a fragile wall between C. P. Snow's two cultures.

Solano

Can sculpture offer a place to play or to sit? Susana Solano, Martha Clippinger, and Jeff Landman and are rebuilding Minimalism.

Soleimani

Can immigrants leave their memories behind? Sheida Soleimani and Daniel Shieh can ask their parents, "Immersion" everywhere that they have lived.

Solomon

For just three years, Alan Solomon threw the Jewish Museum into the turmoil of the city and the turmoil of contemporary art. Why would "New York: 1962–1964" distingiush the two—and why would a black-run gallery founded by Linda Goode Bryant, Just Above Midtown?

Somerville

Can the 2015 Armory Show, the Independent, Pulse, Moving Image, NADA, and other fairs see past contemporary art to history? At Volta, Travis Somerville remembers a lynching.

Sonnabend

When did a global art take over New York? As "Ambassador to the New," Ileana Sonnabend found room for both Andy Warhol and European painting, but Jasper Johns, whose solo show opened her Paris gallery in 1960, still sends his regrets.

Sonnier

Does Keith Sonnier create sculpture, Minimalism, or process art? Either way, he can still draw with neon light and space.

Sontag

Does art still have the power to shock or only to numb the senses? "Into Me / Out of Me," inspired by Susan Sontag on raw experience—along with subsequent shows of "Defamation of Character," "Silicone Valley," and Vic Muniz—can make one overlook the difference.

Doreen McCarthy loves plastics, Lisa Hoke recycles, and "Notes on 'Notes on Camp' " recalls Susan Sontag. For all the theater, can the art object still slip out from within quotes?

Sosnowska

In a time of inequality and Occupy Wall Street, are there two Americas—and two New Yorks? With Monika Sosnowska, the Eastern bloc meets urban America, while summer group shows seek urban "Multiplicity" and "Another Look at Detroit."

Soth

Can portrait photography find room for so many people? They could be "Your Mirror," the lost souls never far from Alec Soth, or "Ghosts."

Sottsass

Was the Memphis design group radical or a dead end? For Ettore Sottsass in Italy, design and color could shape ways of living, with style, while Elaine Lustig Cohen trusts in design to take her from book covers to abstract painting.

Soulages

When did painting move beyond black? Pierre Soulages, Henrik Eiben, and Betty Kaufman tell the story of the red and the black.

Soutine

Chaim Soutine painted flesh or fowl between life and death. Was his still life an allegory of a Jew in Paris between the wars—and why did Wayne Thiebaud in drawings skip right to desert?

It takes comparisons to de Kooning to earn Chaim Soutine a retrospective. How many Modernisms are there?

Spaeth

When people talk about art after the end of art, do they mean that conceptual art has outlived the art object? Edward Winkleman, Catherine Spaeth, Carol Diehl, and "The Shallow Curator" make the virtual case against the anti-esthetic.

Spaulings

Bob Nickas calls his group show "An Ongoing Low-Grade Mystery." Could he be describing, too, the appeal to insiders from Amy Sillman, Reena Spaulings, and others near the downtown club scene?

Spear

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.

Artists never truly paint like their influences, right? Yet the influence of Abstract Expressionism lingers on, not just with Jules Olitski and the late Neil Welliver, but in younger artists who seem almost to channel them—including Duston Spear, Makoto Fujimura, Ronnie Landfield, Peter Reginato, and Joseph Stashkevetch.

Spero

As women, Nancy Spero, Janet Cooling, and Doreen Garner move casually between history and myth. As political artists and women, can they still take no prisoners?

Spranger

Is art today reduced to an international style, targeting wealth at the expense of taking risks? Mannerism got there first, when Bartholomeus Spranger left Antwerp for the sophistication of central Europe, leaving behind the High Renaissance ideals of Tullio Lombardo.

Stanczak

So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Julian Stanczak, Michal Rovner, Diane Samuels, and Jennifer Steinkamp, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.

Starkey

When does a therapy session, street photography, a police investigation, or a true confession become a fiction—or a lie? Hannah Starkey, Andrea Fraser, and Jana Leo seek the truth.

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

Starling

Simon Starling recreates early modern drama with Japanese warriors, while Martha Friedman choreographs something more minimal and surreal, and Anita Thatcher asks architecture to join the performance. Is performance a struggle or a dance?

Starn

Which is the true garden community, the suburbs or the city? "The Romantic Garden" follows their origins from Alexander Pope and the picturesque to Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, while Mike and Doug Starn create their own forest overlooking Central Park.

Stashkevetch

Artists never truly paint like their influences, right? Yet the influence of Abstract Expressionism lingers on, not just with Jules Olitski and the late Neil Welliver, but in younger artists who seem almost to channel them—including Joseph Stashkevetch, Makoto Fujimura, Ronnie Landfield, Peter Reginato, and Duston Spear.

Staver

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

Steenwijck

For Harmen Steenwijck, a still-life painting is filled with objects of desire. Is his art a precursor of Modernism and beyond?

Steichen

Alfred Stieglitz had ten years on Edward Steichen and Paul Strand, not to mention pioneering galleries of modern art. Which, though, stood at the center of a new American photography?

Has Madison Avenue taken over Modernism? Alfred Gescheidt draws on popular culture, naughty bits, and the male gaze, but Edward Steichen, too, thrived on commercial photography in his elegant work for Condé Nast.

Stein

Gertrude and Leo Stein shared a Paris apartment and, with their brother and sister-in-law, a growing flock of artists. When the Steins collect Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, who is teaching whom?

Steinkamp

So what if art still looks pretty? In the hands of Jennifer Steinkamp, Michal Rovner, Diane Samuels, and Julian Stanczak, it may still come with Postmodernism's cool, harsh light and awareness of a lost present.

With Jennifer Steinkamp, Daniel Canogar, Pipilotti Rist, and Mika Rottenberg, have new media become an obsession? The New York Electronic Arts Fair invades Governors Island, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster invades Chelsea.

Steinmetz

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.

Steir

Do Pat Steir, Mernet Larsen, and Joan Snyder exemplify abstract painting, natural imagery, a contorted humanity, or decorative patterning? Just do not dismiss it as feminine.

F. Stella

Has Frank Stella turned his back on Modernism—and when? More than fifty years after his "Black Paintings," he never surrenders either reason or the squalor.

You call this painting? Frank Stella may have given up on paint, but not on the word, while Kurt Schwitters brings to newsprint and collage the texture of an old master.

Can abstraction survive only by losing its rigor? Frank Stella, Ronnie Landfield, Agnes Martin, Carrie Moyer, and Milton Resnick have one working to tell the difference.

Did Modernism have a choice, and does the Museum of Modern Art now? In "Making Choices: 1920–1960," Cindy Sherman's shards of an ego, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor by Frank Stella, and Walker Evans's collision with reality each get to define modern art's first decades of triumph.

J. Stella

Nope, not Frank. What happened to Joseph Stella and American Modernism after they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge?

Stern

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

Sternfeld

Where was Joel Sternfeld before "American Prospects"? Where Jill Freedman in the late 1970s finds tabloid New York, his first pictures find color, a more innocent decade, and four other Americas.

Will the High Line preserve an overgrowth of wild flowers and urban history, with sculpture by Sarah Sze, or will it tower over Chelsea as one more dark, utopian vision? Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in association with Field Operations and with photographs by Joel Sternfeld, offer a look down upon the art world.

Stettheimer

Did Florine Stettheimer produce outsider or insider art? As painter, poet, set designer, and an influence on Rosson Crow, she could be worldly, theatrical, satirical, and loving.

Stevens

What happens when the city that never sleeps shuts down? Don Eddy lies awake, while Dan Herschlein has more cinematic nightmares, and Serena Stevens returns to Iowa with dreams of home.

Stewart

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."

St. Hilaire

Can a Caribbean or Mexican American artist cross the border? Esteban Cabeza de Baca feels the desert heat in Chelsea and Teresita Fernández a tropical storm, while Austin Martin White and Kathia St. Hilaire feel the rubber burning.

Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz had ten years on Edward Steichen and Paul Strand, not to mention pioneering galleries of modern art. Which, though, stood at the center of a new American photography?

When did Modernism become propaganda? "The Power of Pictures" follows early Soviet photography, including including El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko, but earlier still Alfred Stieglitz joined photojournalism and experiment.

Did Alfred Stieglitz create Georgia O'Keeffe or just use her? Probably neither one, and with her abstractions O'Keeffe recreated American Modernism and herself.

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.

Stiler

Can formalism lose itself in a dance, in language, or in a maze? Ruby Sky Stiler, Karl Haendel, Gabriel Sierra, and Jeff Williams are monkeying around with Minimalism.

Stingel

How can Rudolf Stingel alternate between spareness and glitter, instructions for painting and photorealism, skeptical and sentimental? Call it conceptual Rococo.

Can summer sculpture vanish into carpeting and thin air? Unlike typical summer sculpture, Rudolf Stingel and Peter Wegner take the great outdoors inside.

St. John

What is more realistic—photography, illusion, or the plain sense of things? Michael St. John, Leslie Hewitt, John Houck, Ron Milewicz, and Mike Womack compare memory and realism.

Stockholder

When the art scene blends into night life, does art become self-indulgence or directed dreaming? Jessica Stockholder, Cao Fei, Jessica Rankin, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, and Salla Tykka each walk the line between light and dark.

Can anything spoil the serenity of the reopened Isamu Noguchi Museum? For summer 2009, sculpture tumbles everywhere thanks to Roxy Paine, Jessica Stockholder, "Between the Bridges," and "State Fair."

Stone

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

Stone Bluff

More than a year before the American Civil War, Dave could see it coming. Did he and the black potters of Stone Bluff Manufactory foretell freedom then and the medium for Betty Woodman and Jennifer Paige Cohen today?

M. Storr

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, Keiran Brennan Hinton and Michael Gregory turn to interiors and landscapes.

R. Storr

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.

C. Stout

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?

R. Stout

Myrlande Constant celebrates quilting and revolution, while Renée Stout connects portraiture, politics, and painting by numbers. Are they both voodoo children, and can "Hope Is a Discipline" and "Tropical Frequencies" give them hope?

Strand

Alfred Stieglitz had ten years on Edward Steichen and Paul Strand, not to mention pioneering galleries of modern art. Which, though, stood at the center of a new American photography?

Straus

Is this our common humanity? The bodily terror of Kiki Smith and the Straus collection joins the annual juried show at Hudson Valley MOCA as "Death Is Irrelevant."

Strobert

Have African American art and abstraction become old friends? Melvin Edwards, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Kianja Strobert, and Sherrill Roland make abstraction a monument to black history.

Struth

Photographs by Thomas Struth could pass for snapshots of family gatherings, old Europe, a tropical "paradise," or tourists themselves. With such a connoisseur of chaos, should one see the connoisseur or the chaos?

Stuart

What stands between text art and land art? With Michelle Stuart, Mark Lyon, and "Sight Reading," photography is reaching for the stars.

Stubbs

George Stubbs painted portraits, landscapes, dogs, and lions. Why do people know him as a horse painter, and what does that say about the origins of Romanticism?

Sturtevant

Sturtevant did not make copies, but they sure look that way. Does that make a copy of a copy an original—and does that make a photographic reenactment of Diego Velázquez by Yasumasa Morimura a copy?

Suga

Has Minimalism come back as a lightweight? Kishio Suga mixes Chelsea architecture with a Japanese garden, Thomas Lendvai leaves it to a throw of the dice, and Barry Le Va sets meat cleavers dancing.

Suh

Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Do Ho Suh, Khalif Kelly, Pieter Schoolwerth, and the video artists in "Closer Now" might agree to disagree.

Sullivan

Can art have a private language, and what would it sound like? Catherine Sullivan, Anna Craycroft, and Michael Portnoy pursue studies in hysteria.

Art seems to collapse right out from under Catherine Sullivan, James Hopkins, Jon Kessler, Diana Kingsley, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, and Daniel Rozin. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?

Sully

Can indigenous art be thoroughly modern? It takes Mary Sully to New York and Aboriginal Australian bark painting to the land itself.

Sultan

Does rigor still make sense in describing abstract art today? For Altoon Sultan, David Humphrey, Medrie MacPhee, and Juan Uslé, rigor can mean more than geometry.

Susiraja

Can photographs break the silence? "Love Songs" and "Trust Me" capture fragments of intimacy, while Iiu Susiraja has a discomforting love affair with herself.

Sussman

Can video aspire to Old Master painting? Eve Sussman evokes the slippery time and space of Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas, and Bill Viola tries to transcend time through Jacopo da Pontormo, but Pontormo's portraits can take care of themselves.

Must one see Iran and the Old Silk Road through western eyes—or the west through the eyes of others? "Iran Inside Out" manages both, while Eve Sussman rides the transcontinental railroad in search of the space race.

Swartz

Did you know that an artist was involved in the first desktop computer? "Thinking Machines" and "Experiments in Electrostatics" find art in the modern office—and Daniel Neumann and Julianne Swartz in the mix.

Julianne Swartz, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Jane and Louise Wilson are back, Jonathan Cramer channels Jackson Pollock, and Bjorn Melhus changes the channels on Jerry Springer. Is Chelsea truly over the top?

Swavely

Did postwar abstraction find room for women? "Perseverance" thinks so, while Zipora Fried connects and extends the dots, and Jane Swavely zips things up.

SWOON

Has graffiti art returned to fashion? At an outpost of chic in Soho, Barry McGee and SWOON return to the streets and bring the action indoors.

Szapocznikow

Can sculpture still shock? Alina Szapocznikow survives the camps but not cancer, while "A Disagreeable Object" claims Surrealism for today.

Sze

Does appropriation, by definition, run in one cultural dimension? Between installation, architecture, and nature, Sarah Sze piles it on thick and thin.

Zaha Hadid gives a brusque welcome to Postmodern architecture, and Sarah Sze and Caroline McCarthy look everywhere at once. Which represents the future of New York City?

What unfolds between nature and performance? Sarah Sze, Andy Goldsworthy, Yoko Ono, and Mary Simpson discover cracks in Minimalism's garden.

Szymanski

Liz Larner started her career with bacteria and a bang. Can sculpture after Modernism show signs of temptations, transience, and decay—or, with Carol Szymanski, a display of hands?

Taaffe

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?

Taccetti

With Rain Room and Random International, is the art of artificial lights now just a light show? Santiago Taccetti, Laddie John Dill, and Leo Villareal mirror the darkness.

Taller Boricua

Can photographers and printmakers leave their mark amid collectives and questions of racial identity? The Kamoinge Workshop and Taller Boricua grapple with both.

Taeuber-Arp

Sophie Taeuber-Arp created abstraction at a remarkable pace, but also textiles, interior design, and marionettes, while Dorothea Tanning found her self-portrait in Surrealism. Why, then, does history remember only their spouses?

Tam

Can Gauri Gill in India see behind the masks, can Kenneth Tam find hope after forced Chinese American labor in the American West, and can Zhang Huan and Li Binyuan in China still claim the land as their own? Here tradition is itself only a mask.

Taniguchi

Thanks to Yoshio Taniguchi, MoMA's reopening in Manhattan is breathtaking. But will the rarefied air support a conversation with the work?

Martha Rosler holds a garage sale, lines form for Edvard Munch, and Yoshio Taniguchi makes the permanent collection seem a thing of the past. So which one commercializes the Museum of Modern Art?

What is the Museum of Modern Art doing back in Manhattan? With "Take Two," it adjusts the large new galleries designed by Yoshio Taniguchi—and adjusts, too, to contemporary art.

Tanning

Tansey

Is there any art left in Soho? I offer a light, off-the-cuff spring 1997 tour, with the most space to Mark di Suvero, Elizabeth Murray, and Mark Tansey—a painter who has made art into history.

Tavakolian

Can portraits of friends add up to a portrait of race and gender in America? Salman Toor sees gay Asian males under scrutiny, while Hana Yilma Godine locates African women in spaces within spaces and Newsha Tavakolian searches in vain for a state of calm in Tehran.

Tavernier

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.

A. Taylor

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.

H. Taylor

Who knew that Martin Luther King, Jr., and the New York Knicks are just regular guys? Henry Taylor and Spike Lee look to the black and white communities for local heroes, while "And Ever an Edge" finds the chill winds of home.

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.

Taylor-Wood

When artists bring death to the style pages, have they created a fourth-wave feminism? A slippery slope to suicide haunts video by Sue de Beer, paintings by Rachel Howard, and a sell-out by Sam Taylor-Wood.

Sam Taylor-Wood, Julianne Swartz, and Jane and Louise Wilson are back, Jonathan Cramer channels Jackson Pollock, and Bjorn Melhus changes the channels on Jerry Springer. Is Chelsea truly over the top?

British artists—such as Sam Taylor-Wood, Damien Hirst, and Chris Ofili—and New York politicians recycle old scripts, nearly a decade after appropriation art held sway. What accounts for the shock of the not so new, and can a savvy analysis by Hal Foster pin it down?

Does the Chelsea gallery scene know where the bodies are bodied? Sam Taylor-Wood, Wim Delvoye, Tracey Emin, Gary Hill, and Daniel Rozin may not get real, but they do get physical.

Tegeder

Can architecture speak to art? Hariri & Hariri have visions of architecture, Dannielle Tegeder and Melissa Kretschmer use it to disrupt abstract painting, and Mateo López makes it a site for drawing, sculpture, and performance.

Teller

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

Temple

After ten years of haberarts.com, what have I learned, and have I still not joined the art world? The 2006 Dumbo "Art Under the Bridge" festival, with work by Mary Temple, makes critical judgment harder than ever.

Tetrode

Did Mannerism's virtuosity offer a pale shadow the past, or did it foreshadow the future? For a postmodern art history, Hendrick Goltzius and Willem van Tetrode suggest a Post-Renaissance.

Thatcher

Thater

When art looks at disaster, can it see more than the picturesque? Diana Thater, Adriane Colburn, Cheryl Molnar, Ed Osborn, and Leonardo Silaghi find what Leo Marx called the machine in the garden and love among the ruins.

Thayer

How big can art get, and will it then outgrow its own myths? Tom Thayer, Ron Mueck, Neo Rauch, and Dana Schutz see art as a matter of life and death.

Thek

Is there more to Paul Thek and David Wojnarowicz than abjection? Peter Hujar captures their moments away from the furor.

Therrien

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.

A. Thomas

As an African American, it took Alma Thomas a lifetime to make color-field painting her own. Did another woman, Rosemarie Castoro, reach Minimalism sooner or leave it behind?

H. W. Thomas

Are "The New Black Heavies," curated by Mickalene Thomas, post-post-black? She and Hank Willis Thomas make everything uncertain in African American identity but gender, but "Now Dig This!" tries to recover them both.

The Great Depression was a crisis, but could Americans face it together? It may seem that way for Harold Haliday Costain, James van der Zee, and Hank Willis Thomas with For Freedoms.

M. Thomas

Can glitter make the old masters the new black? Mickalene Thomas just wants to strut her stuff.

Thornton

"What, then, is time?" Saint Augustine wondered, but for Leslie Thornton, Christian Marclay in The Clock, and Stephen Vitiello, time is on their side.

Thurber

Can critics still judge art, and should they? Raphael Rubinstein points to "A Quiet Crisis in Art," but more critical noise might well drown out some seriously quiet art—including the photographs of Shelburne Thurber, Catherine Opie, and Christoph Morlinghaus.

Thiebaud

Chaim Soutine painted flesh or fowl between life and death. Was his still life an allegory of a Jew in Paris between the wars—and why did Wayne Thiebaud in drawings skip right to desert?

Cake after cake, Wayne Thiebaud slathers on the icing. Does that count as Pop Art or realism, and which looks more conservative after all?

B. Thompson

Who owns European painting or blackness? Bob Thompson and Barkley L. Hendricks know them both cold.

M. Thompson

Tichy

Can site-specific art look behind the wall? Jan Tichy, Anne Libby, Susan Philipsz, and Philip Seibel penetrate the gallery's light, sound, and infrastructure.

If anything goes, can that include Minimalism? In a hyperactive art world, Jan Tichy, Richard Rezac, and Gedi Sibony display restraint, if only on the surface.

D. Tiepolo

What happened when Rococo collided with Enlightenment and revolution? Domenico Tiepolo turned to the New Testament, while Jean Honoré Fragonard literally got drawing off the ground.

Like father, like son? Domenico Tiepolo inherits his father's workshop and his Punchinello, while a patron's legacy sheds light on Giambattista Tiepolo and his skies.

G. Tiepolo

Top galleries love those elegant centuries that the public rarely notices. Or could the Venice of Giambattista Tiepolo stand for art now?

Tillmans

Can abstract photography capture the flow of experience? If not, Wolfgang Tillmans can always try portraiture, photocollage, or another experiment, while Rachel Libeskind continues to probe photocollage, truth, and transparency.

Timoney

Can art still aspire to a window onto nature? Mary Obering and Patrick Wilson treat abstraction as a window, to which Peter Halley adds his customary bars, while Pádraig Timoney and Claire Kerr multiply the languages of art.

Tinguely

Was Stuart Davis the first Pop artist? Maybe not, but he adapted Cubism to America in the jazz age, while Jean Tinguely and Max Ernst put the pop and sizzle into modern art in Europe.

Tintoretto

Was Tintoretto a dramatist of mass movements or a "face painter"? Works on paper and portraits from Renaissance Venice make the case for Tintoretto's century, while the Met also rehangs a famed Rembrandt and Dutch painting.

Tiravanija

When artists give stuff away, are they "relating" or placing themselves front and center? Rirkrit Tiravanija and Mary Helena Clark feed our animal appetites.

Can an artist still break through boundaries, with or without a radio signal? Rirkrit Tiravanija, Katrín Sigurdardóttir, and Susan Hamburger give it a try.

How did participatory art and "relational esthetics" become installations by celebrity artists? Rirkrit Tiravanija, Douglas Gordon, and "theanyspacewhatever" take over the Guggenheim.

Tiscornia

Was Ida Kohlmeyer looking to painting's future with her symbols or for a way out? She, Ana Tiscornia, and Kate Shepherd apply minimal means to a maximal case for women in abstract art.

Titian

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.

Toguo

Can art about Africa engage politics rather than the primitive? "Négritude" sees a hybrid, global culture in Modernism, and Bathélémy Toguo bears its burdens.

Tolle

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

Talon

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

Tomaselli

"Cursed be forever the useless dreamer"—but what about the artist? Fred Tomaselli and Lara Schnitger deal in curses, rituals, and dreams, but George Condo knows that phony transgression may prove safer after all.

Tomme

Can Jason Tomme, Scott Lyall, and "American ReConstruction" find a space between painting, prints, models, and abstraction? Sara VanDerBeek reminds new and old media "To Think of Time."

Tooker

How can political art look so otherworldly? George Tooker brings magic realism back from the dead.

Toor

Toranzo Jaeger

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Jumana Manna, and Umar Rashid look to the past and future, the true revolutionaries for Christopher Myers are prophets and storytellers.

Torres-García

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.

Toulouse-Lautrec

When did collecting become scholarship? Some might say with Pierre-Jean Mariette in drawings, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in posters and prints for MoMA, or the founding of the Met's print department and "The Power of Prints."

Trecartin

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

Is "Surround Audience" at the New Museum the new-media triennial or political? With help from Ryan Trecartin, it may just have a short attention span, but Wynne Greenwood keeps her music video going for a lot longer.

Treib

Are summer group shows just art fairs without the tourists and collectors? Some in 2017 stand out, alongside Patricia Treib, Shara Hughes, Francisco Ugarte, and "Flora Fantastica!"

Tripe

Linnaeus Tripe traveled to Asia in search of architecture and a cultural heritage, and later Marc Riboud found a continent at a crossroads. When did documentation give way to imperialism or fantasy?

Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel turns her knits and conceptual art into an entire natural history, while Mark Flood covers his disdain with lace abstractions. Who can tell the art scene from the orangutan?

Trouvé

Has summer sculpture run up against a brick wall? Maybe in Socrates Sculpture Park, but not for Pierre Huyghe, Tatiana Trouvé, and "Panorama."

Truitt

Try mapping Minimalism, with Anne Truitt and Mary Corse on the coasts, Michael Snow and Kay Rosen in the "central regions." Can a map of a map have firm borders or only light?

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

Tsao, Tunick, and Turville

When black, white, and color become so visible that one wants to reach out and touch, can one still call it visionary? Richard Tsao, Petah Coyne, and Robert Ryman move beyond debates over formalism and illusion to metaphor, geometry, and goo.

Do Chelsea's once idealistic galleries now form a business district—or a theater district? Michael Fried argued that "theatricality" precedes and follows modern art, and he could have been arguing with me as I checked out such artists as Richard Tsao, castaneda/reiman, Deborah Turville, and Scott Tunick.

Tsien

With Tod Williams and Billie Tsien as architects, has the Barnes Foundation sold out or found itself? In Philadelphia now, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and a ton of Pierre-August Renoir are still getting the "hang" of modern art.

Can the American Folk Art Museum be saved? Michael Kimmelman and others speak out, as Diller Scofidio + Renfro and MoMA plan to demolish the Tod Williams and Billie Tsien architecture for yet another expansion.

Tullio

Tunga

It takes only a small step to proceed from chaos to mythos. Can that explain "Organizing Chaos," Tunga, and Jim Shaw's The Donner Party?

Turner

Was J. M. W. Turner the first action painter? His Romanticism made observing itself an extreme sport.

Could J. M. W. Turner have influenced Moby-Dick? Maybe not, but he drew on the same natural history as Melville along with fiction for his whaling pictures, while his port views show his fascination with changing skies and a changing Europe.

Turrell

Was Minimalism all along about familiar objects or perception? James Turrell still has one asking.

Abstract art may seem to belong to the past the more it asserts its authority. Can James Turrell, Ad Reinhardt, Michael West, Albert Kotin, and Lynne Drexler recover a neglected past and present?

Art cries out for a great alternative space, but as alternative to what? I find out with the merger of P.S. to become "The Museum of Modern Art at P.S. 1," still with its permanent installation of James Turrell.

Tuttle

You call this Minimalism? Maybe not, when Richard Tuttle shows how to lighten up.

Tuymans

As plans for culture at Ground Zero stagnate, can political art respond? The backlash definitely is setting in, with exhibitions of the key architects, plus Luc Tuymans, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Sam Durant.

Twombly

What happens when the avant-garde becomes a school? With Cy Twombly, the finest paintings even look like a blackboard, but their only message is a scrawl.

Tworkov

For every emerging artist gaining the spotlight, an artist somewhere else just keeps plodding along. What gives Jack Tworkov, Louise Fishman, and Stanley Whitney their abstract determination?

Tykka

When the art scene blends into night life, does art become self-indulgence or directed dreaming? Salla Tykka, Cao Fei, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Jessica Rankin, and Jessica Stockholder each walk the line between light and dark.

Ufan

Are east and west only a stone's throw away? Lee Ufan bridges Minimalism and the garden, while Stefana McClure and Idris Khan mix Minimalism, polish, and text.

Could there be a traditional Japanese art of Minimalism? "Requiem for the Sun" recreates the art of Mono-ha and Lee Ufan, decades before Lara Favaretto combines Minimalism, pop culture, and self-involvement.

Ugarte

Are summer group shows just art fairs without the tourists and collectors? Some in 2017 stand out, alongside Francisco Ugarte, Shara Hughes, Patricia Treib, and "Flora Fantastica!"

Ukeles

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.

Uklanski

When a photographer plays curator, does photography look to art or the world? Emmet Gowin finds hidden likenesses, while Piotr Uklanski finds mostly himself.

Umlauf

Did abstraction depart from Minimalism with shaped canvas, crude oil, and glass microspheres? Lynn Umlauf, Mary Corse, and Dorothea Rockburne still sought sensuality, stillness, and light.

Ungerer

The man in the moon flees the authorities, and fears of war lead to illicit sex. Do Tomi Ungerer and Natalie Frank draw for children or adults?

Upson

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.

Ursuta

There are allegories, and then there are all-ugh-ories. Which describe art after AIDS and art after Eastern Europe by Andra Ursuta, Nicole Eisenman, Goshka Macuga, and Martin Wong?

Uslé

Does rigor still make sense in describing abstract art today? For Juan Uslé, David Humphrey, Medrie MacPhee, and Altoon Sultan, rigor can mean more than geometry.

Still more names!

jhaber@haberarts.com