Calvin Tomkins
Calvin Tomkins has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1960. He wrote his first fiction piece for the magazine in 1958 and his first nonfiction piece in 1962. His many profile subjects have included Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Philip Johnson, Julia Child, Georgia O’Keeffe, Leo Castelli, Frank Stella, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Damien Hirst, Richard Serra, Jasper Johns, Vija Celmins, David Hammons, Pipilotti Rist, Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, Ed Ruscha, and Kerry James Marshall. He wrote the magazine’s Art World column from 1980 to 1988. Before joining The New Yorker, he was a general editor of Newsweek. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including “The Bride and the Bachelors,” “Merchants and Masterpieces,” “Living Well Is the Best Revenge,” “Off the Wall,” “Duchamp: A Biography,” and “Lives of the Artists.” A revised edition of his Duchamp biography came out in 2014. “The Lives of Artists,” a six-volume anthology of his artist profiles, was released in 2019.
Maurizio Cattelan’s Armed Art Helpers
To create the gold-plated steel panels now on sale at the Gagosian gallery, the Italian artist hired licensed shooters to riddle them with bullets, in front of spectators like Jeff Koons.
The Art World Before and After Thelma Golden
When Golden was a young curator in the nineties, her shows, centering Black artists, were unprecedented. Today, those artists are the stars of the art market.
The Raucous Assault of Tala Madani’s Art
The Iranian American artist is a rarity: a wildly imaginative innovator with a gift for caricature and visual satire.
How Salman Toor Left the Old Masters Behind
The Pakistani American painter was inspired by Renaissance art, but his work took a powerful turn after he began to experiment with images of his friends.
The Monumental Success of Simone Leigh
Recognition for the American sculptor, who is representing the U.S. at the Venice Biennale, may have come late but it seems foreordained.
The Epic Style of Kerry James Marshall
The artist, a virtuoso of landscape, portraiture, still-life, history painting, and other genres of the Western canon since the Renaissance, can do anything.
Arthur Jafa’s Radical Alienation
The filmmaker left an art world he found too white; years later, he made a triumphant return with “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death.”
The Colorful Worlds of Pipilotti Rist
The Swiss video artist wants her groundbreaking work to be like women’s handbags, with “room in them for everything.”
A Tribute to Christo’s Unforgettable Art Works
What the artist achieved with his wife and collaborator, Jeanne-Claude, was so different from the work of anyone else, and on such a large scale, that it’s hard to believe it was also ephemeral.
Vija Celmins’s Surface Matters
The artist produces relatively little work and vigorously resists all forms of self-promotion. But, as she enters her eighties, her attitudes may be changing.
Alex Katz’s Life in Art
His paintings make us see the world the way he sees it, clear and up close, with all but the most essential details pared away.
The Artist Questioning Authorship
With ready-made materials and artifacts, Danh Vo’s art recasts the historical events and political ideas that have shaped his world.
The Mythical Stories in Peter Doig’s Paintings
The artist’s use of figuration and narrative seemed out of date—until the art world decided otherwise.
Why Dana Schutz Painted Emmett Till
The artist has spent her career using abstract and figurative images to tell enigmatic stories. But a recent work has made her an incendiary figure.
Alex Poots, Performance-Art Impresario
How will the director of New York’s ambitious experimental cultural center change the city?
Maurizio Cattelan’s Armed Art Helpers
To create the gold-plated steel panels now on sale at the Gagosian gallery, the Italian artist hired licensed shooters to riddle them with bullets, in front of spectators like Jeff Koons.
The Art World Before and After Thelma Golden
When Golden was a young curator in the nineties, her shows, centering Black artists, were unprecedented. Today, those artists are the stars of the art market.
The Raucous Assault of Tala Madani’s Art
The Iranian American artist is a rarity: a wildly imaginative innovator with a gift for caricature and visual satire.
How Salman Toor Left the Old Masters Behind
The Pakistani American painter was inspired by Renaissance art, but his work took a powerful turn after he began to experiment with images of his friends.
The Monumental Success of Simone Leigh
Recognition for the American sculptor, who is representing the U.S. at the Venice Biennale, may have come late but it seems foreordained.
The Epic Style of Kerry James Marshall
The artist, a virtuoso of landscape, portraiture, still-life, history painting, and other genres of the Western canon since the Renaissance, can do anything.
Arthur Jafa’s Radical Alienation
The filmmaker left an art world he found too white; years later, he made a triumphant return with “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death.”
The Colorful Worlds of Pipilotti Rist
The Swiss video artist wants her groundbreaking work to be like women’s handbags, with “room in them for everything.”
A Tribute to Christo’s Unforgettable Art Works
What the artist achieved with his wife and collaborator, Jeanne-Claude, was so different from the work of anyone else, and on such a large scale, that it’s hard to believe it was also ephemeral.
Vija Celmins’s Surface Matters
The artist produces relatively little work and vigorously resists all forms of self-promotion. But, as she enters her eighties, her attitudes may be changing.
Alex Katz’s Life in Art
His paintings make us see the world the way he sees it, clear and up close, with all but the most essential details pared away.
The Artist Questioning Authorship
With ready-made materials and artifacts, Danh Vo’s art recasts the historical events and political ideas that have shaped his world.
The Mythical Stories in Peter Doig’s Paintings
The artist’s use of figuration and narrative seemed out of date—until the art world decided otherwise.
Why Dana Schutz Painted Emmett Till
The artist has spent her career using abstract and figurative images to tell enigmatic stories. But a recent work has made her an incendiary figure.
Alex Poots, Performance-Art Impresario
How will the director of New York’s ambitious experimental cultural center change the city?