Conrad Vogel grew up in Briarcliff Manor, New York, graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1977, traveled in Italy, and then moved to New York City where he lived as an artist for more than forty years.
Tag: Howie Siligman
Recent posts: Two Coats of Paint
Tracey Emin, triumphant survivor
Contributed by David Carrier / Now and again, I have second thoughts about my initial strong response in an art exhibition. That was the case, in a way that deserves discussion, with “Tracey Emin: A Second Life” at the Tate Modern. In Britain, Emin is an art star. Before I went to this full-scale retrospective, I knew about her two seminal works – My Bed, her famously motley and putatively sordid installation, as well as Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, the tent incorporating the names of those thus described. With a life as eventful and stressed as Van Gogh’s, she has become a feminist hero. The subtitle of this show, “A Second Life,” alludes to her survival of devastating cancer surgery. In the wake of her friend David Hockney’s death, some are calling her the greatest living English painter.
Todd Stong: Probing art history
Contributed by Bill Arning / Philadelphia is having a moment as a city where artists can still afford to live and work. In an essay for the journal October, conceptual sculptor Josh Kline argued exhaustively that anyone hoping to sustain a creative life should give up on paying New York rents and move to Philly. It was a provocative suggestion. Philadelphia is close enough to Tribeca to spend an evening at an opening there and still be home in time to walk the dog, and the city offers teaching jobs and a far lower cost of living. The online debate was revealing: many commentators preferred the romance of sharing an apartment in Ridgewood to easy access to the Liberty Bell, Marcel Duchamp, and cheesesteaks.
Evolving horror at Management
Contributed by Patrick Bell / When the world stops making sense so does the body; the figure comes apart at the seams and becomes grotesque. “New Grotesque” at Management gathers 15 artists around this idea and the fact that the horror of the 2020s isn’t just lived but also streamed and thereby exaggerated and filtered. Where Bosch, Goya, and Ensor had war and plague of their own, a different kind of suffering is fed to us through the endless scroll. Management’s current show reflects the view that the grotesque has had to mutate to keep pace with the world. The distended, leaking forms here often make humans seem more like animals, machines, or meat than people.