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In a recent article, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith aptly called the show “one of the most thrillingly instructive exhibitions about this painter, or painting in general, that you may ever see.” She is not wrong. Concepts like how to paint light, when to use the color black, or how long to spend on the details of a model you have limited time with are best learned from a painter who spent his lifetime asking these questions, and who was willing to share the fruits of his labor.

“It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship that often sets the creative person apart.”

Janet Cardiff: “The Forty Part Motet” at the Cloisters, New York, September 10 – December 8 As part of the Cloister s 75th year anniversary, Janet Cardiff s "The Forty Part Motet" (2001), which breaks out each voice in Thomas Tallis s "Spem in alium numquam habui" (1573) into 40 speakers, inhabits the acoustically friendly medieval Fuentidueña Chapel for what will surely be one of the most transcendent art experiences of the year.

In June, however, it was a shock to see those who play them or make them rail against them. The occasion was E3, the annual showcase of the biggest Xbox, PlayStation and Wii games. The loudest voice yet from the industry’s mainstream was the respected veteran game designer Warren Spector, who cast his gaze across the show and told GamesIndusty.biz: “The ultraviolence has to stop. We have to stop loving it. I just don’t believe in the effects argument at all, but I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it’s in bad taste. Ultimately I think it will cause us trouble.”

Jed Perl, who has served as the art critic for the New Republic since 1994, has a new book out: Magicians and Charlatans: Essays on Art and Culture. Published by the Eakins Press, the book is a collection of essays written between 1995 and 2011. The writings include profiles of seminal cultural figures such as Meyer Schapiro and Lincoln Kirstein, historical studies of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and Édouard Vuillard, and critical commentaries on contemporary artists Robert Gober, Gerhard Richter and Jeremy Blake.

BRUSSELS — The 29-year-old French-Moroccan artist Mehdi-Georges Lahlou has had an eventful early career. A piece in which he projected Bible and Koran verses onto his naked body caused a scandal in Morocco without even being shown in the country (shortly before his other works were displayed at the 2011 Marrakech Art Fair, local media voiced outrage over the piece, illustrating articles with images of only the Koranic part of the 2010 diptych, “Koranic Inlay”).

This summer, I went to “dOCUMENTA (13)” with high expectations. I wanted to be blown away; I wanted my faith in art as a viable and worthwhile activity to spend my life doing to be renewed. I wanted something that, for at least a moment, made me forget all the doubts I have about art and life, the exact opposite of the daily ritual of browsing for distractions. I wanted a religious kind of experience, that earlier form of spectacle.

Henry Miller (1891-1980) — voracious reader, masterful letter-writer, champion of combinatorial creativity, one disciplined writer — spent a good portion of his career freelancing for various literary periodicals. In April of 1939, Modern Mystic magazine commissioned him to write a piece about the work of psychoanalyst E. Graham Howe. Two years later, the essay was republished in the eponymous volume The Wisdom of the Heart (public library) — a collection of Miller’s short stories, profiles, and literary essays.

A single work of art is spotlit and hung in chains from the ceiling: four enormous fragments of Bath stone, each apparently chipped and cracked yet mysteriously sturdy. The carved letters engraved on the stone read: “The world has been empty since the Romans.”

Legendary author Joseph Conrad was born 155 years ago today. Though he remains best-known for penning the high school English curriculum staple Heart of Darkness in 1899, much of his writing bears a profound philosophical quality, exploring the depths of psychology, morality, the creative impulse, and other pillars of existence.

A pioneering and widely revered video artist, Viola remains one of the most innovative practitioners of filmic art. His retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, “Bill Viola: Liber Insularum,” curated by Roc Laseca, will run from December 5 through March 3, 2013.

The image you see on your computer screen does not make this clear, so let me emphasize that these “figures” are not “life-size.” Their reduced scale is a deliberate choice on the part of their maker, Juan Muñoz, a multitalented and deeply articulate Spanish artist known primarily for his installation-based sculpture.

Kenyon, whose notebooks from the 2011 interactive exhibition, "Talk to Me" have been acquired by the MoMA for its permanent collection, is showing his most recent work at Katzen’s museum in Washington, DC through 16 December. "SUPERMAJOR" consists of an oil fountain made out of cans, however, instead of flowing out of the cans, through a subtle technologic subterfuge, oil seems to be flowing back in.

Oscar Niemeyer liked curves. The Brazilian architect, who rose to prominence in the 1940s, and died this past week, pushed the limits of concrete. He took a material that had historically been used for slabs, beams and pillars and sculpted it into arches and curves of every kind.

Every year, Madrid city council commissions an artist to decorate the streets with festive holiday lighting. Madrid-based Sapey decided to use colorful, geometric patterns to decorate the area. Circular patterns of energy efficient LED lights twinkle overhead as drivers and shoppers pass by underneath.

“A process or set of rules to be followed in solving a problem or a set of problems” (an algorithm) in which looking at art (discussion, assessment, mediation and reproduction) is itself the starting point for new artistic production. That it is no longer possible to speak of art (Kunst), but rather of a differentiated form (Kunste) that positions contemporary art criticism and its “sophisticated contributions to contemporary art” (Texte zur Kunst) in an altered situation.

One Pittsburgh company, TAKTL, has found a more sustainable alternative in ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) that is structurally comparable to steel, requires considerably less material than traditional concrete to meet the same structural requirements, is manufactured locally and has a range of aesthetic capabilities that can make concrete seem refined, even beautiful.

At first sight, Mathieu Mercier’s sculptures and installations question the place of the everyday object in art, once its utilitarian aspect has been carefully dissolved. A central issue in his work lies in the uncertain status of the object, whose use value, reconsidered and diverted, makes it border on abstraction.

Cruzvillegas’ practice deals with history and the construction of the self in reference to economic, social, political, and historical conditions. Employing various means to create open-ended strategies of production and reception, Cruzvillegas gives objects a new life and context, generating shifts in meaning and interpretation, meanwhile demonstrating how concepts and relationships can be constantly inverted and transformed.

The fourth season was dedicated to Rosemarie Trockel. We began in February with a screening and a talk by Beatrix Ruf; then hosted a three-week Cine-Club with films by Brakhage, Pasolini, De Palma, and Fassbinder; then invited people to spend time sitting in front of a photograph by Trockel; then heard Susan Howe on Emily Dickinson; then Dorion Sagan on animal perception (via Jakob von Uexküll); then saw a performance by LLILW GRAY (aka Keith Connolly); then invited Brigid Doherty to talk about headlessness; then showed videos by Judith Hopf and Molly McFadden; then finished by asking Douglas Ross to tell some stories.

This inspiring and unusual building was designed by Dimensional Innovations. Public Library Parking Garage is located in the heart of Kansas City, United States. This project represents one of the pioneer projects behind the revitalization of Downtown KC.

Inspired by pop-art paintings of Wayne Thiebauld about mass produced food, baker Lily Vanilli trawls Indian sweet shops and unusual cake shops, searching for visual references to spark her latest project. Her final creation is a Thiebauld inspired cake installation of artisan, individual cakes: a modern day take on traditional landscape photography.

I encountered The Living Room (2001) for the first time while I was heading to Locust Projects from the Wynwood Arts District and looking for parking. I imagine this is how a lot of people find it—on the way to someplace else. Located at the edge of the officially named Design District, the large-scale installation is attached to nothing, though its form alludes to the shape of the building it was previously attached to.

Last week, the Museum of Modern Art made a very important purchase, acquiring 4 minutes and 3 seconds of¡­ nothing, just "three folded sheets of almost blank onionskin paper", notation for a work of conceptual artist John Cage, a piece of music with no musical notes whatsoever.

With only one permanent construction to his name, a felicitous art-architecture hybrid called “Light Pavilion” completed just this year in Chengdu, China, Woods is best known for his immense output of architectural drawings. His visions of violently ruptured buildings and landscapes, stitched together with profane steel interventions that flout the laws of physics, are considered some of the most radical works of experimental architecture in the 1980s and 90s.

Exhibiting work by Sol LeWitt, Bruce Conner, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Jackie Windsor, Joel Shapiro, Hans Haacke, and Carl Andre, the gallery creates a retrospective of its monumental impact on the New York art scene, while also tracing the progress of the scene itself over the past fifty years.

In Jones work, ethereal geometries and celebratory colors come together in stripped test patterns and blocky isometric illusions. His work locates itself in the earliest moments of seemingly obsolescent digital animation, partly as self-conscious nostalgia but more truly to expand the unrealized potential of this artistic medium.

Throughout his recent practice – most notably in solo shows at Aspen Art Museum and the Kunstverein Munich – Kiaer has turned his attention to notions of refinement and redundancy in minor forms of painting. In so doing, he has made paintings without necessarily painting, instead selecting and arranging materials, models and found objects where motifs promise to inform while prompting thought of absent texts and gaps in knowledge.

RH Gallery is pleased to present 13.0.0.0.0, an exhibition influenced by the Mayan long count date marking the end of the 13th Bak’tun cycle, which, according to many scholars, falls on December 23, 2012.

In addition to the big-name photographers at the Paris Photo, which opens on November 15, the 16th edition of the annual event also features some rising stars who are taking print photography to new levels by experimenting cross-discipline with alternative techniques.

Fascinated by technological innovation, Veilhan creates works that reflect historical styles and subjects yet appear futuristic. Digitally rendered sculptures like Xavier (2006) and The Bear (2010) refer to early-20th-century avant-garde movements such as cubism and futurism, as well as traditions of bestiary, portraiture, and statuary, while incorporating new materials and processes.

Work by young artists whose take on the American landscape and environment is subversive, ironic, cynical, angry, lively and stimulating.

Created by laying out approximately 50,000 used CDs in a precise circle across the the front of the house, Angel of Light spreads its wings, letting you walk right through it. Outlined with battery-operated LED candle lanterns, its sure to be an amazing sight, especially at night.

Can the shape, texture and colour of cutlery change the way food tastes? Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Jinhyun Jeon created this set of knobbly, bulbous and serrated cutlery to stimulate diners’ full range of senses at the table.

Cindy Sherman is far more comfortable in front of a camera than a microphone. Interviews with the artist are exceedingly rare, which perhaps is fitting given how thoroughly she obscures herself in her photographs. However, she did talk with a few journalists, including the San Francisco Chronicle’s art critic Kenneth Baker, in conjunction with Cindy Sherman, the retrospective that opened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, last February and traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art before its presentation at the Walker.

The MOCA show, in which Grosse is one of 16 participants from five countries, is entitled "Inside Out and From the Ground Up." The majority of exhibits are on view through Feb. 24. The idea was to show how contemporary artists deal with architecture and physical space, which in some cases means the MOCA building itself.

In 1974, philosopher Thomas Nagel penned the essay “What It’s Like To Be A Bat?”, which went on to become one of the seminal texts of contemporary philosophy of mind. Nearly four decades later, he returns with Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (public library) — a provocative critique of the limits of scientific reductionism, exploring what consciousness might be if it isn’t easily explained as a direct property of physical interactions and if the door to the unknown were, as Richard Feynman passionately advocated, left ajar.

Walk through the white doors of the Suzanne Geiss Company this month, and you’ll find a foyer empty in the familiar way SoHo galleries tend to be. But pass over the threshold and into the main space, and you’ll find it difficult to turn a corner without fear of knocking into one of the unwieldy sculptures of Ryan Johnson, the Karachi-born, Brooklyn-based sculptor whose work is on view at Geiss until December.

As Real As It Gets, however, is not so much a statement about the marketplace as it is an experiment in using marketplace forms to unexpected and sometimes paradoxical ends. Instead of positing a plainly foolish or villainous corporate Other that we can congratulate ourselves for opposing, these artists, designers, musicians, writers, companies, and even a government entity, offer creations just ambiguous enough to implicate the viewer.

Scaramouche is pleased to present “It’s Been Hours” the first New York solo exhibition of artist Leah Wolff. Inspired by posits in quantum geometry and string theory, Wolff’s artistic practice is an investigation into these all encompassing and fixed modes of scientific analysis.

If you happen to be in Japan from now to March 31, 2013, make sure to check out one of Japan s most stunning displays of light called Winter Illuminations at Nabana no Sato, a botanical garden turned light theme park on the island of Nagashima in Kuwana.

Minimalism used to describe a trend in design and architecture where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. So guys, today you may expect plenty of simple, but modern looking houses.

Exhibition Detail Lutz Bacher LUTZ BACHER Ratio 3 2831A Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94110 October 5th - November 3rd Opening: October 5th 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

A long time ago in an art world far, far away, the self-improvement movement known as EST (Erhard Seminars Training) and what I call ‘the rusted loading-dock-door’ syndrome blew through the gallery landscape. The take-away from EST was simple: "The result is the result" (meaning: by any means necessary).

Dutch artist Levi Van Veluw makes incredible portraits of himself in which he is often the canvas. Over the years he has covered himself in ink, hair, stones, fake grass, and light generating foil, among other materials. His more recent work has increased in complexity: earlier this month we wrote about “Family,” an installation in which Veluw coated himself and four other people in wooden blocks in order to recreate a scene from his childhood. Back in 2008 we first spotted Veluw and his “Landscape” series.

But when a performance artist, Spartacus Chetwynd, and a video artist, Elizabeth Price, are shortlisted for the Turner Prize, perhaps it’s time to start taking more notice. And with Remnants showing the work of Amanda Coogan, Dominic Thorpe and Aideen Barry at Ballina Arts Centre, and the Dublin Live Art Festival opening on Tuesday, it is possible to explore what goes on when art happens in front of you.