Opinion Why the Legal Strategy Behind Masterpiece Cakeshop Gets Art Backwards—and Why It Should Make People Nervous What happens when the definition of “art” becomes a burning political issue of our day. By Ben Davis, Jun 7, 2018
Reviews How Domenico Gnoli’s Meticulous Paintings Reveal a Society—Like Ours—That Is Coming Apart at the Seams A new exhibition at Luxembourg & Dayan reveals how the artist used elements of Surrealism and Pop to do something entirely different. By Ben Davis, Jun 1, 2018
Opinion How Purple Magazine Intern-Turned-Scam Artist Anna Delvey Turned Contemporary Art Into the Perfect Tool for Fraud Take a look at Delvey's Instagram and behold what a hollowed-out signifier art has become. By Ben Davis, May 30, 2018
Opinion Jordan Peterson, the Controversial Pro-Male Philosopher, Says He Hates Postmodern Art. But He Secretly Loves It! The author of "12 Rules for Life" loves Socialist Realist art. By Ben Davis, May 24, 2018
Opinion How Art Helps Makes Sense of Donald Glover’s ‘This Is America’ Video & More Critical Thoughts on Culture Plus, Tony Cokes turns tweets into art, and one very eerie paparazzi pic. By Ben Davis, May 17, 2018
Opinion There Is a Dystopian Cultural Vision Hidden in Michael Bloomberg’s Multimillion-Dollar Art Shed The half-billion-dollar art center drops a manifesto, making big claims for its mission. By Ben Davis, May 14, 2018
Art World Is It Even Possible to Comprehend a Work of Art Without Seeing a Woman Next to It (for Scale)? Examining an enduring and strange stock photo phenomenon. By Ben Davis & Julia Halperin, May 10, 2018
Reviews With ‘Like Life,’ the Met Breuer Has Arrived at Something New, Paradoxical, and Strangely of Its Time New York's encyclopedic museum stakes its contemporary-art fortunes on courting a new kind of taste. By Ben Davis, May 1, 2018
Opinion Infinity Gems and the Art Gallery: What Ambitious Artists Can Learn From Marvel’s Cinematic Universe Adventure More than you might think! By Ben Davis, Apr 24, 2018
Exhibitions Duchamp Did Not Invent the Readymade. In Fact, It May Have Been the First Human Art Form Consider the case of the Makapansgat Pebble. By Ben Davis, Apr 19, 2018
Reviews Can VR Really Make Us Feel Empathy? Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ‘Carne y Arena’ Proves That’s the Wrong Question As the Oscar-winning VR installation arrives in Washington, DC, our critic explains how it shows the potential—and the limits—of its medium. By Ben Davis, Mar 30, 2018
People ‘I Drank the Apocalyptic Kool-Aid’: Art Historian Hal Foster on Why He Has Developed an Unromantic View of the Avant-Garde Ben Davis, artnet News's chief art critic, spoke to the eminent art historian about the urgent themes of his upcoming Mellon lecture. By Ben Davis, Mar 26, 2018
Politics ‘National Geographic’ Turned to a Photo Historian to Help Reckon With Its Colonialist Past. Even He Was Unsettled by What He Found John Edwin Mason, a historian of race and photography, spoke to Ben Davis about examining the famed magazine's troubled history. By Ben Davis, Mar 21, 2018
Exhibitions How the New Museum’s Triennial Sabotages Its Own Revolutionary Mission What's all this talk of propaganda? By Ben Davis, Feb 20, 2018
Politics Here’s the Bad News About Kehinde Wiley’s Presidential Portrait of Barack Obama There's a lot to love in the fanciful image, but there's also a lot to question. By Ben Davis, Feb 13, 2018
