All articles from 4columns
4Columns was an online magazine of arts criticism in publication from September 23, 2016 to June 26, 2026. Funded by a private foundation, the project was established with a budget to cover …
A river of bodily emissions runs through it: in Lucio Castro’s new film, the flow of erotic energy proves to be a mystical power.
Laith Khalifeh as Adnan in Drunken Noodles. Courtesy Stra…
In her final collection, Fanny Howe witnesses the same world we all see.
This Poor Book: A Poem, by Fanny Howe,
Graywolf Press, 132 pages, $18
• • •
“I don’t think …
A galvanizing exhibition at PS1 showcases NYC art made by and
for the people.
Greater New York, installation view. Courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Kris Graves. Pictured, left: fields harrington,…
Hélène Cixous weaves intersecting timescales to relay a multigenerational story of flight and fire.
Incinarration: What Do We Carry?, by Hélène Cixous, translated by Peggy Kamuf, Seagul…
Denial, delusion, dissociation: a new book collects Rachel Aviv’s New Yorker essays about mothers and daughters.
You Won’t Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters, by Rachel Av…
In the Scottish duo’s album Inferno, a kaleidoscopic range builds up a rich and uncanny sense of atmosphere.
Inferno, by Boards of Canada,
Warp Records
• • •
Few band…
Aliens are among us: in Steven Spielberg’s latest film, the truth is out there—and on our screens.
Colman Domingo as Hugo Wakefield, Tommy Martinez as Santiago, Emily Blunt as Margaret …
The V&A shines a spotlight on the Italian designer’s wild creations and collaborations with stars, celebrities, and Surrealist artists.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, installation…
In his audacious directorial debut, comedian and actor John Early stars as an LA ingenue who relapses into bulimia after becoming a
reluctant food influencer.
John Early as Maddie Ralph in…
Claudia Horn’s book about one of capitalism’s greatest critics presents a tantalizing vision of Luxemburg the eco-socialist.
Rosa Luxemburg’s Herbarium: Radical Ecology and the Global…
To have and to withhold: an exhibition of the Cuban artist’s works emphasizes the body’s dynamism even when tied up, gagged,
or otherwise confined.
Rocío García: The Object of Power …
A new volume collects three never-before-translated novellas by Jacqueline Harpman, author of I Who Have Never Known Men.
We Were Forbidden, by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwart…
In Lynne Tillman’s latest collection of art writing, meaning may not arrive, but attention persists.
Paying Attention: Essays on Art and Culture, by Lynne Tillman, edited and with an intr…
A twenty-five-year survey at the Guggenheim illuminates the run-up to the artist’s fluid and gestural steel sculptures.
Carol Bove, installation view. Courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museu…
Imperfect yet heartfelt performances highlight the improvised nature of Chris Jolly’s 2000 film project, shot using 1960s technology.
Kevin Barnes as Bernard and Jill Carnes as Helen in C…
Crazy, cruel, clueless, all of the above: in his new adaptation of Jean Genet’s play, Kip Williams checks off every box.
Phia Saban as Solange and Lydia Wilson as Claire in The Maids. Cou…
In her new novel about an author researching the Modernist writer, Deborah Levy examines rootlessness and expatriation, partnership and friendship, freedom and devotion to one’s art.
My Y…
Bonding, blending, and a kinship of aesthetics abound in an exhibition of works by the two artists.
David Hammons and Jannis Kounellis, installation view. Courtesy White Cube. © On White W…
On race and retail: Boots Riley’s mile-a-minute film is a wild mix of the heist genre, the ensemble comedy, labor satire, and outright science fiction.
Keke Palmer as Corvette in I Love B…
Antoine Fuqua constructs a biopic as comeback tour starring the King of Pop’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson.
Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in Michael. Courtesy Lionsgate. Photo: Glen Wilson.…
Call her by her new name: in Milagros Mumenthaler’s film about a fashion designer’s mental disintegration, a story of the ruptures between before and after, past and present.
Isabel Aim…
In the late poet Keith Waldrop’s fictional memoir, gentle humor and a powerful afterglow of melancholy and loss.
Light While There Is Light, by Keith Waldrop,
New York Review Books, 201 …
Closer to the heavens: nearly one hundred architectural plans and drawings from a period when attention was directed upward and beyond the stone.
Gothic By Design: The Dawn of Architectural…
MoMA turns the transatlantic Dadaist, prankster, fabricator and reproducer of objects into a proper artist.
Marcel Duchamp, installation view. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Jonathan…
Rising star Isabelle Huppert and Delphine Seyrig at her peak deliver impressive performances as a Swiss outsider artist in Liliane de Kermadec’s elliptical 1975 film.
Isabelle Huppert as …
Six short essays by Trevor Paglen on seeing and believing in an era of digital images.
How to See Like a Machine: Images After AI, by Trevor Paglen,
Verso, 176 pages, $24.95
• •…
Works by Asian and British artists created for East India Company agents from 1750 to 1850 exemplify multidirectional influences and
extractive relationships.
Painters, Ports, and Profits:…
Here, there, Middle of Nowhere: the singer embraces the messy in-between on her latest album.
Middle of Nowhere, by Kacey Musgraves,
Lost Highway Records
• • •
In a pop…
Francesc Tosquelles is the hero we need right now.
Tosquelles: Healing Institutions, by Joana Masó with texts by Francesc Tosquelles, translated by Robert Hurley and Mara Faye Lethem, Semi…
The digital-arte-povera style of James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s film renders the jankiness and alienation of the modern workplace.
Tobin (voiced by Jesse Wakeman) in The Misconceived. Courtes…
An exhibition at the Bozar in Brussels traces the origins of the obsession with good looks.
Beauty and Ugliness, installation view. Courtesy the Bozar. © Yannick SAS.
Beauty and Ugliness:…
Talking about men, really: the artist’s new works point to corporations, politicians, and their conspiratorial powers.
Sarah Morris: Snow Leopards and Skyscrapers, installation view. Cour…
Qian Zhongshu’s epic picaresque from 1947 presents a world in which fraudulence and opportunism cast a shadow across all levels of society.
Fortress Besieged, by Qian Zhongshu, translated…
In Lucrecia Martel’s first full-length documentary, a continued fascination with the limitations of perspective and the obtuseness of the bourgeoisie.
Still from Our Land (Nuestra Tierra)…
A new show highlights the astonishingly phantasmagoric works created by the artist in response to the rise of National Socialism.
Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds, installation view. Courte…
At the outset of the Great Migration, trajectories converge beyond the wreckage of history in August Wilson’s 1988 drama.
Cedric “The Entertainer” as Seth Holly, Taraji P. Henson as B…
One viewer’s embrace of sweet nostalgia is another’s
artificial fantasy of yesteryear.
Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work, installation view. Courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum. …
Rosa Campbell chronicles Shere Hite’s groundbreaking 1976 report on clitoral stimulation and its fate in the culture.
The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared: Shere …
Maurice Pialat’s compassionate 1971 miniseries examines the Great War’s fracturing of civilian life.
Hervé Lévy as Hervé Gardy and Michel Terrazon as Michel Latour in La maison…
Light in the dark, dark in the light: the Austrian Romani artist’s work is given space to speak for itself in a show at the Drawing Center.
Ceija Stojka: Making Visible, installation view…
C'est cool . . . Ann Scott's novel set amid a '90s Parisian milieu of techno beats, club drugs, and bisexual ravers.
Superstars, by Ann Scott, translated by Jonathan Woollen,
Astra House, …
A traveling retrospective of essential viewing makes an elegiac landing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Noah Davis, installation view. Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art. Pictured, far …
Family tragedy and fracture evoke lingering questions in Sophy Romvari's debut feature, set on Vancouver Island.
Still from Blue Heron. Courtesy Janus Films.
Blue Heron, written and dir…
Created in collaboration with Anselm Kiefer, a new book by the late Alexander Kluge reveals the polymath's dizzying,
allusive, spellbinding depths.
Intelligence is the Art of Remaining Fai…
The critics aren't all right: this year's survey is a sharply political and totally sincere iteration.
Whitney Biennial 2026, installation view. Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art. Pho…
In a new retrospective series at Anthology, an indelible actress whose story remains full of ellipses.
Tina Aumont as Henriette in Fellini's Casanova. © Universal.
"La fille des étoile…
Adele Bertei's book forefronts the many women artists, filmmakers, and musicians who were integral to the no wave scene.
No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene,…
Awkward parties, dreary bars, rudderless female narrator: Gwendoline Riley's latest is a delicate novel about love, friendship, and contempt.
The Palm House, by Gwendoline Riley,
New York …
Steven Soderbergh's intriguing new drama about the anguish of abandoning one's art.
Michaela Coel as Lori Butler and Ian McKellen as Julian Sklar in The Christophers. Courtesy Neon. Photo: …
