Five Variations News Today

Molly Warnock on the art of Chryssa

SPEAKING AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY in January 1968, the artist Chryssa detailed a disposition toward creative practice that she described as the “cool mind.”1 The term served to telegraph, via contrast, her disdain for certain endeavors aimed at bridging art and life—all of which, in her view, simply reproduced the disordered flux of the “human pattern.” Of particular concern was what she cast as the fundamentally regressive credo of Happenings, with their freewheeling yet ultimately poin...

Thoughts on Chryssa's neons at Dia, Brigid Berlin's life at Vito Schnabel, Nora Griffin's T-shirts at Fierman, Threads, and MyPillow's art.

Some 60 years after her breakout solo shows in 1961 at the Betty Parsons Gallery and the Guggenheim Museum, the pioneering artist Chryssa is finally back in the public eye. Showcasing an impressive range of work centered upon light and form, Chryssa & New York at Dia Chelsea is the first museum show in North America in over four decades to focus on the Greek-born artist Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali (1933–2013). Once considered a pivotal figure in the burgeoning dialogue amongst Pop, Minimali...

Two conductors get the big box treatment, plus contemporary choral music and the return of a minimalist master. Classical CD reviews by Graham Rickson, Sebastian Scotney