Amei Wallach
AMEI WALLACH has written or contributed to more than a dozen books. Her articles have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, The Nation, and Art in America. She is in production for “1964: Rauschenberg Wins!” her third feature-length art documentary. She is founding program director of The Art Writing Workshop, a partnership between the International Art Critics Association (AICA/USA) and the Arts Writers Grant Program.
Guest Critic
What Richard Pryor Didn’t Know
By Amei WallachIn 1926, John Grierson coined the word “documentary” to describe the “documentary value” of Moana, the second film by Robert Flaherty, who is considered the inventor of the form, at least in the English language.
In Conversation
CHRISTO with Amei Wallach
The Floating Piers, the first project Christo has completed solo since the 2009 death of Jeanne-Claude, was, as usual, a sensation. For sixteen days, from June 18 through July 3 this summer, news from The Floating Piers overwhelmed the Italian airwaves and blogosphere, and crowds grew exponentially.
The World Out There
By Amei WallachI’m easy. I can be lured away by beauty, incongruity, formal rigor, brilliant execution, prescient wit, the elegant solution, the titillating thrill of art. But from the start, my heart has belonged to art that asks the big human questions about what it means to live in this world and to die of it.
The Forever Now vs. Recombinant DNA
By Amei WallachIn an instance of spectacularly unfortunate programming, The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World shared the first two months of its exhibition life on the Museum of Modern Art’s sixth floor with Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs.
Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois
By Amei WallachIn every way, Robert Storr’s biography, critical exegesis, and art historical inquiry/psychological inquest into the art and work of Louse Bourgeois is a magnum opus. More than thirty years in the making, including lengthy pauses while Storr pursued his duties as a curator at MoMA and Dean of the Yale School of the Arts, this 828-page volume with more than 1,000 illustrations is ravishing to look at.
