461 stories from 4columns
The latest novel by Helle Helle captures with casual intensity and uncanny grace the relationship between a terminally ill mother
and her teenage daughter.
they, by Helle Helle, translated…
A new reissue of Greg Tate's 1992 essay collection hits hard with the truth, again and again.
Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, by Greg Tate, AUWA Books, 336 pages, …
The Barnes Foundation presents an exhibition of fifty-five transportive paintings by the visionary artist who explored borders
and what lay beyond them.
Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets…
A stage adaptation by Elevator Repair Service brings a madcap energy to James Joyce's notoriously difficult novel.
Cast of Ulysses. Courtesy the Public Theater. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Ulys…
In his first comprehensive US retrospective, a demonstration of the Cuban artist's practice as an act of decolonization.
Wifredo Lam: When I Don't Sleep, I Dream, installation view. Courtes…
Round and round it goes: the artist's installation takes a pilgrimage to the existential state of not-knowing.
Candice Lin: g/hosti, installation view. Courtesy Whitechapel Gallery. Photo: …
Harry Lighton's new film, starring Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård as an odd couple, plays like a sub/dom rom-com.
Harry Melling as Colin and Alexander SkarsgÃ¥rd as Ray in Pilli…
No work, no school, no shopping.
4Columns will not publish today in solidarity with the National Shutdown. Our regularly scheduled issue will come out tomorrow, Saturday, January 31.
In George Saunders's follow-up to Lincoln in the Bardo, death comes for us all"with the possibility of grace.
Vigil, by George Saunders,
Random House, 174 pages, $28
'  ' …
Big stories emerge from a small showcase at the Morgan centered on the Italian painter's Boy with a Basket of Fruit.
Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit in Focus, installation view. Pho…
Striking discordances bring an animated intensity to Robert Aldrich's 1956 tearjerker starring Joan Crawford and Cliff Robertson.
Joan Crawford as Millicent "Milly" Wetherby and Cliff Rober…
In the jazz musician's autobiography, an elaborate, dizzying accumulation of memories and moves, tour stories and sonic endurance.
Better Do it Now Before You Die Later, by Sonny Simmons wi…
Confederate statuary takes on new meanings in a history-making show at MOCA and the Brick in LA.
MONUMENTS, installation view. Courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brick. Photo: …
Rebecca Zlotowski's film starring Jodie Foster takes the form of a wry murder mystery with a side of mystical melodrama.
Jodie Foster as Lilian Steiner in A Private Life. Courtesy Sony Pict…
Tracy Letts's '90s roadside psychodrama makes its Broadway debut.
Carrie Coon as Agnes White in Bug. © Matthew Murphy.
Bug, written by Tracy Letts, directed by David Cromer, Samuel J. F…
A twentieth-anniversary reissue of The Greatest renews faith in the artist's soul-baring songs.
The Greatest and Redux, by Cat Power,
Domino Recording Company
'  '  '
G…
Aestheticized violence and fussy formalism in Lav Diaz's new film.
Gael GarcÃÂa Bernal as Ferdinand Magellan in Magellan. Courtesy Janus Films.
Magellan, written and directed by Lav Diaz…
Art in a time of war: an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and collages at 52 Walker.
Nicole Eisenman: STY, installation view. Courtesy 52 Walker.
Nicole Eisenman: STY, 52 Wal…
In Matthew Rice's book-length poem, a portrait of the poet on a factory night shift.
plastic: A Poem, by Matthew Rice,
Soft Skull, 90 pages, $15.95
'  '  '
Before it wa…
In Karl Ove Knausgaard's latest, the tragicomic tale of an artist's unwitting Faustian bargain.
The School of Night, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken, Penguin Press, 503 …
Our annual year-in-art-reviews.
Does arts criticism go viral? Relatively speaking, it does!
Our editors are here with a countdown of 2025's most engrossing, attention-grabbing reviews, f…
We'll be back with a new issue on January 9, 2026!
4Columns mascot Old Saint Sparky and assistant senior editor Bolek wishing you a festive winter break.
We're hunkering down for a mini wi…
A young table-tennis champ careens and crashes through an obstacle course of chaos and catastrophes in Josh Safdie's new film.
Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser in Marty Supreme. Courtesy …
French theory's influences ripple through the development of American art in a show at Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Thought, installation view. Cou…
A material girl in a material world: hyperfeminine stylings commingle with industrial structures and materials in the artist's exhibition.
Mimosa Echard: Facial, installation view. Courtesy…
