By now, a critical consensus has congealed around the Walker Art Center’s latest exhibit, The Quick and the Dead, a show that purports to “reach beyond itself and the limits of our knowledge and experience” to ask “what is alive and dead within the legacy of conceptual art?” Almost everyone who has written about it thus far is in agreement that the show, curated by Peter Eleey, the WAC’s new visual arts curator, is the best exhibit the Walker has pulled off in years—an “intelligent and elusive” show (as ArtForum’s David Velasco described it) that puts the Walker back on the cutting-edge of contemporary art after veering so dangerously close to populism with such pandering people-pleasers as Picasso and American Art, Frida Kahlo, and currently, Live Forever: Elizabeth Payton. Finally, it seems, the WAC has gotten back to what it does best—confounding people with that special brand of weird that can only be found in the world’s finest museums. 

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I will be the first to admit that, at first glance, the idea of building an art exhibition around postage stamps doesn’t sound very promising. Stamps are very small, for one thing, so finding little frames to go around them can be a challenge. They are also, well, stamps—and if you collected them as a kid, you know that a little collecting goes a long way. Fill a page or two of an album and you’re good for life.

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If you’ve been following the dust-up over artist Shepard Fairey, you know that: a) the Associated Press is upset that Fairey didn’t ask permission to use a photo of Barack Obama taken by an AP photographer to create his now iconic “Hope” poster; b) Fairey sued AP over the matter before AP had a chance to sue him, and c) Fairey is now the most famous artist in the country. 

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When you think about it, the library is the ideal place for an art gallery. It draws people from all walks of life. There’s an energy and vitality that many a gallery would envy. And the Minneapolis Central Library’s Cesar Pelli-designed building is a work of art in itself. Not surprising, then, that a show like 32x4, with its focus on community and shared history, fits in well.

The name of the exhibit refers to the four photographers—Michael Dvorak, Dusty Hoskovec, Sarah Stacke, and Xavier Tavera—commissioned to photograph thirty-two Twin Cities neighborhoods. Some of the neighborhoods are familiar, others not so much. Yet odds are you’ve driven through many of them at some point, even if they didn’t register as distinct neighborhoods.

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Artist's books defy easy categorization. They are works of art in book or book-like form, or, in some cases, art that simply incorporates books but would be difficult to, say, read. The Walker pays homage to this enigma with " Text/Messages: Books by Artists," a new show that draws from the center's sizeable collection of artist's books. 

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TiVo has excised commercials from my life, and most of the year I feel pretty smug about that.

One of the many gifts of my god-sent DVR is making commercially interrupted programming instantly commercial free. I can shrink 60 Minutes to forty by sending the Cialis ads and Lipitor pitches into a fast-forwarded blur. The hours I've saved juicing the system--it's impressive.

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The first ever U.S. retrospective of the work of post-war Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo opened this week at the Walker Art Center. The exhibition, which consists primarily of installation pieces and sculpture, is spread out over three galleries with work representing three decades of pure provocation.

Kudo has been described as having a "strikingly eccentric visual vocabulary," and the exhibition affirms this, emphatically. His seminal "Philosophy of Impotence"—a room peppered with hanging black objects, part phallus, part chrysalis—provides one of many examples.

The exhibition traces the evolution of his unique take on metamorphosis. From "Philosophy of Impotence," the exhibition moves on to more overt representations of a "new ecology" in which humanity merges with nature and the manmade world in a rather grotesque tableaux.

"Grafted Garden," an installation populated by wilting day-glow flowers, severed limbs, and the occasional pulsing electrode, places humanity on the same level as even the most reviled corners of reality. Kudo explains his opposition to the dichotomies of the West. "I wanted to tell Europeans that humanism and love and sex are virtually on the same dimension as such mundane commodities as instant soup or cigarettes."

It's impossible to ignore the likely influence of world events on Kudo's art and attitude. His notion of a "new ecology" that resembles nothing so much as a radioactive wasteland hardly seems coincidental. Those forced to assimilate to Japan's post-atomic landscape would surely find logic in Kudo's idea of metamorphosis.

Yet, dark as his visions are, Kudo's fixation with the possibility of renewal (even if into a form unrecognizable or even undesirable to most of humanity) keeps his work from spilling over into total nihilism. His later work, from the 1980s, features cocoonlike sculptures wrapped in dark and light string, as well as cast skulls and his trademark detached phallus with colorful string curling around and trailing behind, which bears the title "The Survival of the Avante Garde"—are indications that Kudo seemed to be casting his gaze inward later in life.

Kudo's overriding vision remains consistently dystopian, but his apparent cynicism isn’t meant as a wakeup call or even a cause for despair. Rather, the ugliness, the decay, the pollution, are all part of a process of metamorphosis, the outcome of which remains unknown.

Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis continues at the Walker Art Center through January 11.

Everyone has seen an eye chart at some point (if not all the letters on it). It's one of the most recognizable diagnostic tools. The chart's purpose is simple. It measures the strength of one's vision on a scale from 20/200—the big letters at the top of the chart—to 20/10—the little type at the bottom. New York–based artist R. Luke DuBois has adapted the ubiquitous chart for a novel purpose in his new show Hindsight Is Always 20/20, which opened at the Weisman this weekend.

DuBois substitutes words culled from State of the Union addresses from forty-one presidents and arranges them top to bottom by frequency, omitting the most common words (“a,” “of,” “the,” etc.) At the top, a single word followed by smaller words, first two, then four, then whole strings of them.

Hindsight Is Always 20/20 offers up layers of meaning and interpretation. On the one hand, the exhibition acts as a modern window into American history, and points us toward the concerns of each era. Buchanan's "Slavery" next to Lincoln's "Emancipation," offers a singular example. On the other hand, it asks a series of intellectual and aesthetic questions about the arrangement and resulting meaning of such information. DuBois describes himself first and foremost as a composer who happens to work in a variety of media, and those familiar with the information design guru Edward Tufte will see a definite affinity here.

The exhibition raises questions, but it also offers simple pleasures. The bold words topping each chart are like the introduction to a brain teaser, drawing you in and making you want to try to piece together meaning. Some are obtuse. Why on earth would Ulysses S. Grant use the word “Procedure” so regularly in his State of the Union? Or McKinley, “Puerto”? Others draw you in with their ominous tone. Truman’s “Soviet” and Hoover’s “Unemployment” come to mind. Or come packed with ironic humor. Nixon’s top word: “Truly.” Still others strike as possibly prophetic. Bill Clinton’s chart starts with “21st” followed by “Got Lost.”

Dig deeper and you’ll find other amusing and telling juxtapositions, too. On one line toward the bottom of the chart for Jimmy Carter, the words "abuse I've endured" meld into a rather loaded phrase. In the chart for Lyndon Johnson’s speech, the very contemporary phrase, "beauty police," pops up.

Perhaps the most striking juxtaposition of all though is between the chart for George Washington and the chart for George W. Bush. “We go from ‘gentlemen’ to ‘terror,’” says DuBois. “Had George Washington lost the election 250 years ago, he would have been hanged for treason to the British crown, and gone down in history as a terrorist—yet his number one word is ‘gentlemen.’ Now we have a president with the background of a gentleman—he is a Yale graduate—but he’s fear-mongering, trying to make us scared.”

Hindsight is always 20/20 runs through January 4 at the Weisman Art Museum.

Word has it that Yuri Arajs, a fixture of the Twin Cities art scene in recent years, is moving on. Arajs was the curator of the now-defunct Outsiders and Others gallery, a bastion of support for nonmainstream artists of all kinds. He was an enthusiastic booster of local artists, especially those who might not get attention otherwise. A show of his work at Rogue Buddha Gallery in Northeast Minneapolis is a fitting farewell.

Arajs's work has tended toward minimal, abstract landscapes. His current show, Reclaimed Memories, introduces found photographs and objects into this aesthetic to produce some fascinating image and effects. Arajs based the pieces in the show on the narrative within each photograph. "The photo had a story to tell me," he says. "I listened to it and what came back was my own version of a memory that is not mine. But I have now reclaimed these memories as my own and this is what they look like."

The images in the show are all old black-and-white photographs, and are populated by solitary figures and small groups, sailing ships, old homesteads, and children. The paper, the frames, even postal marks with a year and place, add context. But the pieces are more than interesting artifacts. Arajs's imprint is true to the promise of the show's title in that he uses these objects and images to create intriguing compositions that add to the mystery embedded in the lost worlds of the photographs. A man sits on a slanted fence rail in a dark suit, his expression impassive, an image that’s paired with a chicken wishbone and a small anchor. Two men stand against a backdrop of a mountain of timber juxtaposed with iron dust and cobalt acrylic, "No. 2" in red at the center. Arajs transforms simple scenes into vivid, layered, uncertain landscapes to explore–a little like memory itself.

He, too, will be missed.

Reclaimed Memories continues at Rogue Buddha Gallery through July 27.

Or check out the online gallery.

Thousands of artists received funds through the Works Progress Administration and other New Deal programs during the 1930s and early 1940s. Some of the artists became household names—Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, and Cameron Booth, to name a few. Many others did not, but their work became part of the fabric of American culture in the form of post-office murals and handicrafts. By the People, For the People: New Deal Art at the Weisman offers up the full spectrum of work from this era.

The show draws from the museum’s impressive collection of New Deal art. It’s organized by a mish-mash of aesthetic and topical themes: work and industry, abstraction, photography, the University and Minnesota, women. The themes only serve to underscore the premise of the show: that New Deal art encompassed far more than social realism. The Weisman folks even managed to come up with a few examples of Surrealism, which gives you an idea of  how eclectic and interesting this show really is.

The New Deal programs placed emphasis on regional folkways and traditions as subject matter. By the People contains many examples, but Lucia Wiley’s series based on the legend of Paul Bunyan—and, more broadly, the world of logging—caught my eye. She based a series of post-office murals on the oil illustrations, which resemble woodcuts in style. In one, Bunyan nearly fills the canvas. On one knee, head bowed, he cradles a young ox. The other images in the series swirl with energy, but the simple exchange between ox and man is oddly touching.

The show has a little of something for everyone. The colorful abstract paintings of Alexander Corrazo in one room, documentary photographs of Marion Post Woolcott in the next, and a handful of local landscapes of the Twin Cities circa 1940 in the next. The exhibit also highlights the work of women hired as New Deal artists, and will serve as the foundation for a series of lectures and seminars on this fascinating period in American art.

Through July 27, Weisman Art Museum.

Pictured: Dorothy Lau, Workers-Five O'Clock, ca. 1935-1940, oil on canvas