Staff Picks: Conduits, Cockroaches, Colored Paper

From Ben Gijsemans’s debut graphic novel, Hubert.

It seems silly to ask, but did you know that there were loads of women making art in the postwar era, before the advent of the feminist movement, women who were central to the development of various abstract idioms but who were largely marginalized in male-dominated conversations about abstraction? Surprising, but not surprising, right? MoMA’s new show, “,” which opens tomorrow, seeks to rectify this omission by gathering some fifty artists and more than a hundred paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, ceramics, and fiber works, a large canvas on which pink and white ovoid shapes burst out of a dark purple background. I discovered Eleanore Mikus’s gluey white canvas, from which indistinct shapes begin to surface, like forms from a block of marble; Anne Ryan’s small, profound collages made from colored paper, sandpaper, cloth, string; Magdalena Abakanowicz’s imposing, animate yellow-orange woven sisal wall piece; and so many more—room after room of stunning, brilliant work.  —