Famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) is the subject of an expansive retrospective that opened yesterday at MoMA. His work in the 1930s "helped define the creative potential of modern photography" and made him one of the most influential photographers in history. As a photojournalist, he captured life on the run, exclusively using Leica 35mm rangefinder cameras—as the NY Times noted in their review: "By plane, train, bus, car, bicycle, rickshaw, horse and on foot, he covered the better part of five continents" throughout his career. The show will run through June 28th, and here's little look into the world he saw through his lens. more ›

Vasily Kandinsky is getting a full-scale retrospective treatment at the Guggenheim next month (the exhibit will run from September 18th through January 13th). The comprehensive survey will include "nearly 100 of Kandinsky’s most important canvases from 1907 to 1942... drawn primarily from the three largest repositories of the artist’s work—the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York, and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau in Munich—as well as from significant private and public collections." There will also be over 60 works on paper, and combined this will be the largest retrospective of the artist’s career in the United States since the 80s. more ›

The long holiday weekend is here, and what better way to spend the sunny hours than with an escape into the demented mind of Francis Bacon? The Metropolitan Museum of Art has just opened their Centenary Retrospective on the artist, the first major New York exhibition on him in twenty years. The NY Times notes that it "won't do much to alter the polarities of opinion around Bacon" but it does dispute the belief that his art declined throughout the years, "indicating that it often improved as his colors brightened, his paint handling gained muscularity. It was equally important that he began to focus on people he knew and cared about, giving them faces that seem simultaneously masked, gouged out of wet clay and recognizably individual." It may be a good opportunity to reevaluate his work, which the museum notes has been seen in a new light following his death in 1992. more ›

Photographer William Eggleston got famous in 1976 when his photographs—derided by art snobs for their bold departure from black and white—were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. According to the Times, the controversial show, with its emphasis on the lifestyles of everyday Southern folk, was received with such dismissive comments as "Perfectly banal, perfectly boring." Now, of course, his work is considered iconic, and the photos' abiding popularity is due in no small part to Eggleston's costly use of the dye transfer printing method, which yields stunning colors. more ›

© MURAKAMI, a retrospective of the work of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, opens Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, where it was on view until February, the exhibit primarily focuses Murakami's work between 1991 and 2000, when the artist began exploring "his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity." (One additional work, Murakami's 6,613 pound, 18 foot-tall Oval Buddha sculpture, will be on view at the Sculpture Garden at 590 Madison Avenue at 56th Street.) more ›