Sebastian Smee

A Jack Whitten retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art blew our critic away.

“Degenerate Art,” an exhibition at the Musée Picasso in Paris on the Nazis’ persecution of modern artists, is about culture wars and where they can lead.

Anselm Kiefer’s “Breaking of the Vessels,” weighing more than seven tons, is one of the artist’s many manic dissections of German history.

The artist August Coleman named “Battleship Kate,” a major work of folk art, for a sex worker and swindler with head-to-toe tattoos.

The artist August Coleman named “Battleship Kate,” a major work of folk art, for a sex worker and swindler with head-to-toe tattoos.

“Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature,” a major retrospective of the German romantic at the Met, speaks of a world out of joint.

“Twentieth-Century Nudes from Tate,” an exhibition including major modern artists, reveals the connection between our naked bodies and reality.

The painter, like the filmmaker, created images that resonated with a specifically modern sense of horror.

Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” and Ragnar Kjartansson’s “The Visitors” are two of the best artworks of this century — the top of a medium that has come into its own.

Artemisia Gentileschi painted Mary Magdalene in a sudden swoon — a tradition of matching physical beauty to spiritual elevation.