Mira Schor writes about several current shows in New York including: Christopher Wool (through January 22) and Robert Motherwell: Early Collages (through January 5) at the Guggenheim Museum, Mike Kelley at MoMA PS1 (through February 5), an installation of works by Al Held and William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time at the Metropolitan Museum, New York (through May 11).

Comparing Motherwell and Wool, Schor writes: "thinking back on the echoes in Wool’s paintings of Rauschenberg and Polke and a host of other artist going back to the Abstract Expressionists and to Cobra, two things seem clear: the facility of Wool’s marks, including in particular those moments when he seems to be riffing off the idea of wiping out a drawn loop of paint, is only simulacral of the notion of discovery within a painting. The work is predicated on the risks taken by earlier artists, all the battles have already been fought, by somebody else, whereas in these early Motherwell collages you see those battles being fought freshly and with sincerity rather than with a facile gloss. The difference is that although Motherwell was also fighting battles that had already been fought by Miro, Matisse, Picasso, Gris, Braque, he isn’t skating over slick ice yet, he’s still engaging. And this engagement yields a pleasure particular to works from that era."