Gorky in Philly

Agony, Arshile Gorky, 1947/The Museum of Modern Art

Arshile Gorky had one of the most singular careers in American art — a decades-long, almost self-annihilating immersion in the work of a few painters he revered, and then an explosion in the early 1940s into an art that was entirely his own. From now through January 10 there's a terrific new Gorky retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I reviewed it in this week's issue of Time.