The St. Petersburg Paradox | The New Yorker | Goings On About Town: Art

Jun 16 2014


A show about gaming and chance takes its title from an eighteenth-century statistical theory about gambling and aversion to risk. Works by thirteen artists span nearly a century, from a 1916 collage by Jean Arp to three “Monte Carlo Bonds” (1924-38), by Marcel Duchamp—the artist appears on the certificates as a faun with shaving-cream horns—to Barbara Bloom’s 1992 artist’s book with the palindromic title “Never Odd or Even.” Among several new pieces by younger artists, the most impressive is Sarah Ortmeyer’s anarchic scattering of chessboards—a nod to Duchamp’s favorite pastime. Through Aug. 17.