Required Reading

Kara Walker new painting on display at Sikkema Jenkins & Co gallery is “Barack Obama as Othello ‘The Moor’ With the Severed Head of Iago in a New and Revised Ending by Kara E. Walker” (2019), pastel, conté crayon, charcoal on treated paper, 87.375 x 72 inches (221.9 x 182.9 cm) (photo credit: © Kara Walker, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York)

• Lennard Davis on the truth of photography and Dorothea Lange’s famous Migrant Mother image:

In a later interview with the Los Angeles Times (November 18, 1978), Thompson stated clearly, “I didn’t get anything out of it. I wished she hadn’t of taken my picture.” She added, “She didn’t ask my name. […] She said she wouldn’t sell the pictures. She said she’d send me a copy. She never did.” In another interview (cited in Marie-Monique Robin’s 1999 book The Photos of the Century), Thompson complained, “I’m tired of symbolizing human poverty when my living conditions have improved.”

Because the photographic object talked back, and because U.S. Camera magazine did forward Thompson’s letter to Lange, we have learned indirectly from an interview with another photographer (cited in Linda Gordon’s 2009 biography Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits) that Lange felt “shaken — frightened and miserable that her photograph had caused grief.”

• Jeremy Gerard thinks it’s time for critics to step in and help things along in the theater community:

Most of Boston’s major media showered the revival with enthusiastic features. But no one reviewed it. The critics and their editors were not invited to come until the second-to-last performance, I was told by one of the city’s most prominent critics. Apparently not wanting to appear impolite, they all agreed.

“No reviews” is a trend, spanning from Boston to a recent out-of-town tryout in Los Angeles and even to Broadway. I’m all for producers and the sometimes preposterous lengths they will go to in order to promote and protect their shows. That’s their job. But I’ve often wondered why we, the critics, so willingly go along with their manipulations. Especially when they interfere with the, well let’s call it the journalism part of our job — reporting to our readers and giving context to the cultural news of the day.

• Thirty Thousand Hertz does a solid episode about the evolution of sounds for children’s toys:

• Wonder why many diseases appear to originate in China? Vox attempts to explain and “wet markets” are a focus:

• A documentary about the looting of European fine art during the Nazi regime:

• The latest anti-China symbol is the ‘claw’ symbol based off the movie Red Dawn. It’s the new Yellow Peril dog whistle, and this report is from Australia:

Strewth has spied it stuck outside the suites of Liberal lower house members Andrew Hastie, Tim Wilson and Phillip Thompson, Liberal senator James Paterson and Labor senator Kimberley Kitching. The group jokingly calls itself “The Wolverines”, a reference to the 1984 flick Red Dawn where high school football stars Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen stop a Soviet invasion of the US. Formed last year, the bipartisan Canberra Wolverines communicate (with many a wolf emoji) via encrypted WhatsApp messages. Their aim? To speak out against China’s expanding power.

• OMG:

For a few hours Wednesday, residents of the northern Italian town of Castelvetro realized they could have their Lambrusco not just from bottles — but also from their faucets and shower heads.

• With these nine passports you can travel visa-free anywhere in the world:

1. Japan
2. UAE
3. Uganda or Sudan or Ethiopia
4. Turkey
5. Mali
6. India or Bangladesh or the Maldives
7. China
8. Georgia
9. Afghanistan

• Road rage, LA style:

• Enjoy:

Required Reading is published every Saturday, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.