Art Review
The Carnegie International Looks Back at Itself
The 59th iteration captures some of the excitement of earlier exhibitions, providing vital commentary on issues of authoritarianism and militarism.
Ed Simon
Ed Simon is Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University, a staff writer for LitHub, and the author of Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain (2024).
Book Review
Hans Holbein Painted the Human
He surpassed all of his colleagues in the sheer depth, visceral intimacy, and empathy conveyed in his renderings of nobles, aristocrats, and thinkers.
Feature
Salvador Dalí’s Frustrating Vision of the Divine
Having abandoned the profane for only the sacred, Dalí’s “Nuclear Mysticism” renounced the richness of experience for the aridity of metaphysics.
Opinion
The Marquis de Sade of the Upper East Side
Like the infernal French nobleman, Jeffrey Epstein’s story represents cruel and oppressive politics that were seeded in aristocracy, tended in capitalism, and are now harvested in fascism.
Feature
How Liminalism Became the Defining Aesthetic of Our Time
This crowd-curated digital movement is one of the most pertinent and explicit reactions to our particular slice of dystopian late capitalism.
Feature
The Egalitarian Vision of Nativity Scenes
In all its artistic iterations across millennia, the nativity remains inherently political in its depiction of God choosing to enter the world in marginalized circumstances.
Opinion
A Visual History of No Kings
From the destruction of King George III's statue to today's No Kings movement, resistance to tyranny has always demanded aesthetic subversion.
Opinion
Maurizio Cattelan Is No Duchamp
One elevated the prosaic. The other merely gilded the familiar.
Opinion
The Algorithmic Presidency
Just as 20th-century fascists deployed radio and film, today’s ideological descendants use memes, social media, and above all, artificial intelligence.
Comics
An Unfinished History of the Antichrist
The sinister figure was shaped by social and political forces throughout the centuries. Is he still walking among us?
Opinion
The Tackiness of Evil
More than a testament to his tastelessness, Trump’s demolition of the White House tells the American people: I can do whatever I want with the past.
Opinion
Homeland Security’s Genocidal Aesthetics
By posting paintings like “American Progress,” the DHS signals its white supremacist beliefs.