The art establishment was never quite sure what to do with a self-taught artist like Basquiat, who owed as much to bebop and William S. Burroughs’s cut-up technique as he did to African influences.
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is a cultural critic. He coined the term “Afrofuturism” (in the 1994 anthology Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture, which he edited) and popularized the concept of “culture jamming,” which he theorized in his 1993 essay of the same name. His books include The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, , and the essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams. His most recent book is a biography, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey.
Posted inOpinion
The Unseen Depths of Winslow Homer’s “The Gulf Stream”
In this moment of racial reckoning, we cannot continue viewing Homer’s masterpiece as an apolitical seascape painting.
Posted inArt
Exhilarating Dreamlands of the Unconscious at the Met Museum
Tensions between resistance to Surrealism as cultural imperialism and the embrace of it as a universalist vision of freedom unfettered run through the show.
Posted inOpinion
An Archconservative Magazine Discovers Afrofuturism at the Met and Is Not Pleased
Conservative critic Gilbert T. Sewall wants to make the Met great again.
Posted inArt
The Last Time I Saw John Giorno, an Extraordinary Performance Poet
In the weeks after his death, I think of Giorno’s poetry — exuberantly queer, unabashedly pornographic, frequently hilarious, sometimes furious, and almost always as compassionate as it is sardonic.
Posted inArt
An Update of Edward Gorey’s Classic Abecedarium for Dark Times
“The Ghastlygun Tinies,” MAD magazine’s mordant riff on The Gashlycrumb Tinies, updates Edward Gorey’s book for our age of school shootings.
Posted inBooks
Max Ernst’s Collage Novels Are Part Séance, Part Victorian Underworld, and All Uncanny
Ernst’s trailblazing “collage novels” employ the dreamlike conjunction — the fusion or juxtaposition of unlike elements whose collision makes perfect sense, in a free-associated way.
Posted inArt
Mourning eBay’s Days as the Internet’s Kitschiest, Most Surreal Mall
The passing of the old eBay is the last nail in the cyberflâneur’s coffin.
Posted inArt
Chuck Berry and the Modernist Fable of “Johnny B. Goode”
The jackhammer chatter of the song’s opening riff lets us know that the pastoral is past.
Posted inBooks
The Persistence of Hunger: Dalí’s Dissatisfying Cookbook
Salvador Dalí’s 1973 cookbook, now reprinted by Taschen, doesn’t seem to know what Surrealist cuisine is.