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Hyperallergic

Hyperallergic

Sensitive to Art & its Discontents

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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 inArt

How Jean-Michel Basquiat Rose to Be King of the Art World

Avatar photo by Mark Dery June 29, 2022July 11, 2022

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.

Posted inOpinion

The Unseen Depths of Winslow Homer’s “The Gulf Stream”

Avatar photo by Mark Dery May 30, 2022May 31, 2022

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

Avatar photo by Mark Dery January 13, 2022January 13, 2022

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

Avatar photo by Mark Dery November 18, 2021November 19, 2021

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

Avatar photo by Mark Dery November 8, 2019November 19, 2021

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

Avatar photo by Mark Dery October 22, 2018November 19, 2021

“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

Avatar photo by Mark Dery February 9, 2018November 19, 2021

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

Avatar photo by Mark Dery May 19, 2017June 6, 2022

The passing of the old eBay is the last nail in the cyberflâneur’s coffin.

Chuck Berry circa 1958 (via Wikimedia Commons)
Posted inArt

Chuck Berry and the Modernist Fable of “Johnny B. Goode”

Avatar photo by Mark Dery March 28, 2017November 19, 2021

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

Avatar photo by Mark Dery December 29, 2016November 19, 2021

Salvador Dalí’s 1973 cookbook, now reprinted by Taschen, doesn’t seem to know what Surrealist cuisine is.

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Hyperallergic is a forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking about art in the world today. Founded in 2009, Hyperallergic is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.

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