Art
Making American Labor Visible Again
Though officially outlawed in 1865, the de facto continuation of slavery remains a repulsive American secret.
Tim Keane
Art
Louise Nevelson's Graphic Imagination
Nevelson used drawing as a creative bridge back and forth into the making of sculpture.
Books
Marcel Proust’s Dream of Art
Proust’s mid-career struggles with writing led him to art criticism, which provides clues to the qualities prized by readers of In Search of Lost Time.
Art
Van Gogh’s Japanese Idyll
Through willful imitation of Japanese art, van Gogh became the van Gogh we know, perhaps the world’s most famous painter.
Art
A Painter's Extraterrestrial Journey Through the Light of Day
In recent decades, living and working in and around Cape Cod, Paul Resika’s imagery has veered between the naturalistic and the mythical.
Art
Photographing Northern Ireland's Mean Streets
During the decades that Northern Ireland’s paramilitary violence garnered worldwide attention, most people were busy making ends meet.
Art
How August Sander and Otto Dix Recorded Fascism's Rise
Questions posed in a two-artist exhibition at Tate Liverpool reflect back on our own politically desperate era, often with eerie resonance.
Art
Walter Benjamin on How to Stop Worrying and Love Late Capitalism
Benjamin’s gargantuan Arcades Project brims with philosophical propositions, poetic digressions, lyrical aphorisms, and experimental theses.
Art
The Heroes and Villains of New York's Changing Cityscape
There once was a time when the resistance movements of New York pushed back against the regimenting, state-sponsored programs known as “urban renewal.”
Art
America Is Trembling: Jean Genet’s Answer to Donald Trump
Jean Genet believed that money was inherently evil and the quest for power was a form of necrophilia.
Art
The Irish for Noh: The Masks of William Butler Yeats
Although the poetry of William Butler Yeats is often misconstrued as autobiographical, the poet scorned such transparency, calling it “unimaginative” and comparing realism to “putting photographs in a plush frame.”
Art
Bohemian Rhapsody: The Love Songs of Franz Kafka
How did a sharply dressed insurance agent with a desultory love life, who preferred brothels to relationships, who held crappy middle management jobs before retiring early due to poor health, become, as his one-time lover Milena Jesenská puts it, a “clairvoyant” storyteller, let alone one with a sti