Books
Reader’s Diary: Cormac McCarthy's ‘Blood Meridian’
Thanks to Blood Meridian, I’ve learned, at least temporarily, the meanings of “quirt,” “pritchel,” and even the seemingly ultra-rare “malandered.”
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Books
The Tender Proceduralism of Solmaz Sharif’s 'Look'
More than merely taking a side in a long-running coterie debate, Look’s selective disclosures of its method stand out because they represent a way of pointing to artistic process without fetishizing it.
Art
Stoic Beauty
At one point, while looking at Roy McMakin’s four identical green tables, I had the sudden urge to wipe the dust off one of them, except there wasn’t any dust.
Art
After the Storm, and Before
Marco Breuer has been making abstract photographs since the early 1990s. However, in contrast to Aaron Siskind, whose black-and-white photographs of walls were linked to the gestural paintings of the Abstract Expressionists, particularly those of his friend Franz Kline, Breuer works with sheets of c
Art
Surveyor of Shadows
While writers have drawn a line, so to speak, between Soriano and Sol LeWitt, it seems to me that there are profound differences between their wall drawings. Whereas LeWitt’s self-contained works make no reference to the changes of everyday life, Soriano’s are based on time, light, and shadows cast
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
Music
Travis Scott's Ambience
There’s a paradox at the heart of this music: constructing a simulation of hedonism takes extraordinary discipline.
Art
Richard Hell’s Journals 1969–1979
Read alongside his music, Richard Hell’s journals help us understand the formation of punk culture as an intellectual as much as an aesthetic movement.
Art
Don Voisine's Universe of Shapes
Don Voisine’s pieces demand attention; you need to study them up close and from a distance to fully appreciate the illusions the artist creates by way of a handful of shapes and a limited but resonant set of colors.
Art
Blurred Boundaries and Other Connections
A mix of blue-chip names and energetic younger artists on the Lower East Side is further evidence of the increasingly blurred boundaries among Manhattan’s art districts.
Art
Two Iconoclasts Offer a Fuller Picture of Korean Modernism
Exhibitions in Seoul devoted to Wook-kyung Choi and Yong-Ik Kim give a sense of Korean artists' vibrant responses to the monochrome Dansaekhwa movement of the 1970s.
Art
Two Artists Strutting as Victorian-Era Dandies Imagine Alternate Queer Histories
Artist duo McDermott & McGough's show is filled with campy critiques of homosexual oppression through the ages.