Opinion
Required Reading
This week, Santa's Chinese elves, 200 journalists in prison, troll hunters, inequality and Uber, top selfie searches, art bros, and more.
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Opinion
Weekend Words: Island
It only took a half-century, but this week the United States restored diplomatic relations with the island nation 90 miles off its shoreline.
Music
Electric Therapeutic Noisefest
Former Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore’s new album The Best Day begins with eight downward arpeggios, which is pretty funny given his reputation as an obsessive guitar technician.
Art
Cy Twombly’s Remarkable Treatise
A drawing/collage that Cy Twombly made on May 27, 1970, includes three disparate objects: a reproduction of his large, multi-panel painting, “Treatise on the Veil” (1968); a sheet of paper whose dimensions echoed the reproduction, with vertical creases made by folding; and another sheet containing h
Books
Fables from Artlandia: The Miraculous by Raphael Rubinstein
In a 1946 letter to the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, poet Charles Olson articulated what has become a quietly influential conception of historiography in poetry circles. “There has been, is too much of everything, including knowledge,” he contended, quite presciently, “because it has not been winno
Art
Ephemera, Wives, Paint: Cézanne & Picasso
Masters of painting are occupying major venues in New York this winter. Egon Schiele at the Neue Galerie, Matisse cutouts at MoMA. In addition, the rival Picasso exhibitions at Gagosian and Pace are noteworthy, as is Madame Cézanne at the emblazoned, tarnished Met.
Art
The Death of Painting: All-New, 2014 Edition
The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, the new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, prompted thoughts of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, though I’m not sure how much acceptance there is in the end.
Art
Shredded Sheets and a Mountain of Words
A mountain of typography and a two-story installation of ripped fabric are on view at Pierogi Gallery's the Boiler as part of Terra Infirma, a duo exhibition featuring Linda Herritt and Elana Herzog.
News
Brooklyn Store Under Fire for Native American Headdress Logo
The clothing retailer Scumbags & Superstars, which has a storefront space in Bushwick and an online store, has come under fire for its "disrespectful" appropriation of Native American imagery in its logo and merchandise.
News
Tate Digitizes 52,000 Artifacts from the Lives of British Artists
Around 52,000 letters, sketchbooks, photographs, and other ephemera of 20th-century British artists will be accessible online by next summer. The first 6,000 items were revealed this month as part of the Tate Archive.
Art
Two Films Capture the Genius of Gaudí
Can a film program be too Gaudí? Graced with Stefan Haupt’s efficient, if a little odd, documentary on the architect’s famously unfinished church, Sagrada Família, the Film Society of Lincoln Center (and at least one other theater) saw a match made in Barcelona and paired it with Hiroshi Teshigahara
In Brief
Boat Bearing JR Artwork Rescues Drifting Migrants
Sometimes art and life converge in miraculous ways. That happened last week in the Mediterranean, where drifting migrants were rescued by a cargo ship plastered with an image by French artist JR, the Wall Street Journal reported.