Music
Occam's Razor: In Defense of Drone
There is nothing like the ethereal monotonal droning of bow on string to amplify the dismal cacophony of human tics, our collective bodily disquiet.
Latest
Comics
Is Nothing Sacred?
Selling out is hard not to do …
Art
Revealing the Group Selfie
CHICAGO — Selfies are no more a singular activity than any other type of digital vernacular photograph.
Books
The 19th-Century Story of the Wonderful Tattooed Man
The story of how a boy from Providence, Rhode Island, became "the most wonderful tattooed man ever known in the civilized world" involves menacing sailors and voyages across the sea, and was recently digitized so that we can all read this tale of the 19th century.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, New Yorker gets snarky, guns at MoMA, new Banksy, digitizing drawings, a literary classic is banned in North Carolina, and more
Art
Robert Rauschenberg and Photography
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of photography throughout Rauschenberg’s career.
Books
Living in Hypothesis: The Poetry of Patrizia Cavalli
It’s refreshing, in this age of ubiquitous self-promotion, to pick up a book modestly titled My Poems Won’t Change The World, the first substantial American anthology of Patrizia Cavalli’s work.
Art
The Face of Infinity Is Not a Picture: New Paintings by Barbara Takenaga
In an illuminating interview with Barbara Takenaga, Robert Kushner makes an observation that goes to the heart of a question that I want to raise about the artist’s recent work …
Music
Fagen's Critical Catalogue (September 2013, Part 1)
This week, reviews of Vampire Weekend, Janelle Monaé, The Weeknd, and Neko Case.
Art
All Art Is Contemporary, Part 3: Florence
FLORENCE, Italy — Is there a more hallucinatory painter than Jacopo Carucci, more popularly known as Jacopo Pontormo?
Art
All Art Is Contemporary, Part 2: Arezzo
AREZZO, Italy — The organization of space. Its definition can be found under Piero della Francesca, whose frescoes depicting the Legend of the True Cross (1452–1466) are mind-bending excursions into the cumulative force of perspective, line, plane and pattern.
Art
A Pop-up Photo City on the Brooklyn Waterfront
Situated on the edge of Brooklyn, and overlooking the picturesque bouquet of buildings in lower Manhattan, Photoville is quickly becoming a must-see affair in the photography world.