News
Another day, another depressing story about the deterioration of cultural patrimony in Italy. The subject this time? The Biblioteca dei Girolamini, a 16th-century library in Naples that was systematically looted by its director.
Books
The 1920s in Russia weren't exactly what people had hoped they would be. After the 1917 Russian Revolution brought down the old regime and the Soviets took over, there was a swelling sense of hope in a potential egalitarian Communist future. Yet only a few years later, censorship was curtailing art
Books
Lucian Freud, as presented in the gossipy new biography, Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Grieg, lived for 88 years entirely guilt-free, which is a remarkable bit of pathology in itself, but especially so for the grandson of the man who tagged guilt as the glue holding civilization together.
Books
“Is this relationship built on trust?” Nigel Nolan asks in a caption directed at FeD, one of his “Argentine boys for sale.” The relationship in question is structured on commodity exchange: FeD’s image in exchange for a cut of the sales from it. Argentine Boys for Sale, a 500-page ebook with accompa
Books
CHICAGO — Simone de Beauvoir once said, "Buying is a profound pleasure." To shop, to consume, to purchase a new look even if it's temporary — an air of satisfaction accompanies that moment of credit card swiping, or handing over that stack of Ben Franklins.
Books
One mind-stumping sensation a reader is likely to glean from Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2013) is that the poems wrote themselves, and that he just happened to be in the room when they showed up. There is even a substantial section in Collected Poems that Padgett
Interview
Anyone who's chosen to live a creative lifestyle — not just artists — knows what it means to worry. Rather than gun for the safety of a monthly paycheck, most of us (this writer included) have to find a way to put food on the table, without sacrificing our proverbial souls.
Books
The Romanian-born, German-speaking Paul Celan is one of the most translated poets in recent decades, and we’re still not through with him.
Books
It seems like every few decades there is a mainstream revival for the occult and esoteric. Not that it ever fades away, but there is a periodic surge in fascination with the unknowable, the rites, rituals, and art that make up its history.
Books
How much time do you spend looking at the art on a pizza box?
![Alan McMonagle’s "Psychotic Episodes": “I’ve a feeling we’re not in [Old] Ireland anymore”](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/size/w600/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/10/alanmcmonagle-home.jpg)
Books
“Being born in Scotland carries with it certain responsibilities.” That observation, made by Derek Taylor, the Liverpool-born newspaperman who became the Beatles’ press officer, was irreverently included on the back cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s record album The Plastic One Band/Live Peace in
Books
Lytle Shaw’s Fieldworks is a big and ambitious study that is a welcome addition to the dense, unruly, and relatively unmapped field called “postwar poetics.”