The spectacle can be found on every screen that you look at. It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser.
Celebrity
Posted inBooks
Photos Capture the Rise of a Carefully Crafted Chinese Celebrity
The name of Chinese actress and pop singer Fan Bingbing has been cropping up more and more frequently in the headlines of Western news publications.
Posted inArt
Madness in My Family
When Saroyan, a biography of my father William Saroyan by Lawrence Lee and Barry Gifford, was published in 1986, I was coming off a five-year run during which I wrote three books about my family and couldn’t handle sitting down to read another word about them.
Posted inBooks
You’ve Been Shot by a Smooth Photographer: The World of Michael Jackson Impersonators
Lorena Turner’s book The Michael Jacksons is the end product of a journey to track down, photograph, and interview Michael Jackson impersonators.
Posted inArt
Richard Prince, Inc.
Richard Prince: New Portraits consists of 37 of the artist’s so-called “Instagram paintings,” each of which, if we’re to believe an anonymous source of the New York Post, are selling for around $100,000. The series, which includes photographs of celebrities such as Kate Moss, Pamela Anderson, Elizabeth Jagger, and Sky Ferreira, feels cheap and underwhelming.
Posted inOpinion
Waxing and Waning with the Stars in Hollywood
LOS ANGELES — President Barack Obama stands fully formed in wax towards the exit of the entertaining, kitschy tourist trap that is the Hollywood Wax Museum. Celebrity gazing is a thoroughly American tradition.
Posted inBooks
Meditations on Celebrity Over Millennia
Lapham’s Quarterly is a quarterly (duh) publication edited by Lewis Lapham (also duh), former Harper’s Magazine editor from 1976 to 1981. Each issue of the staid, stately magazine focuses on a single theme; previous themes have included “The City,” “Sports & Games,” and “About Money.” Drawing on writers and source texts from throughout history, Lapham’s provides a unique perspective on its chosen topics by sheer editorial insight, pairing eras and authors to best highlight the similarities and contrast between changing perceptions. It’s the proximity of all of these authoritative voices that gives Lapham’s its historical heft, but it’s the lightness of their touch that makes the text fun, an adventure and a time machine in the reading.
