Art
An Ode to the Raised Fist Emoji
The international gesture has almost always signified some variation of solidarity and power to the people.
Essays
Art
The Enduring Allure of Pencils
Sometimes affection sprouts up in unexpected forms. Sometimes a core of graphite mixed with clay and encased in a tube of wood can surprise you. It hooked me, anyway.
Art
The Fascist Messaging of the Trump Campaign Eagle
Trump and his surrogates have repeatedly and blatantly integrated fascist aesthetics into the campaign. This T-shirt design is only the latest example.
Art
The Crafting of an Art Critic
How did I learn to judge between one work and another? By looking and reading and looking and reading and looking.
Art
Fighting to Save a Fringe Landmark
One of central London’s few remaining alternative arts venues struggles to survive in the face of a 333% rent increase.
Art
What’s So Hard About Painting Shakespeare?
Many paintings of Shakespearean scenes feel mawkish or literal-minded, flat-footed or lacking in emotional depth.
Art
The Fault Lines of Freedom, From Juneteenth to Independence Day
Solidarity gestures are trending but as we move from one “Independence Day” to another, will they be accompanied by structural change?
Art
Why It's Right That the Theodore Roosevelt Statue Comes Down
Maybe we can finally really look at Theodore Roosevelt statue: a monument that is all about hierarchy, created to express what American Museum of Natural History exhibits at the time called the “distinct races of mankind."
Film
What Hollywood Does to Asian Actors
Hollywood stereotypes define the Asian male as bowing, scraping, obsequious, devious, sneaky, dismal, and sexually frustrated.
Art
The Prophecies of Deborah Kass
What can we say about an image that understood Trump’s root persona early on, and froze it in time?
Art
Elliott Green’s Voyage of Self-Discovery
Green has attained something that few artists accomplish in their lifetime: he reinvented himself.
Art
The Disregard of Power in Journalistic “Objectivity”
Images of the brutalized, dead, and dying can buy awards and recognition for journalists. When the opportunity presents itself, many rush to participate because they subscribe to the doctrine of redistributing pain as it is, not as it should be.